By Ed Avis
IRgA member company Duck Press is located in Tucson, Arizona and sometimes their clients head to job sites at 4:30 a.m. to beat the heat. Those clients often want to pick up prints on their way. Other clients want to stop by and get prints in the evening, after Duck Press is closed.
Until recently, getting prints to those early-or-late clients was a hassle. But earlier this year company owner Victor Pesqueira saw Amazon’s ubiquitous package lockers and got an idea: Why not install similar lockers outside Duck Press so that customers could pick up prints after hours?
“It was a creative self-service approach,” says Pesqueira. “We’re on a major street and I thought the lockers could create an iconic buzz for our shop.”
So Pesqueira, who has owned Duck Press since 2003, talked to his designer about the idea and came up with some preliminary drawings. He shared those with a local metalworker who enjoys unusual projects. By the beginning of March an attractive, sturdy set of lockers was installed outside his shop.
The lockers feature nine vertical lockers for rolled prints and two rectangular lockers for spec books or other print jobs. An LED array at the top lights up after dark to attract attention. Duck Press employees put a customer’s prints in a given locker and text or email the customer the locker number and a four-digit code. When the customer arrives, they type the code into a pad on the locker and voila, their prints are there!
“The lockers send a message that we’re trying to provide a solution for our customers,” Pesqueira says. “We don’t have enough business to keep staff working after hours, but this way we’re still serving customers from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., when we’re otherwise closed.”
Not only do the lockers make it easier for customers to get their orders, but they also are a marketing tool.
“We have kind of a bland building front, and the lockers add curb appeal,” Pesqueira says. “There’s a breakfast/lunch place to the right of us and a bar to the left, so the lockers are enough of an enigma for someone to say, ‘Wonder what they do?’ So for a sensible capital investment it was well worth it.”
Pesqueira says the lockers are used nearly every day now. He recently started distributing a one-page marketing flyer with a picture of the lockers, so familiarity with the concept is slowing growing. “Universally everyone loves them,” he says. “They have been amazingly well received.”
The locker concept isn’t Pesqueira’s only clever idea for attracting attention. He only started offering reprographics services in 2019, so he’s unable to rely on a decades-long reputation among potential customers. So he counts on out-of-the-box thinking instead.
For example, when he meets a potential customer, he doesn’t just offer his business card. Instead, he gives them a Duck Bucks (see image at right), which provides a $5 discount off the customer’s first order.
“When you run into a trade guy at the gas station or something you can give him a business card, but the Duck Bucks is a way to really get their attention,” he says. “A lot of times a cement guy might just need to print two pages, but this way they get them for free, and it gets them in the door.”
The lockers, the Duck Bucks, and other innovative marketing ideas are helping Duck Press grow in the Tucson market.
“We’re the new kid on the block so we have to do something to make us stand out,” Pesqueira says. “We like to show that we’re progressive and innovative and doing things differently.”