Hürriyet Matbaası, one of the oldest printing houses of İzmir, is leaving behind its 66th year this year. & Bauer (Graphitek) 50 x 70 4 color offset printing machine, Ryobi 44 x 58 2 color offset printing machine, single color 46 x 64 offset printing machine and two typo pedals as well as crimean, threshing machines, folding unit wire stitching robot and press features. There are 12 blue collar and 5 white collar 17 people in the printing house.
Can you summarize the story of Hürriyet Matbaası from the establishment to today?
Hürriyet Matbaası was founded in 1951 as a family company in Kemeraltı. So far the partners have not changed. We have come to this day without interruption. Three different venues were changed until we arrived. We came to Çamdibi in 2004. We have a total area of 3800 m2. The main building has 3500 m2 production area. We have a graphic design department before printing; We receive the CtP service from outside. We use CIP 4 and CIP 3 data in our prints and we try to provide quality printing as standard.
What kind of work do you do?
We usually do creative work called boutique printing. We mainly produce magazines, catalogs, brochures, fantasy-weighted boxes. Our box business isn’t a big deal. In the meantime, we’re contract printers. Our agreement and continuous form pressures are continuing. We’re not marketing. We offer services through our customer representatives. In addition, we have customers for many years. We have been our clients since 1951.
If you evaluate the last 5 years, how do things go?
As you’ve heard from everyone, I think you’ll hear the same thing from me. Of course there is a serious contraction after 2015. Before the events, it was already going to be the contraction, it was obvious. Because long before the political events our sector was about to succumb to the internet. We have a blood loss because of the internet. If you go a little further, the printers had documents and registrations, which are now completely in computers and memories. A very large business volume has been digitized. Brochure, catalog, magazine printing also decreased. The software and cloud technology developed in the mushroom, where computers were almost reading our minds, developing ad systems that were much faster and faster than the written and visual media. There’s really a difference between doing it and distributing it. Hence the catalog, the brochure will continue to decline. Smart mobile phones have entered our lives, now you can do anything with them. As such, it is difficult and cost-effective to distribute the printed documents physically. When you go to the internet and look anywhere, you are inevitably exposed to millions of ads on that subject. Therefore, the volume of business from each sector has decreased. Because the printed material cannot compete with the virtual environment in terms of process and cost.
How do you look to the future?
I’m not looking forward. The boredom is that this sector has to work profitably. The non-profitable enterprise cannot survive the release. There were those who tried, but they experienced a lot of trouble. I think the sector will get smaller, I don’t think we can catch up with the old situation. I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and we’ve always had to keep up with the more difficult conditions. Again, we will not create new conditions, we will try to keep pace with. They are more advantageous because they sell more over the internet. But we’re already in the part they can’t. In other words, the customer wants to find a counterpart for creative solutions. That’s not gonna end, but it’s going to go down. In addition, the digital will probably develop more and will replace our offset machines over time. In the last drupa fair, we only spent time on digital. Currently, we are not suitable for digital printing with the structure of our company. Digital printing needs small and unauthorized jobs. We’re not at a point where these things are busy. Our commercial structure is more suitable for large unit-based production and construction. Retailing in a digital sense. We also need to work retail, do digital marketing. It’s not right for us yet. We’re outsourced for small, low-run jobs.
Bu sürede organize matbaacılık kısmında büyüme oldu. Onlar daha çok internet üzerinden satış yaptıkları için avantajlılar. Ama biz şu an zaten onların yapamadığı kısımdayız. Yani müşterinin kreatif çözümler için karşısında muhatap bulmak istediği taraftayız. İşin bu tarafı bitmeyecek ama azalacak. Bunun yanında dijital belki daha gelişecek ve zamanla bizim ofset makinelerimizin yerini alacak.
Dijital yatırımlarını çok düşündük. Geçen drupa fuarında da sadece dijital üzerine mesai harcadık. Şu an şirketimizin yapısı itibarıyla dijitale baskıya geçmeye uygun değiliz. Dijital basım henüz küçük ve adetsiz işler gerektiriyor. Konum olarak bu işlerin yoğun olduğu bir noktada değiliz. Ticari yapımız büyük adet bazlı üretime ve yapıya daha uygun. Dijital bir anlamda perakendecilik. Ayrıca dijitalde pazarlama yapmak, perakende çalışmak lazım. Henüz bize uygun değil. Mevcut ufak tefek düşük tirajlı işler için dışarıdan hizmet alıyoruz.
