The best print work is boring. It arrives on time. It matches the proof. It doesn’t make you think. For Maple & Pine Events, an eight-person event agency in Singapore, achieving that boredom was the whole point. When they decided to consolidate their print orders with Staples Printing in early 2024, they were chasing exactly that kind of reliability.

The agency handles about 40 conferences a year across Asia and Australia. Before the switch, their print jobs were split across five vendors: one for banners, another for booklets, another for stickers, and so on. The operations director, Hana Lim, estimated she spent six to eight hours a week just chasing files and proofs. The moment that forced a change was a misprinted batch of stickers two weeks before a major event.

In the interview below, Hana talks about why they moved their conference poster printing to Staples Printing, how the staples email printing workflow changed their proofing, and why they are never going back.

Company Overview and History

Maple & Pine is not a giant. The team has eight full-time staff, plus a larger pool of freelancers during peak months. They needed a print supplier that could handle short runs of 50 as easily as bulk orders of 5,000. Their work ranged from 80-person workshops to 1,500-person conferences, and every event came with its own set of print deliverables.

Their previous approach was pragmatic: use whatever vendor the venue recommended and hope for the best. That worked until it didn’t. One client, a UK-based conference organiser, expected a speed and finish that local vendors were not always able to match. In the poster printing uk market, next-day delivery is almost taken for granted. In Singapore, Hana was often quoted five working days.

That gap between expectation and reality created constant tension. The UK client didn’t care whether the delay came from a slow vendor or a public holiday. They only saw a missed deadline. A friend from another agency mentioned Staples Printing, and Hana made a note to try them for the next small order.

Quality and Consistency Issues

The problems were never dramatic. They were death by a thousand cuts. A banner would arrive with the wrong shade of blue. A booklet would be trimmed two millimetres off centre. Small issues, but each one cost time to identify and fix.

Hana’s least favourite memory involves a batch of stickers for a delegate pack. She had sent the artwork to a discount printer, received a low-res proof, approved it without zooming in, and later discovered the logo had a missing segment. She now jokes that if anyone asks who offers the best custom poster printing, she gives the same answer she would for stickers: a supplier who actually checks the proof. For their own sticker printing staples needs — quick, easy, reliable sticker orders — they needed someone who would flag problems before printing, not after.

The cost of inconsistency added up. Between replacement orders, rush shipping, and overtime for the design team, Hana estimated that quality failures cost them roughly 8% of their print budget over a year. That was the number that finally got leadership’s attention. It also made the call to Staples Printing easier to justify.

Implementation Strategy

Switching to Staples Printing was not a big-bang change. They started with a single low-risk order: 300 copies of conference poster printing for a regional healthcare summit. The order went through the staples email printing workflow, which for Hana meant a shared folder, automatic proof request, and clear file naming. No more “final_v2_FINAL” attachments.

The first pilot worked better than expected, but there were adjustments. The standard template Hana had used for years had margins that were too generous for the new press. They lost a little colour saturation on the first run. Staples’ print engineer caught it and suggested a CMYK conversion that kept the brand colour within the expected range.

After the pilot, they moved banners, booklets, and name badges under the same account. The sticker orders followed a few weeks later. By mid-2024, Maple & Pine was sending 90% of its print work through Staples Printing. The remaining 10% stayed with a local vendor for same-day jobs because geography made that faster.

That split was intentional. Hana did not want to be locked into one supplier. She liked having a fallback, even if she rarely used it. It was a trade-off between convenience and resilience.

Lessons Learned

The clearest result was time. Hana now spends about two hours a week on print management, compared with six to eight before. The colour consistency across repeated orders also improved; their last 12 events had no sticker or poster reprints due to printer error.

But the biggest lesson was about handoffs. The move to Staples Printing worked because they also changed their internal file process. They standardised fonts, embedded images, and created a pre-flight checklist. The supplier helped, but the discipline had to come from their side.

Hana also learned to ask better questions. Instead of “can you do this?”, she now asks “what could go wrong with this?” The answers have saved them from at least two potential disasters: a foil stamp that was too heavy for the substrate and a booklet whose glue joint would have cracked when opened.

Would she make the same choice again? Yes, with one caveat. She wishes they had negotiated a service level agreement from the start. The informal trust built up over time is valuable, but a written SLA would have made the first six months less stressful. It is the kind of advice she gives to other event planners who ask about moving their print work to a single provider like Staples Printing.