Premier Printing Inc.

Owner: Jay McDowell

Address: 115 N. Dixieland Dr., Suite 16, Rogers 72756

Phone / fax: 501-631-5914 / 501-631-5827

Hours: 8 a.m. to 6p.m. Monday-Friday and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday

Startup date: Aug. 1

E-mail address: [email protected]

Lured by the weekly swarm of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. vendors in Northwest Ark-ansas, Jay McDowell opened Premier Printing Inc. to offer a range of replication services — from high-volume, full-color, offset-printing projects to single-page, black-and-white copies.

McDowell’s fastest press prints about 12,000 sheets per hour, and the cost per page depends on the project’s volume. A single colorless copy costs 7 cents, and one color copy costs 99 cents. However, an order of 45,000 black-and-white copies costs about $400, dropping the per-page cost to less than a penny.

Higher volume projects, from the vendors or other small businesses, are Premier Printing’s pride, McDowell said.

“[Other small printing companies] get into a certain financial stability,” McDowell said, “and they refuse more work than they accept. My whole deal is customer service.”

Premier Printing actually plays a larger role in the vendor’s work than McDowell expected, because the shop retrieves two or three forgotten vendor presentations per week.

Various company representatives travel from all over the country to offer their concepts to Wal-Mart executives, McDowell said, and many accidentally leave their computer disks at home. Premier helps retrieve and print the lost presentations.

McDowell leased Xerox copiers for the 3,500-SF shop, and he estimated his initial costs for the business to top $60,000. Five full-time employees staff the shop.