Codra Enterprises

How to Create a Collaborative Partnership with Your Printer

One of the great joys in life for many business owners is creative collaboration. Brainstorming ideas with like-minded people has led to some of the greatest inventions in history. Nailing down concrete ideas and details can be a bit tricky, though, especially when your product is being produced overseas. Your printer can be an amazing collaborative partner, so here are a few quick guidelines to help boost your collaborative opportunity, particularly with an overseas partner.

Determine the Big Ideas Before Involving the Printer
While your printer can offer suggestions on materials, packaging, or add-ons, the initial meeting will flow much more smoothly if you already have drawings, links, photos, and firm ideas of the product you are looking to build. You don't need the details, but you need a nice pitch deck, of sorts—something to clearly communicate where you're headed so the printer can offer helpful feedback and ideas without steering you the wrong direction because of misunderstanding. Take the time to do as much of the background research as possible before your initial meeting with the printer and save yourself time and extra stress in the first step with your partner.

Organize Organize Organize
One of the most detrimental issues for partnering well is disorganization. It doesn't only affect your personal process; it adds undue weight to the relationship with the printer. For example, you'll need to share design and content files with your printer. Sending them piece by piece in separate emails followed by emails with edits and revisions is a recipe for disaster.
Instead, create a singular place and process for sharing and updating files with a repository and notification ability. Even if your file due date needs to be pushed back in order to add all files together, you'll save yourself and your production partner a lot of headaches by doing so. Other helpful practices include:
Appoint one point of contact for the duration of the project
Specify one address for all samples to be delivered
Plan for two sets of proofs if those who will approve them are not in the same place. While some of these ideas may seem like common sense, it's not uncommon to see them overlooked, which can add a lot of unnecessary headache and time to your project.

Pump Up the Branding
One of the benefits of overseas printing is the ability to create items at an extremely effective and efficient price point. Take advantage of this opportunity and add in the extra marketing
piece(s) to share the story of the product, display your logo on a belly band, or create a branded card to share behind the scenes photos of the process. People are drawn to great stories, and you can take full advantage of low cost overseas partnerships to add in a little something extra to tell your story and help your product stand out from the pack.

Ready to build a relationship with a collaborative partner to create amazing products to please your customers and enhance your brand? Contact us at [email protected], and let's create something great together.

Nonprofits: Don't Send the Same Old Donor Gifts

Another pen with your logo on the side? The same old keychain? Don't do it.
Donor appreciation gifts can not only be great ways to say "thank you" to trusted partners, but also opportunities to keep the mission in front of them and even allow them to become ambassadors on your behalf. So they should be well thought out, high quality products that represent your nonprofit well.

Organizations often create gifts that tie into the mission but don't usually ask themselves whether or not their donors will actually need or utilize the products. The best gifts have the donor in mind and represent your understanding of who they are. Here are a few items that could appeal to different personas within your donor base.

The Writer
Your donors who love to write likely also highly value quality products that pertain to that practice. High quality stationary, customized journals, embossed or carved writing pens, or a well-designed storage bin for such items are excellent, useful items that they will treasure. On a smaller scale, consider products that compliment those types of items, like customized highlighters sets, stickers, washi tape, or stretchy bands to add to their favorite journals. Each of those items can be manufactured with quality and customized for your brand.

The Traveler
Among your donors, there are likely some who are always on the go. And the regular traveler is usually pretty particular about what they take along, so a little creativity and an eye on quality is key. However, the right product could become a traveling billboard for your brand all over the world. Branded phone chargers, phone cases, travel chargers, and other such travel accessories can be great gifts that are used on a regular (daily) basis. You can also step up your game and offer a custom multifunctional bag, backpack, or passport case. Just keep in mind that travelers can be quite picky, so don't overlook quality to ensure it's something they'll treasure and utilize.

The Giver
Your donors are all givers, but there are certainly some who simply love to give gifts. These types of donors might enjoy custom wrapping paper, gift bags, or even a pair of customized scissors. Well designed, beautiful paper will not only be a useful tool, but also a creative way for your donors to share about your mission with their loved ones.

The Outdoorsman
Your outdoors-ey donors are often traveling from destination to destination, as well. Some of the traveler's ideas could be useful for them, as could a nice reusable branded water bottle (plastic, glass, or aluminum) or travel mug, a branded hammock, or some nice gloves or headband. You could also appeal to their athletic side, offering up a branded yoga mat, workout bands, ear pods (w/ branded charging box), or athletic bag.

The Gamer
The average knick knack may not be the best choice for your donors who love games, but you can have a lot of fun creating products they'll love. You can add your branding to existing games, like packs of cards. Or you can create your own puzzles, cards, or even strategy games that align with your mission. Though it takes a little creativity on the front end, creating games can be a lot of fun for both you and your donors and are fairly inexpensive to print.

The Chef
For donors who enjoy spending time in the kitchen, offer a recipe box (cards in a custom tin box) to store their favorite family recipes to be passed down for generations. If your nonprofit is international, create a cookbook with recipes from all around the world. Or a nice set of branded measuring cups, a set of nice coffee mugs with a display tree, or a high quality oven mitt could do the trick.

The Host
Donors who love to host others in their home can be incredible ambassadors for your nonprofit, because other potential partners are in their home regularly. A couple of common products that remain wonderful ideas for in-home display are a beautifully constructed coffee table book or stunning prints to hang on the wall. Consider other things that might be used regularly by hosts or displayed in homes, like drinking glasses, high quality blankets, or hand towels.

These are a few simple ideas that will hopefully spur creativity as you continue to nurture the relationship with the partners who are funding the mission. And, of course, we're here to help when it's time to create. We'll take the guesswork out of the process so you can stay focused on the mission.

If you're ready to create brand-developing products that connect with your clientele and further your mission, Codra is the collaborative partner you need. Contact us at [email protected].

Building Your Brand with Product Pre-Sales
If you have a small business producing new products, the topic of pre-sales has most likely come up at some point. Offering your customers a chance to purchase items before their release can add a lot of value, as pre-sales can be a great tool to connect with your audience and build excitement. Here are a few advantages of pre-sales for your next product.

Cash Flow
By offering an item before its release date, you receive capital you otherwise would not have. Especially for small businesses who watch every penny by necessity, front loading some of the profit you'll make from sales before laying out all of the cash for production can be a huge help. This will increase your cash flow and ease the burden and pressure of not knowing if your product will generate income.

Creativity
The proliferation of funding sites like Kickstarter, Indigogo, and GoFundMe has proven that there are myriad wonderful product ideas out there that would never see the light of day without pre-sales. Running such a campaign allows your business to test the consumer waters and maybe try some products you might otherwise consider too risky.

Anticipation
When a new item is introduced but not quite yet “attainable,” hype builds. Excitement grows. Anticipation intensifies. It's human nature to want what we can’t have and to make sure we have the opportunity to grab it (see any product release for which people line up around the block or camp out for days). By offering a pre-sale, you are essentially playing into that desire and offering the buyer the chance to attain something they otherwise would have had to wait for. They become part of a special club, as it were, and build loyalty when done right.

Free Social Proof
Pre-sales create multiple opportunities for fun, exciting marketing campaigns. But the best ones create opportunities for free marketing. Social proof. There is no better marketing than when your customers become advocates on your behalf. When your customers begin to share your product because they were able to get in and order early, and they want to do that; you just have to give them the chance, all of their friends and followers will feel the pull and your product will begin to make the rounds. This can happen at any point in the life of your product, but pre-release offers unique opportunities that can be incredibly valuable.

Freight Relief
Any business owner understands the pressure and stress of relying on freight to have your product in hand—especially if you've been shipping products in the last year. By offering pre-orders, you can ease the stress on your mind of having to have your product in hand by an immediate date. Pre-orders buy you time with freight instability because you're not trying to stock shelves to get sales. You're simply delivering products that have already been sold in the most efficient and effective manner possible, but it doesn't affect your bottom line.

Customer Loyalty
Customers like to feel special. They want to feel like they have insider information or special access to something that other people do not. Pre-sales are a great way to offer your customers exclusive access to your brand. This builds loyalty, and helps create customers for life.
If you're ready to create brand-developing products that connect with your customers and enhance your brand, Codra is the collaborative partner you need. Contact us at [email protected]

Everything You Need to Know About Printing Proofs

If you’re new to printing products, you'll get to learn an important step in the process called “proofing.” It's the part of the process where a proof of concept is produced so that changes can be made before an item goes into mass production. Especially when you are printing overseas, this is a vital part of the process, and one you want to understand and fully take advantage of. You have options for different types of proofs that may be offered for your products. Here’s a quick guide to 3 forms of proofs that can be produced for paper items.

PDF Proof
This is the most basic kind of proof, and it is completely free. It is a digital (as in not a hard copy) PDF document containing your printed pages as they will be laid out for production. It will include crop marks, bleed lines, and a color block on the side to show the color ratios. It will also include markings for required hole punches, points at each corner for measuring whether or not your text is centered, and other design cues.

Typically, these proofs are generated by the plants right after receiving initial product files. They are a great way to verify alterations to the text and design before mass production, because they are generated quickly and you do not have to wait for transit time. These are not meant to match color, as the color on screen will reflect color in RGB format, but printing will take place in either the CMYK or PMS format.

Digital Proof
Don’t let the name fool you, while this may sound similar to the PDF proof, the digital proof is actually physical text pages printed with your designs. It bears that name because it is a digital printout of your product's artwork. This proof will contain the same crop, bleed, and hole punch marks as a digital proof and can be very helpful, especially if your project contains fold out pages and ultra specific formatting throughout the text.
While the digital proof can sometimes be printed on the actual paper that will be used in mass production, it is important to note that the color may not be exactly the same as the one that is used in mass production. So for the particularly color conscious, the next proof is for you.

Wet Proof
Wet proofs involve printing your actual colors (either CMYK or PMS) on the actual paper that will be used in your project, so you can see exactly what the final product will look like. Consider this #1 out of the thousands you would be printing in mass production. This is the most definitive way to check your proof for all text, design, material questions. You can hold it in your hands to see and feel what the final product will actually be. The only problem is that it is very expensive to run the printing machines when you are only producing one item. But it can be very helpful if you are producing items like color-packed planners, coffee table books, or other image-heavy products.

The point of the proof is to give you the opportunity to make 100% sure that everything is perfect before mass production begins. The PDF proof is where you'll want to make most of your necessary changes because there is no cost to produce it. It is simply editing and manipulating the digital files. A digital proof can give you a good idea of the final product, but won't be exact. The wet proof is the final step you'll want to take when proofing because you don't want to make a bunch of changes and produce multiple proofs for the sake of the costs of production.

Ready to create the product to please your customers and enhance your brand? Contact us at [email protected], let’s create something great together.

Why Churches Are Turning to Overseas Printing Services

In recent years, churches ranging from local churches to large, multi-campus Ministries have begun exploring overseas printing services for their communication and outreach needs. From Bibles, books, journals to sermon series booklets to Bible study materials, printing is an important part of ministry. Churches are learning how they can take advantage by partnering with an international printing company.

Cost Efficiency
One of the most significant drivers behind this trend is cost savings. Overseas printing in Asia have lower labor and production costs, while delivering high-quality products at a much lower price charged by domestic printers. For churches operating on budgets or prioritizing stewardship, this presents a great opportunity. By reducing printing expenses, churches can allocate more funds toward core ministry efforts such as community outreach, missions, staff support, and facility improvements.

High-Quality Production
Overseas printers offer exceptional quality, thanks to modern equipment and global competition. Advanced printing technologies, high-grade paper options, and professional finishing. Services such as binding, embossing, and UV coating are widely available. For churches producing visually engaging materials, this level of quality reflects a church’s commitment to excellence.

Planning Ahead
One of the trade-offs with overseas printing is longer production and shipping times. Depending on the location and shipping method, delivery can take several weeks. This requires churches to plan further in advance than they might with local printers. But with some simple planning and preparation, a church can easily take advantage of the benefits of overseas printing.

Clear Communication
Clear communication, detailed specifications, and careful review of proofs are essential to ensuring that the final product meets expectations. Churches that invest time in building strong relationships will find the process smooth over time.

Is Overseas Printing Right for Your Church?
The decision to use overseas printing services ultimately depends on a church’s specific needs, timeline, and priorities. For large print runs with flexible deadlines, the cost savings and quality can be highly advantageous. For urgent or highly customized projects, local printers may still be the better choice. Many churches adopt a hybrid approach using overseas providers for bulk, planned materials and local printers for quick-turnaround jobs.

To learn more, email us at [email protected] so we can learn more about your needs and better serve you.

Hey Podcaster, What Products Compliment Your Brand?

Podcasting has become a must-have for brands looking to connect with their customer bases and grow. Thought leadership (and storytelling) is one of the most valuable commodities for marketing your products and services. But what about those whose greatest commodity is the podcast—does it work the other way, too? Do products help to grow the reach of the podcast or further its success?

We have seen many successful podcasters dip their toes into the waters of overseas printing and the products they've created have helped expand their brands. The key is to find the creative answer that makes sense for your audience and matches your brand's style. A few simple steps can help get you there.

- Ask yourself if there's a product that just makes sense for your brand. For instance, if you host a storytelling podcast, why not write up a few of your most well loved stories and combine them into a book? Add a few pictures or a bit of illustration, and make it available as a coffee table book.

- Ask yourself if there's a product that specifically serves your listeners. Have a podcast for on-the-go moms? A nice branded planner or journal with sage advice, tips, reminders, or encouragement (quotes from your podcast?) might be just the way to connect further with your listeners. Making a podcast for off-roaders or van-lifers? You have to print the stickers, of course, but what about a handbook of some of the best places to go with maps, accommodations, and must-see places?

- Ask yourself if there's a product that stretches your brand and your listeners. Innovation and creativity are absolute necessities if you want to grow and expand your brand. Force yourself to consider new products, considering options that aren't necessarily the most natural or obvious fits. Are there ways to take what you do in the auditory world into print, ways to tell stories in a new way, share images, or otherwise create spaces for your brand to showcase what it does best? Find them. Explore them. Do not be afraid to take a measured chance.

Finding ways to expand from a strictly auditory commodity to a physical product could do for your brand what your show cannot. It could help you jump into markets that may not otherwise be familiar with your podcast. No matter your audience, there is a physical printed product to match their needs in some way.

Ready for a collaborative partner to help you get creative and produce new products to please your customers and enhance your brand? Contact us at [email protected], and let's create something great together!

Overcoming Cultural & Communications Issues Overseas

Establishing a professional and supportive business relationship with your overseas manufacturer is imperative for anyone looking to grow a business that is dependent on the products they produce. Building those relationships can be easier said than done. Here are a few tips to consider when developing a new relationship with an overseas partner.

Timezones
Communicating around the world is a struggle, and timezone differences are among the most well-known culprits for making consistent communication tricky. Many large manufacturers and printers could have a 12-hour time difference or higher, making conversations during regular business hours all but impossible. For example, China is about a 15-hour difference from the Pacific Time zone, so 9am in China is 6pm in California.

Be sure to schedule phone calls at appropriate times for both parties and maximize the conversations you have at those times. Take what you learn from those conversations and develop your asynchronous communication skills, learn to communicate as fully and clearly as possible without requiring contemporaneous communication.

Pictures
Details, details, details, they will determine the success of your product. Get them right, and you could be very successful. Get them wrong, and your product's success could be in jeopardy. Language confusion can be a major barrier when it comes to ironing out details, so utilize images to help ensure you and your production company are on the same page.

When facing a language barrier, details and explanations are in danger of being lost in translation or misinterpreted altogether. A tried and tested way to overcome this issue is by utilizing reference photos of the details you need in your product. Add precise notes to the photos to be sure your needs are clearly understood, and you can easily overcome communication barriers and develop the best product to represent your brand.

Celebrate Holidays
Keeping a professional, friendly attitude with your partner can show your appreciation for all the hard work that they do. A great way to do that is to understand the important holidays, traditions, and gifts that are customary for those specific holidays. Send a quick note acknowledging a given holiday or plan a little early and drop an appropriate gift in the mail.

Also, take the initiative to research and understand cultural customs that your partners hold. Doing so both prepares you to engage wisely and avoid possible opportunities for embarrassment or even insulting your partner. For example, Chrysanthemums are a very popular flower choice in the States to encourage or show support to someone. However, in many European countries, these beautiful flowers are viewed only as a symbol of funerals and the passing of loved ones. Giving gifts that demonstrate a misunderstanding of cultural norms can become a barrier to building a trusting relationship.

The best way to assure your project is completed to your satisfaction is by building long term relationships with your production partner that can be nurtured over time. That's not always easy, unless you are constantly creating products and have the opportunity to communicate regularly. Of course, you can also lean into a trusted, collaborative partner here in the States who have long term relationships already built. And Codra would be honored to help...

If you're ready to delve into the world of overseas printing and manufacturing, contact us at [email protected] to get started today!

Don't Forget the Experience: Choose the Right Packaging

If you are not taking care of your customers, your competitor will. –Bob Hooey

You’ve done it before, right? Visited a store or a website to purchase something you needed only to find it’s really difficult to spend your money? You weren’t able to find what you needed, or the process to buy it was just, well, awful.

Sadly, it’s a common reality for consumers. Creators and business owners spend whatever is required to produce a useful product, but the focus on the customer’s experience finding, purchasing, and utilizing it is often secondary, at best, or completely forgotten, at worst.

When designing for your project, your customer’s experience has to be just as important as the product design itself. While it certainly does not make up the whole of your customer's experience, your packaging can be a very important part of it.
Whether it’s a fully printed box or a special material pouch, the way that you package your product can aid or hinder the experience. Here are four helpful suggestions to help you design your packaging and delight your customers.

Unique Design
Your packaging will be the first thing your customer sees when they purchase your product, the first tangible interaction with it. Consider their experience, how it appears, how it feels in their hands, what it communicates. You'll want to mock it up and hold it in your hands. Open it. Play around with logo placement and any copy that might be on it. See how you feel opening it and imagine the experience you can create for your customer. Your manufacturer should be able to provide templates and physical samples that can help you visualize your packaging in order to help create a pleasing experience for your consumers.

Unique Elements
Part of creating a unique design is finding ways to make your packaging stand out from your competitors. Foil stamping, embossing, and full-color elements can spark the interest of your customers and give your packaging an elegant look.
Those extra creative pops can also encourage excitement and activity in social media. Content that centers around reviews, unboxing, and grand reveals of products can be a huge win for your marketing, and a great, maybe even surprising, experience can fuel it.

Use and Function
Some of the most creative packaging stands on its own. It isn't just thrown away once the product is removed. Once your customers get their hands on your product, make sure that the packaging and any additional elements included with it can be utilized in some creative or useful way.
For instance, nice, unique boxes or pouches can be used as storage or decoration in your customer's homes, which will be a reminder of your brand each time they see or use it. And a creative enough use could even create opportunity for a conversation piece and possible new customers.

Safety During Shipping
Though aesthetics and functionality are important for your packaging design, the safety of your product can't be an afterthought. Beautiful packaging is great, but it loses its luster if it can't keep the actual product safe and sound. Packing products like bubble wrap and packing peanuts can be an option for protection during shipping, but well-designed, sturdy packaging that doesn't require those extras can keep it clean and elevate it much more.

If you're ready to create the perfect packaging to enhance your product, please your customers, and enhance your brand, contact us at [email protected], and let's create something great together.

Environmentally Conscious Printing

FSC Certification
Years of waste created by the development of products has moved people in many industries to search out effective ways to create their products with minimal impact to the environment. That includes the printing industry, whose participants may choose to take part in a process to become FSC certified. Here’s a quick look at what FSC is and how it impacts your product.
FSC stands for Forest Stewardship Council, whose stated mission it is "to promote environmentally sound, socially beneficial and economically prosperous management of the world's forests" and has a vision to "meet our current needs for forest products without compromising the health of the world’s forests for future generations."

Essentially, the council is a group of experts who study different industries to understand the impact that they may have on the environment and devise standards for practice to limit that impact on our forests. They have devised a set of 10 principles and 57 Criteria that apply to FSC-certified forests around the world, and FSC certification denotes that the products you source derive from responsibly managed forests.
Within the printing world, an FSC certified printer completes an inspection and ensures processes that meet with the standards associated with the certification throughout.

Why FSC Printing?
FSC printing can be valuable for you when considering a new product for your customers. Whereas FSC printing is not more expensive in and of itself, FSC certified paper can be more expensive than non-certified options, but it can be very important when communicating your company's values and priorities.

Use of FSC certified products sets a standard for your company that may match other quality and production decisions you have made as it pertains to waste reduction, energy efficiency, or other such environmental factors. The FSC logo in the corner of your product communicates volumes to your customers and may be the deciding factor in their purchase of your products over a competitor.

Codra has worked with FSC certified materials for years and understands the importance of not only caring for the environment, but also addressing the needs of the brands who value a mindful production process. If you are going to utilize FSC certified products, you need to plan for them from the beginning as they can affect design, budget, and, of course, paper choice.

Ready to build a relationship with a collaborative partner to create amazing, mindful products to please your customers and enhance your brand? Contact us at [email protected], and let's create something great together!

3 Reasons Print Communications Still Matter for Your Nonprofit

Just about anything you need, at just about any time, is available at the click of a button, information included. Digital communication certainly carries the lion’s share of the communication load these days. But, though digital communication can deliver quickly and has a number of advantages, there remain a few deficiencies in its use, a few things it cannot deliver that should be important in your communications as a nonprofit. Here is a list of three advantages print communications provide over digital.

Tangibility

There is something special about holding a book in your hand, the texture of a high quality journal page or the soft cover of a book. The tangibility of print pieces delivers a very real sense of ownership in the work your donors invest in. It’s not only a reminder of the mission or means to share stories of impact, it’s a way to connect them in a very real and tangible way to the ongoing work.

Print products engage more of your senses through aesthetic beauty, the sound of turning pages, the feel of spot gloss or leather on the cover, and even the smell of the materials or ink. Until digital scratch-and-sniff technology advances, there is simply no way digital communications can produce the same effect.

Personalization

Marketing and communications continue to drive toward further and deeper personalization. Advancements in AI and bots have enabled businesses and nonprofits to personalize sales and service processes, and automation has simplified the process of keeping a brand front-of-mind for delighted customers who purchase again and become vocal ambassadors for the brand.

Physical printed products are the OG version of personalization. A beautiful coffee table book or story-filled magazine on a desk or a personal planner on the kitchen table are tangible ways to communicate and build ambassadors for your brand. While your brand is fleshed out through both digital and physical presence, print products in prominent places within your donors’ homes cement a place for your brand in their personal stories and stand as a testament to others who come into their homes of the importance of your organization in their lives.

Impact

The human brain is an incredible machine, and it locks away millions of memories. But not all memories are created equal. Print content has proven to be more memorable than digital content, which likely has a lot to do with tangibility, engaging more of the senses and heightening the impact. A print product in hand simply increases the ability for your brand, your mission, to stake a claim in the hearts and minds of the donors and investors who will be vital in the accomplishment of your goals.

Certainly, you should utilize all the existing and emerging digital tools at your disposal. The benefits of immediate and continual communication through those means is absolutely undeniable. But do not miss the opportunity to accentuate and enhance your communication for long term impact through physical print communications.

Great stories deserve to be remembered. Contact us at [email protected] to explore print solutions that help strengthen donor connections and amplify your mission.