To Bob Morton, President, Best Graphics, Inc. --

I'm happy to answer your questions about my experience with the Best Osako 368AS saddle stitcher we purchased from you.

Our old Osako 230 was always a good machine -- it's a durable workhorse and it still continues to produce for us. However, with our business volume increasing, we needed the added capacity, turnaround, flexibility and dependability of a good second machine.

A major piece of business for us is a Canadian nationwide weekly periodical, which has a lot of newsprint pages and a demanding turnaround time. We needed a stitcher that would absolutely do a great job for us on this publication --something with good, strong stitch heads, a solid 3-knife trimmer and a reliable, powerful feed system to handle the pub's 1/2-inch bulk and thickness.

We figured that if the stitcher could handle this publication smoothly, it could handle just about anything we could throw at it, and it's proven true. Not only does the machine make short work of the periodical --stitched and trimmed as square and true as you could want -- it performs great on our other jobs as well.

The 368AS has opened up a lot more avenues for us. We used to spend thousands of dollars a month outsourcing some of our stitching to trade binderies. Now we do it all in-house. (As a side note, it's not even the money that's the main concern -- it's having in-house control and fast turnaround. If you have to send out folding and stitching, you lose two days. Now, we finish a big job and mail it the same day. We do a lot of mailings and publications and send them right out of our plant.)

The machine is built solidly. We simply couldn't run these big jobs on a wimpy machine. The feeders are very smooth and sturdy, and the tilt-back feature gives us a lot of flexibility for tough signatures. Also, the individual air pumps are a very good feature. They provide a much better, more uniform suction to each feeder than running a lot of ducts off of a single pump like other machines. Misfeeds are rare and you don't have to jigger with the setup all the time.

I've got a lot of good words for the machine, but looking past the hardware, what really impresses me is the good people at Best Graphics. The training from you folks has been fantastic. The people you sent up are very knowledgeable and helpful. You even helped us fine-tune our other, older machine, even though you had no financial interest in it. That's really saying something.

I'm very happy. Best Graphics is a class act. The service has been great, you've been very supportive and very professional. You guys really deliver a lot of value-added. I just couldn't ask for a better organization to work with, and for me, that's the most important thing.

Sincerely,
Al Alexandruk, President/Owner
The Prolific Group