Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2019
How many companies does it take to create dozens of materials for an event with 10,000 attendees, with 48 hours from design files to finished product?
One.
For the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Premier Press has become the efficient single source for all the way-finding signage, venue banners, vehicle graphics, and programs, as well as the keepsake limited-edition posters and attendee badges needed for the annual event celebrating classic video and arcade games.
In 2014, Sean Harrington and an all-volunteer board of directors were organizing the 9th annual Portland Retro Gaming Expo.
In addition to all the other details they had to manage, their collateral needs included everything from small-formal digital and offset printing to wide-format flexible and rigid signage ā a workload that would over-tax the small poster and sign shops around town. Sean decided to have one printer handle the street pole banners for outside the venue, and spread out the other print projects to different shops. Of course, each project would have to be overseen separately. And of course, he was working on very tight turnaround times. It was a monumental task.
Then he found Premier and had a tour of our facility, and was so impressed that he no longer felt the need to go anywhere else. We were the one printer with the fastest, most sophisticated presses operating 24 hours a day, plus the customer service to get it all done — often with just 48 hours from receipt of the graphics to finished product.
After finishing our sixth year of working together, the process is as fluid as a well-oiled machine. We start talking months in advance, mapping out our logistics plan, and building a countdown schedule that worked back from the event date. We produce all the street pole banners, more than 50 one-off free-standing way-finding signage, a dozen giant hanging banners, 6,000 multi-page programs, collectible artist-commissioned posters, and the wildly popular attendee badges that Sean designs as tributes to key points in video game history.
Consolidating all his branded materials with one vendor has given Sean the quality control he wants for his printed pieces, and more time to devote his energies to all the other areas of the Expo that need his oversight.
Every year after the event is over and Sean gets a couple days of sleep, he sends us a thank-you email, like this one:
āI just wanted to thank you and your team for helping to make the Portland Retro Gaming Expo a success. The programs, banners, signs, and of course badges, all looked great! We received more compliments that we could count. We are lucky to be able to count on you for the consistent quality and ability to come through for us. So thank you again for everything that you’ve done.ā
Itās been gratifying for us to have the trust and appreciation from such a great long-time partner. Thanks, Sean.
