Company Overview
Marathon Press Inc. is one of the most unique printing and photo lab companies in the United States. Established in 1980 with only three employees, the company has grown from its early days as a traditional printer into a specialized provider of full-color digital printing, email marketing, graphic design, and web-to-print online ordering. Marathon specializes in printing yearbooks, children’s books, photo books, and specialty books, and also serves as a wholesale outsource provider for other printing companies and online photo businesses.
Operating from their FSC-certified GreenPrint production facility in Norfolk, Nebraska, Marathon runs high-end digital production equipment from multiple vendors, including HP, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, and Horizon. As a print-on-demand operation, virtually every job is a one-off product—a business model that demands exceptional accuracy and real-time visibility.
The Challenge
In print-on-demand photo book production, there’s no margin for error. Every book contains personal, irreplaceable content—and as Max Alewel, Owner of Marathon Press, notes: “You cannot put the wrong bride on the front of a book.”
With thousands of short-run variable jobs to track daily and items that needed to ship the same day, Marathon faced a critical challenge: the manual steps required for job recording were no longer reliable or accurate. The consequences were significant.
“It was a nightmare,” Alewel recalls. “We were printing duplicate books. We were doing a lot of that just because we weren’t getting the feedback as fast as we needed it. When we’re printing items that need to be shipped in a day, that’s imperative. If you end up printing things three times just because you’re not sure, it makes it a little costly.”
The costs compounded quickly. Photo books involve expensive paper, expensive clicks, expensive lamination, and expensive processes throughout. Reprinting due to lost orders in production was adding up, and Marathon needed to automate their data collection and reporting to support their operational needs and growth.
The Solution
Marathon discovered SpencerMetrics at a dscoop event. After discussing their challenges with the SpencerMetrics team, they implemented the LYNK® solution—a fully automated, touchless, real-time data collection, monitoring, and reporting system designed for multi-vendor, multi-technology production environments.
LYNK provided Marathon with:
- Automatic tracking of machine status, jobs, and counts without human intervention
- Real-time production dashboard for immediate visibility into job status
- Various KPIs, including utilization, production volume, and speed
- Cloud-based analytics showing historical details and production trends
- Direct digital machine connection across their multi-vendor equipment
What sets LYNK apart for Marathon is its independence from individual equipment systems. “It’s more consistent, more accurate because it is independent,” Alewel explains. “It’s writing independently of the DFE or of any kind of RIP software—definitely far superior as far as getting true data that you need.”
Implementation
The deployment was remarkably swift. “Very, very short,” says Alewel. “We integrated purely with our digital presses, so that was pretty turnkey. They had that all set up within a week and started working with the data from an API side within probably three weeks.”
Marathon integrated LYNK with their backbone order management system using SpencerMetrics’ RESTful API, connecting it with HP Siteflow and other internal software into what Alewel describes as “one big conglomerate process.”
The company also installed SpencerMetrics displays next to all their presses, giving operators real-time visibility as jobs progress through production.
Results and Benefits
Elimination of Costly Reprints
LYNK’s real-time job production validation has dramatically reduced unnecessary reprints. The system flags when a job is complete and sends that data back to Marathon’s internal system, confirming production status and preventing duplicate printing.
End-to-End Production Visibility
Marathon now knows exactly where every job is throughout their entire process. “SpencerMetrics signifies to us whether a job is printed or not printed and moves it to the next operation—whether it be cutting, binding, lamination, UV coating, you name it,” Alewel explains.
Immediate Bottleneck Identification
The system provides a clear sense of uptime and enables comparison across equipment. “We know what’s working, what’s not working, and you know your bottlenecks right away,” says Alewel.
Flexible Data Integration
While LYNK offers an intuitive visual interface that’s “easy to grasp, easy to read,” Marathon primarily leverages the API capabilities to feed data into their homegrown processes. “Most of the data we’re using, we’re using outside of SpencerMetrics for other processes,” Alewel notes, highlighting the system’s flexibility to adapt to each business’s unique needs.
Daily Operational Integration
After a few years of use, Marathon has upgraded from LYNK to CONNECT to get even better visibility on their production metrics. CONNECT has become integral to Marathon’s daily operations. The team uses the data provided by the system every day to drive processes and determine what happens next in the production workflow.
The Partnership
Beyond the technology, Alewel emphasizes the quality of the relationship with SpencerMetrics: “They have been the most supportive company that you can work with as far as software goes. These guys are amazing, great people.”
Looking Ahead
Marathon Press continues to leverage SpencerMetrics to support their growth as a premier print-on-demand provider. The combination of automated data collection, real-time visibility, and seamless API integration has transformed what was once “a nightmare” into a streamlined, efficient operation capable of meeting the demanding requirements of same-day shipping in the personalized photo book market.
“SpencerMetrics has been great to work with and has helped immensely with our internal order tracking. Their support has been very responsive, and they are always willing to help make our process better.”
— Max Alewel, Owner, Marathon Press Inc.
