This story is interesting to people, even those with very little knowledge of printing, for many reasons. It’s about how important it is in our world to get your message right. The ‘printing press on wheels’ is an example of a colourful and unusual way of communicating your product to your target audience.
Our story today is about a remarkable and unusual example of product presentation, which deserves to be included in the book of world marketing achievements. It is about how to bring a mountain to Muhammad in an unusual way, at a time when Muhammad himself cannot approach the mountain.
Hubert Sternberg again
We have already told you about the enormous contribution to the success of Schnellpressenfabrik Heidelberg AG by its renowned CEO Hubert H. A. Sternberg. This is a man whose importance to the printing industry is comparable to that of Akio Morita for ‘SONY’, Lee Iacocca for ‘Chrysler’ or Steven Jobs for ‘Apple Inc’.
Born in Potsdam, he served in World War I after high school and then studied business management at Rudolf Mosset’s publishing company in Berlin. In 1923, at the age of 26, he took a job with the Kahn Group, where he quickly rose to director. Early in 1926, Richard Kahn asked him to analyse the company’s division located in Heidelberg, to determine if and how the ‘Schnellpressenfabrik’ problem could be solved.
Sternberg went to Heidelberg, inspected the factory and agreed – provided that he was given full freedom of action, especially with regard to the production programme, and five per cent of the shares. Kahn agreed to both conditions. (This was later recounted by Lothar Hoog, who had worked for the company for 50 years as sales manager for crucible printing machines; he only retired in 1974).
So the 29-year-old Sternberg arrived at ‘Schnellpressenfabrik’ in Heidelberg and took a leading role in what was to be a turning point in the company’s development. And stayed there for half a century.
This man successfully led the company through the Great Depression, the National Socialist dictatorship, World War II, and of course, after it ended, during the revival of the German economy. He was the originator of the DRUPA exhibition.
Read Hubert Sternberg’s story if you missed it.
Innovative ideas in marketing and production
On 22 June 1926, immediately after joining the firm, Sternberg was appointed to the board of management. Other members of the board were Ernst Schwarzländer, who had served as an alternate board member since 1920 (he retired in 1960), Oskar Leroy, and Wilhelm Meyrer, who only served on the board until March 1927. The driving force among them was undoubtedly Sternberg. Using modern advertising methods, innovative production techniques and continuous product development, he brought the company to the top of the printing machine industry.
In the face of a global environmental crisis, the first priority was to stimulate business. Sternberg achieved this through new marketing and distribution methods. For example, he converted buses into demonstration machines transporting a fully operational Heidelberg crucible press-based printing press so that print shop owners and employees could watch the demonstration at their door. The demonstration buses were manned by mechanics who not only demonstrated the compact ‘print shop for everyone’, but also carried out necessary repairs or maintenance on other Heidelberg machines in the print shops while travelling around the regions.
The ingenious system of financing the purchase from the company itself, was invented to facilitate financing for potential buyers. The factory itself provided instalments, while the customer’s financial situation was checked by a local agent. In this way, the customer did not have to deal with local financial organisations, which made it easier to obtain goods in countries just recovering from the First World War.
Many years later, such a system would also be applied in Eastern Europe, when the unstable financial system made it impossible to take out a loan for the purchase of equipment from a local bank.
Within a very short time, sales soared and production volumes did indeed have to be increased.
‘What was good for the ancestors was good for us.’
But at that point the independent sales and service companies responsible for selling Heidelberg printing machines had to get used to the idea. At first, they were unenthusiastic about such a strange sales and service policy. But soon their growing sales volumes enabled them to capitalise on this intensive customer service.
The former sceptics quickly turned into franchise distributors. Demonstration buses now travelled not only throughout Germany and Europe, but also to industrial centres in the USA, South America and India. Sternberg obliged all major ‘Schnellpressenpressefabrik’ agencies to purchase demonstration buses ‘in order to utilise this wonderful advertising tool in as many locations as possible to stimulate sales’.
After years of experience with these travelling demonstration buses, ‘Schnellpressenfabrik’ developed a standard version of the demonstration bus that was offered to agencies at half the regular price. In the mid-1930s, the company sold four of these ‘corporate image’ demonstration buses to France, two to the United Kingdom, and one each to Argentina, Brazil, India, South Africa, Australia, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. By 1937, a total of 25 buses had travelled the world.
It should be noted that not only compact crucible printing machines, but even flatbed stop-cylinder presses were demonstrated on the buses. Here is a rare photo of what the saloon looked like with a KSB-type machine.
With his advertising acumen, Sternberg also saw an opportunity to strengthen his brand. He knew exactly how to make full use of the reputation of the place of production. After all, the whole world knew the romantic city of Heidelberg, sung in poems and songs by Goethe, Hölderlin, Keller and Viktor von Scheffel. So Sternberg named the printing machine ‘Heidelberger Tiegel’ (‘HeidelbergPlaten’), thus breathing life and romance into each of these seemingly soulless cast-iron machines.
The first machine is sold by the salesman, the second by the service engineer
But romance alone was not enough. Shortly after taking office, Sternberg committed himself to producing 200 machines of consistently high quality every month. This could only be achieved with the help of modern machines and conveyor production. In 1927, therefore, the company installed, among other equipment, a large surface grinding machine which enabled the base surface of the plate frame and the printing surface to be ground to within a hundredth of a millimetre – 14 times faster than could be done by hand.
Other acquisitions included specialised machines such as multi-purpose drilling machines, gear cutting machines, turret lathes, lathes and profilers, some of which were designed and built in Heidelberg’s own workshops.
The working process also changed significantly. The individual machine elements were assembled into groups. The assembly was carried out by employees on platform conveyors and on assembly lines. In this, Schnellpressenfabrik was a pioneer in both a technical and organisational sense. Apart from the automotive and electrical industries, no other industry had implemented the conveyor production introduced by Henry Ford.
Sternberg’s entrepreneurial foresight gave Schnellpresse a competitive advantage that came in handy during the economic downturn.
Another of his innovations that boosted sales was the customer magazine ‘Heidelberger Nachrichten: Anregungen und Ratschläge für fortschrittliche Drucker’ (‘Heidelberg News: ideas and tips for progressive printers’), published by the company. But we’ll talk about that later.
Demonstration bus in Eastern Europe
Up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Heidelberg was unable to sell its printing machines to the Warsaw Bloc countries directly from Germany. Austrian companies took over the representative function: ‘Autopan’ imported MAN Roland products into the USSR and ‘Berthold+Stempel’ imported Heidelberg machines. In 1996, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG acquired the sales network of ‘Berthold+Stempel’ for a symbolic 1 DEM, and since then it has been responsible for sales in the CIS and Eastern Europe.
Vladimir Babaev, Heidelberg’s ambitious young manager in Russia (and later the head of the sales network for all CIS countries), had a major task to tell potential customers about the company’s products. After all, the Soviet Union was dominated by machines of local State manufacturers, and more rarely by machines made in the GDR, Czech and Indian countries. Only employees of large party printing factories who printed the teachings of Lenin and Karl Marx knew about Heidelberg. Therefore were obliged to have the best printing machines. But times had changed, and Heidelberg had to make itself known somehow. And that is where the demonstration bus, once invented by Hubert Sternberg, came to the rescue.
Closer to the customer
The genius of Hubert Sternberg’s idea was that it demonstrated the compact size of the main printing plant equipment, which could be perfectly accommodated in a single bus. In most people’s minds, printing equipment is something huge, occupying entire buildings of production facilities. And the bus that came straight to him convinced the owner of the printing house that printing equipment could be placed in a small room and start making money.
At the end of the 90s, a demonstration bus like this was brought to Moscow and customs cleared. It contained a solution for a small printing house – a Heidelberg Quickplatter photo output device (produced by ESKO Graphics, it exhibited printing plates on silver-containing material), and a two-colour compact printing machine Heidelberg Quickmaster QM46-2. The Quickmaster was later replaced by a GTO 52-1 machine.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any photos of the bus involved in the exhibitions. If any of the readers still have photos, I would be grateful if you could send them to me. I remember, this Neoplan bus converted to a mobile printing house was an incredible success, during the presentation of the company’s new offices in various cities.
Everything comes to an end at some point
The bus that travelled around the CIS countries in the early 2000s looked exactly like this photo. The author of these lines had the pleasure of giving presentations in it for anyone interested. It was very interesting to introduce printers from different countries to the most legendary printing machine in the world.
Heidelberg used buses until the mid-2000s. Their history ended when the internet became widespread and the company was able to make video presentations online. In addition, the Print Media Academy took over some of the company’s training work, and the buses soon became an anachronism.
Thus ended the story of the demonstration buses, which had brought Heidelberg really huge profits and helped the company to survive in difficult times.
But when you decide to buy a used printing machine, we will be happy to help you check it out. Our people will do the best to make you more successful and happy with this great equipment. All details, description of the test etc. can be found on our website.
Materials from the book ‘150 Years of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Aktiengesselschaft’, ISBN 3-00-006505-9 were used.
