Optimizing Inventory Management
with FlexRapido Volume Discounts

The context

2020 was a year of deep change for many publishers, who saw opportunities to adapt their production and marketing processes.

A fall season without the usual in-person events and book fairs which—key drivers of book sales—has highlighted a number of things for those in the book industry: among other things, that storage costs with some distributors have increased in recent years. As Simon Dardick told us: “Times are changing–warehousing costs with our Canadian distributor have skyrocketed over the past few years. The situation is no longer the same.”

The old business model of printing large runs and then storing the books until they sell or are remaindered, is increasingly unrealistic for many publishers. That’s why Rapido Books created FlexRapido: a program specially designed to allow publishers to replace storage with responsiveness.

THE CHALLENGES

1  Véhicule Press will soon be celebrating its 50th anniversary. As a well-established publisher, its catalogue now includes several hundred titles, which need to be managed efficiently in order to avoid unnecessary print and warehousing costs.

2  It is often difficult for an independent publisher to estimate the commercial potential of a new title: “Publishing is not an exact science; you choose some titles on a hunch, because you have a good feeling about a manuscript, because you believe in it, but these are always difficult things to quantify.”

3  Many of the larger printers with which Véhicule Press works have increased their production times many fold, meaning that a publisher now must reserve a spot more than two or three months in advance in order to have its books printed on time.

THE RAPIDO BOOKS SOLUTION

Specializing in high-quality and fast turnaround short-run printing, Rapido Books is one of the rare printers in Canada that can print orders of 25 to 1,000 copies in just a few days.

This important advantage prompted Véhicule Press to consider our printing services. Our combination of fast turnaround and high quality printing could help them better face the challenges facing the publishing house.

Two other key factors convinced Simon Dardick to work with us on a more regular basis:

• Rapido’s excellent quality of service, which he had experienced for several years: “You’re easy to work with. You always get back quickly to people, which is both respectful and very important in a professional relationship” ;
• Our FlexRapido program, specially designed to offer publishers exceptional responsiveness on time, while providing volume discounts that increase with each subsequent reprint order.

How does FlexRapido work?

FlexRapido is a pricing model that provides publishers with volume discounts that increase with each subsequent reprint order of 100 or more copies.