Business - Applications

Mutoh and Avery Dennison team-up to hold six more car wrap classes throughout the United States this year. Classes begin at $399 and all students receive over $600 worth of tools and media kits just for attending.
 
Classes provide an in-depth understanding of how to properly wrap almost any vehicle and gain a competitive edge in the wrap industry.
 
Professional car wrap instructor, Justin Pate, will teach each of these classes using his, easy to learn, Universal Graphics Installation System (UGIS).
 
“Over my 15-year career, I have wrapped more than 2,500 vehicles. I developed my Universal Graphics Installation System as a result of that experience. UGIS is a fluid, easy-to-learn installation system that reduces mistakes and ensures quality, resulting in a significantly lower install times,” shares Pate.
 
The workshop will include a 2 day class (with optional 3rd day certification exam) that will focus on properties of the film, recessed areas, proper tool use, tips and tricks and cleaning of the wrap process.
 
“Mutoh experienced a very successful 2010 with our car wrap classes, and we are looking forward to partnering with Avery Dennison for the ten classes offered in 2011,” shares Brian Phipps, General Manager of Mutoh America Inc. “New this year, students can receive Avery certification that can enhance their businesses; we look forward to continuing to help the wrap industry grow.”

Participants of the class will receive a NT Cutter A-551P knife, Avery Dennison toolkit, Martor safety box, 25 yard rolls of MPI1005 Super Cast Easy Apply RS and DOL1360, and a 30 percent coupon for purchases at www.learntowrapcars.com.
 
Class sessions will be held at the following locations:

• July 28-30 – Wharton, NJ – Graphic Resource Systems
• August 1-3 – Denison, TX – SignWarehouse
• September 8-10 – Toronto, ON – Proveer
• September 12-14 – Atlanta, GA – Mutoh Southeast Regional Office
• October 27-29 – Chicago, IL – Modagrafics
• October 31-Nov 2 – Seattle, WA – To Be Announced

Pixartprinting announces the purchase of two Komori 8-colour 70x100cm machines, 4 HP Indigo 7500 presses and 2 HP Latex presses.  These are the systems that will further increase the production capacity of pixartprinting, thanks to agreements entered into with Komori and HP almost simultaneously. Perhaps it isn’t such a casual coincidence but it confirms the company’s position with respect to the age-old dilemma of offset printing versus digital printing. With this important announcement, pixartprinting continues to amaze us with the strategies chosen, its exponential growth, the result of its internationalisation policy and conspicuous investments in new technologies, which for this first part of the year amount to roughly Euro 8 million. Implementation of new printing systems for printing large and small size jobs has become necessary, due to the increase in orders which determined a 48% growth in sale in the last financial year, with respect to the previous year.

Matteo Rigamonti, CEO of pixartprinting comments: “As we’ve already emphasised before, our customers don’t care which technology is used to fulfil individual orders. Customer satisfaction is based on other factors: the quality of the result, respect for delivery time and competitive prices, of course. To satisfy at best the expectations of our customers, we focus on advanced technology, constantly introducing the most innovative and efficient systems available on the market in our production department.” He adds: “Considering that by now the quality of offset and digital prints are pretty much the same, there’s no longer the problem of production deformity. Thanks to our Uragano software and the performances of the new Komori machines, which allow for having the right and stable amount of inking with only 20 sheets of make-ready, we’ve managed to lower the break-even point as we had hoped. In our production department digital printing is suited for foliation jobs of up to 200/250 colour prints on A3 sheets on plain white paper or 100/125 colour prints on A3 sheets on white paper and at times offset printing is right for larger quantities. These results make us even more competitive, because it certainly depends on technologies, but above all on our Uragano software that optimises workflow. It’s a plus that only we have, since the software has been entirely tailor made by our staff of engineers. Due to all these reasons we are really convinced that at our company the two technologies are perfect only if considered complementary, each for its specific nature.”

Only Uragano has the task of deciding whether orders will be printed with the digital system or with offset printing. It manages daily to bring together over a thousand individual processes on hundreds of make-readies perfectly synchronised with delivery time, print runs, paper type and grams per square meter. “It’s a job that is practically impossible for a human being,” Rigamonti comments. “The result of this automated process management enables us to fully exploit the machines’ capacity, practically eliminating wastes and inefficiencies.”

Lowering the break-even point and the great success of the dedicated promotional campaign conducted in recent months has led pixartprinting to make another important investment in offset printing. Between September and November the two Komori 4-colour and 10-colour 50 x 70cm systems will be replaced by two new Komori 8-colour 70 x 100cm super offset systems, endowed with transfer device, which will allow for quadrupling the company’s production capacity. Pasquale Razza, Sales Manager at Komori Italia, comments: “It’s the first installation in Italy with 8-colour systems complete with simultaneous automatic plate change and a new spectrophotometric quality control unit with bar reading that can be positioned at any point on the sheet, which adjusts inkers and the register at the same time with just one scan. These functions further speed up the time it takes for make-readies, and improve print quality at the same time. This configuration has still not been officially presented. Indeed, our R&D department completed the project at the request of pixartprinting ahead of schedule to satisfy their specific requirements.”

The 4 new HP Indigo 7500 presses to be installed between April and June will contribute to strengthening the capacity of the small size digital printing department, and will support the 6 HP Indigo 7000 presses already installed. This choice stems from the improved features of this system which has brilliantly passed the beta tests HP conducted at eight customers, including Precision Printing, a partner in the UK of pixartprinting. Besides hardware solutions, pixartprinting has invested in a powerful hardware solution developed by HP: the digital front-end Ultra Print Server customised for the requirements of the Venice-based company that will manage the whole Indigo department composed of 10 presses. It’s a powerful server with centralised workflow control, capable of routing all jobs, creating job tickets, analysing each machine’s specifications, sending the job order to the machine available at that particular moment, and playing a big role in optimising production. “With this choice pixartprinting confirms that digital printing and conventional printing are complementary and not antagonists,” explains Gabriella Moretti, Marketing Manager of HP Indigo Digital Printing. “We are proud that pixartprinting has confirmed its confidence in our company, surely fruit of a long-standing profitable collaboration. Besides the installation of new HP Indigo presses and dedicated operating software, this collaboration and confidence have grown with the purchase of two more HP Latex presses dedicated to wide format prints, which will be added to the 5 already installed.

The latest in our 'Spotlight on...' features focuses on Jeff Biggs, Managing Director of wide format printing solutions distributor Colourgen, which is due to celebrate its 25th anniversary in business this year.

The large format printing market is still relatively young, only really forming properly twenty or so years ago. In that time, there aren’t too many companies or even individuals that have endured all that it has been through and remained positive, popular and profitable. Colourgen and its founder and managing director, Jeff Biggs, certainly meet those criteria.

Unlike many in this industry, Jeff does not have a printing background. He was trained as an engineer and started his professional career as a computer operator and technician at the University of his home town in Liverpool and was part of a team that established the Computer Science department when computer science was first recognised as a pure subject.

He went from there to an IT provider, Cubix, where he designed and built multi user micro systems and telephone call logging systems for commercial businesses. The systems were also used by the Accor group to run the reservations and back office for small to medium sized hotels.  Thanks to his engineering skills he was also called upon to provide specialist servicing of these units across Europe and northern Africa.

Jeff left Cubix to establish a specialised reseller under the wing of a distributor of Mitel telecom and call logging equipment. This meant dealing with the more technically difficult sales that other resellers and Mitel couldn’t handle directly. Jeff took this step because he strongly believed that voice and data would merge in the coming 5 years. He was mostly right - but it ended up taking a little longer than that and other opportunities soon arose.

The sudden shift of direction to large format printing came purely by chance. A secretary’s ex-husband’s next door neighbour who worked for Xeros Engineering Systems (XES), needed a PC supplied and supported to form part of a trial for a large format RIP from Colossal Graphics that would drive an XES electrostatic printer.

Jeff’s eye for potential when it comes to technology was caught by this solution and what the whole area of digital printing would require. Companies needed a lot of technical support around these products. This included programmer level support, which was required due to the issues with PostScript, specifically how applications generated the PostScript and fonts. Jeff already had software engineers employed so it was an easy transition for his new company to supply the font and file fixing support over a modem for the end clients who were generally working to very short deadlines. He obviously had to learn about colour, as well as educate XES engineers about colour and quality expectations. To this end, Colourgen retained a colour expert and consultant so it could offer colour consultancy services to end clients who were often very familiar with the chemistry of colour, but not necessarily process colour printing.

XES sold the solution initially with Colourgen’s support. However XES realised quite quickly that they needed to focus on selling their CAD and engineering systems. Solutions (Colourgen’s trading name at the time) was appointed resellers for the XES electrostatic printers and we went on to sell 70 plus systems throughout the UK. It is in Jeff’s nature to know the technology behind his businesses inside out so he established a print production company, Colossal Solutions with Graham Terris, in order to gain a better understanding of end user demands and requirements.

The XES based solutions initially supported by Colourgen were major investments of around £100k to £140k. Jeff could see that a lower cost solution would open up whole new areas of the market and so approached Encad, which allowed them to offer a more entry level £30k to £40k solution based on 36” inkjet printers. Once appointed as an Encad distributor, Colourgen went on to develop an aqueous dye inkset with Lyson, which was more suitable for the print for pay graphics market rather than the CAD drawings that the printers were actually designed for. This desire to work with other leading companies to develop a complete and compelling solution continued with further partnerships with the likes of Rexam Graphics (now Intelicoat), Seal and Epson and more recently Seiko and Mutoh.

This history also shows why Colourgen has such a strong approach to the service and support elements of a digital printing solution. Its focus is on providing a complete solution to the needs of both manufacturers and resellers and has developed as a result of first hand experience of how these relationships work and how they can be optimised. The channel, albeit in a different technology area, is where the company came from and this has been key to its long term success.

Colourgen has survived three recessions, each bringing its own set of difficulties that have been overcome. Jeff believes the current recession is showing small glimmers of a recovery that is very likely to be slow and tortuous. “There is still a lack of business confidence out there. Marketing budgets have been slashed and that means there is less demand for print. This filters all the way through the industry. We also have to accept that the funding from the banks isn’t there yet to support investment and any funding they can achieve is still relatively highly priced compared to base interest rates.”

He continues, “Sign shops looking to invest in hardware and ink technology need to take a very close look at their business requirements and invest in what best suits their needs based on the budget available. This is the main reason why we insist that end users have a proper demonstration because desk research often leads them in the wrong direction in terms of technology and what is best for them.  People often come into our demo room
with a clear idea of what they thought they needed, but after discussing their requirements, walk away with something completely different and right for their business.”

Whatever has happened to the economy, the large format industry has enjoyed at least one reliable constant. Colourgen will soon be celebrating its Silver anniversary and there aren’t too many other companies in this sector that can say they are part of that particular club.

 

Birmingham City Ladies football star Karen Carney has visited a company to say thanks for giving the team a Hollywood makeover for the launch of the exciting new televised FA Women’s Super League (FAWSL).

Signs and graphics giant Hollywood Monster has agreed to sponsor the Blues team’s new shirts as they embark on their first campaign in the Football Association’s eight-club elite competition.  Blues Ladies have won all three of their matches so far and are top of the table. They meet second-placed Arsenal Ladies on Thursday (April28).

Karen visited the company’s headquarters in Tyseley, Birmingham, to express the team’s appreciation for their support. Birmingham City Ladies FC will face top teams including Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton and Liverpool in the league which for the first time in history will take place during the summer months.

The aim of the league is to establish and grow the women’s game while attracting a wider audience by introducing family friendly activities including keepy-uppy competitions and music entertainment before and after matches. The launch of the Women’s Super League is the single biggest event to happen in women’s football in the UK.

Hollywood Monster has sponsored Birmingham City FC for 20 years and jumped at the chance to sponsor the women’s team’s shirts in a two-year deal for an undisclosed sum.

Managing director Tim Andrews said: “Hollywood Monster is delighted to be supporting Birmingham City Ladies at what is a very exciting time for women’s football. This is a fantastic opportunity for the women’s game to gain national coverage and I am sure it will encourage thousands of schoolgirls to get involved in the sport.

“We’ll be supporting the team every kick of the way as they take on the elite of women’s football in England. We’re proud to be associated with the ladies team and we hope that they can bring more silverware back to St Andrew’s.”

Blues' President Carson Yeung said: "We are delighted to welcome the ladies side into the Birmingham City fold and will give them all support possible in the form of the wealth of experience and knowhow we have behind the scenes at St. Andrew's.
 
"The Women’s Super League promises to be really exciting and I for one am extremely proud that Birmingham City Ladies are going to be a part of it. As well as cheering on Blues and playing their part in helping to steer us up the Barclays Premier League table it would be great to see as many supporters as possible getting right behind the ladies team too and roaring them on. Many thanks, also, to Hollywood Monster who have kindly agreed to sponsor the ladies.”

Blues star Karen said: “We've all been working hard to get ourselves ready for the inaugural FAWSL campaign and we're delighted that Hollywood Monster are lending their support to this exciting era for women's football in the UK.

“I know Hollywood Monster have a long association with Blues and the whole ladies squad will be aiming to do our new sponsors, and the name of Birmingham City FC, proud across the course of this season and beyond.”

The new league aims to be family friendly and fans will be able to interact with their favourite players both at matches and online, with live matches and highlights also being broadcast on ESPN. Fans can visit facebook.com/FAWSL or www.fawsl.com throughout the season to have a say in their league and clubs, and to access exciting behind the scenes news and videos from players. The FA is investing a total of £3million over the next two years in the FAWSL.

Hollywood Monster has invested heavily in state-of-the-art printing technology enabling it to produce enormous banners and advertising hoardings at high-profile sites including sports stadiums, festivals, rock and pop concerts, shopping centres and property developments.

[Photo shows Hollywood Monster managing director Tim Andrews meets Birmingham City Ladies FC star Karen Carney.]

Agfa Graphics announced today that two ruggedized refrigerators will be wrapped at Agfa’s booth during the International Sign Expo 2011, and two lucky winners will be able to take them home. To demonstrate that there is more to wrapping than just cars and trucks, Agfa will be designing and applying wraps to two Gladiator® Chillerator® Garage Refrigerators, designed for garages and basements. Each will be given away to two lucky visitors to Agfa’s booth (#4153) during the show.

Agfa's wrap technicians will be doing hands-on wrap demonstrations on the refrigerators all throughout ISA using 3M media and laminates printed off the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000.

"Agfa's wide format specialists consult customers and help determine the right combination of ink, media and engine that best meets their application," said Larry Salomon, vice-president, Wide Format, Agfa Graphics North America. "Our national distribution network is designed to deliver display graphics products within 24 hours, so a customer can win a job today and be printing it tomorrow."

The wrap demos will take place at Agfa's booth (#4153) during ISA 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, April 28-30.

 

When furniture company Funkids wanted to update its traditional range of children's bedroom furniture to make it more attractive and appealing, Extrema Publicidad in Mexico turned to its Inca Eagle H printer for the solution. Extrema printed directly onto MDF and HDF to produce the range of colourful, themed designs.

Several processes were involved from digitally cutting the individual pieces - more than 150 different pieces were registered - to the substrate treatment and primer preparation before the pieces could be printed, then UV varnished.

With its Eagle H printer Extrema Publicidad were able to produce consistently high-quality, richly-coloured graphics which were ideal for children's bedrooms.

This project was an innovation for the Mexican furniture market as other companies were using decals or vinyl for decoration which produced an inconsistent quality.