Download a PDF of the Shweiki Media story from the Oct. 30, 2009 San Antonio Business Journal.

by Mike W. Thomas (San Antonio Business Journal)

Businessman Gal Shweiki is taking the popular adage, "It takes money to make money," to heart.

When Shweiki, who owns Shweiki Media, bought his first printing press in 1999 it cost $200,000.

When he bought his second printing press a few years later it cost $400,000.

His third printing press that replaced his first one cost $800,000.

And now he has bought his latest printing press for a cool $6 million.

The exponential jump in price is partly due to the fact that the latest printing press is brand new and custom designed, while the older ones were all used when they were purchased. But Shweiki says he was persuaded to make the leap to a new press, despite the high price tag, after attending Drupa, the world's largest printing equipment exhibition held every four years in Messe Dusseldorf, Germany.

There, he learned how spending money could help his business make money.

"I went to Drupa two years ago with the intention of buying another used press for about $1.5 million," Shweiki says. "But when I saw the speeds and efficiencies that could be achieved with the new technologies, I realized that we would have to buy new just to stay competitive."

To make up for the jump in price, Shweiki decided to scrap plans to construct a new warehouse building for the printing press and found an existing building instead. The new press, built by Mitsubishi, is now set up in its new home but will not be fully operational until Nov. 16.

The new press is four times as fast as the next oldest one that it will eventually replace, Shweiki says, and it is much less wasteful.

Typical printing presses waste about 20 percent of the paper that is used for each job as the printer works to get the color combinations just right, he explains. The new press will be able to make most all of these adjustments in advance.

"Our press we use now does not talk to the pre-press," Shweiki says. "Now these two units will be connected and the press will know which colors to use so that everything will be adjusted before you even push the 'go' button."

With the faster speeds and the reduction in waste, Shweiki says the new press will pay for itself in just a few years.

Growth opportunity

Shweiki has great expectations for the new press.

The 32-employee Shweiki Media had annual revenues last year of $8.7 million. But Shweiki predicts those revenue figures will triple over the next few years as the new press makes a big splash in the local printing market.

Eli Levinson, chief operating officer for Shweiki Media, says the new Mitsubishi press will "turn the printing industry upside down."

"This is the smallest company I've ever worked for," Levinson says of Shweiki Media. "But I think that is just temporary because we are going to grow substantially."

Levinson, a veteran of the computer industry who came to work for Shweiki three years ago, says the new press will create the same kind of buzz for Shweiki as happened to Dell Computers in 2000 and to Google more recently.

"In the computer industry, they call it value innovation, like Google did, when you create something that people need at a good value — something they can't stop talking about," Levinson says. "That is what we are going to do in the printing industry. We are putting the pieces of the puzzle together to 'wow' the customer."

Levinson says those pieces include a policy of 100 percent delivery on time, guaranteed; absolute top quality services; the best and most affordable prices in a given range; and very short, aggressive turnaround times.