By Lew Sabbag

Mini-Mailers, a direct mail firm with offices in Los Angeles and Irvine, Calif., was founded in 1986 by CEO Bill Rivera with the goal of becoming the most advanced letter-shop in the nation.

In keeping with that goal, the company went looking for ways to offer its customers across the country the ability to more easily customize, proof and edit print jobs, while ensuring fast turnarounds.

After considering a range of alternatives, the company hit on Pageflex and its line of Web-based software for online document customization and digital printing. With the help of Xerox, a Pageflex partner, the company rolled out Pageflex’s Mpower and .EDIT software to create a new application it calls WebToPrint. The result has been total customer satisfaction, as now its clients can take advantage of WebToPrint’s corporate identity protection, database merge and real-time online proofing capabilities.

"As we began expanding our vision outward from direct mail services to full-range digital print services, we learned that in this business, the hardware is already great, but the latest and greatest software makes the difference," Rivera said. "We found the Pageflex Web-to-print technologies by far the most flexible available. And we feel we have chosen a partner who will grow with us as we establish our third facility and devote it entirely to digital print, especially for the one-to-one marketing segment."

The company can now offer a range of quick one-to-one variable data-based customization options, significantly increasing its ability to bid on and win print jobs from a variety of marketing organizations, Rivera said.