Wide-Format & Signage June 2021 by WhatTheyThink

JUNE 2021

08 T op 100 Small Commercial Printshops 48 T he ABC’s of ADA Signage

JOHN WAYNE

52 Change Needed Now in Textiles

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VOICE OF THE INDUSTRY ─ Warren Werbitt

PRINTER TO PRINTER: INDUSTRY INSIGHTS FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Warren Werbitt When it comes to print communications, Warren pushes boundaries, creates traction and imagines the unimaginable. For over 25 years, he’s been immersing clients into a world in which their business or brand vibrates wwerbitt@stick2.com

Read More… Find article at PrintingNews. com/21152188

ince late last year I’ve been doing a series of video interviews on WhatTheyThink called “Printer to Printer.” We’ve published over two dozen videos, and I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned about the industry in these exchanges. The best part of this series is seeing the willingness of people to speak openly and honestly about their businesses. Everyone has something to say, but it can sometimes be hard to get them to say it. I’ve learned that if you give people a chance to speak they’re happy to do so and do so loudly. The good news is we have a lot of people who are passionate about their work and willing to talk about it. The bad news is many of them are nervous and afraid of what the future holds. I hear this from a lot of printers: They are trying to do more with less, and the margins for error keep shrinking. They have also been thrust into this new pandemic era, and it has put them in a position of having done well - for the most part - prior to COVID only to see disaster strike. There are a few commons stories that I’ve been hearing: ● Our business is OK as we pivoted at the beginning to find ways to help others.

● I thought we were a little behind the times before, but now I know we are! I am going to fix it and get us up to speed. ● I don’t think I have it in me for more of this. ● We cut back where we needed to and somehow we made a profit. ● The PPE loans really helped us. ● We were (and are) behind on automation. ● This was a big opportunity to tighten up my shop! There are many people in the industry who think they are behind the times on technology, and they are contemplating not going forward because it is expensive and scary. Others are making the investments needed and forging ahead through uncertainty. The majority of my interviews have given me an overwhelming sense that we are a resilient industry with smart and industrious people who don’t give up easily. Their passion keeps them going even when times are tough. They also think - and I also believe that things will be better for those who stay in it. We all need to work together as an industry if we are going to survive. If you’d like to be featured in a video, please drop me a line at warren.werbitt@gmail.com. ●

WhatTheyThink - Printing News | June 2021

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VP, PUBLISHER Kelley Holmes kelley@whattheythink.com 772-579-7360 PRODUCTION EDITOR & MANAGER Amy Hahn amy@whattheythink.com EDITOR Jessica Taylor jessica@whattheythink.com

CON JUNE 2021

MANAGING EDITOR Richard Romano richard@whattheythink.com SENIOR EDITOR Cary Sherburne cary@whattheythink.com

Cover Story

TOP 100 SMALL COMMERCIAL PRINTSHOPS

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Stephanie Papp stephanie@whattheythink.com 602-639-0530

WhatTheyThink | Printing News annual small commercial printshop Top 100 Survey. Winner came in at $21.32 million.

PRESIDENT Eric Vessels eric@whattheythink.com 740-417-3333

By Richard Romano

COO Adam Dewitz adam@whattheythink.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Tom Crouser Lisa Magnuson Dave Fellman Jennifer Matt John Giles Jim Raffel Elizabeth Gooding Frank Romano Steve Johnson Ralf Schlozer

PRINTING NEWS Shelby Sapusek Heidi Tolliver-Walker Mark Vruno Trish Witkowski David Zwang

CREATIVE SERVICES Bobbi Burow, CreativityTank LLC bobbi.burow@gmail.com NEED HELP WITH YOUR SUBSCRIPTION? For subscription info, change of address, and other updates email help@whattheythink.com

ARTICLE REPRINTS Please contact your account executive PrintingNews.com—the web portal representing content from Printing News, Wide-Format & Signage—is devoted to delivering you timely news and multimedia content on a daily basis. WhatTheyThink (ISSN 2642-3189) (USPS 500-850) Volume 44, Number 7 is published nine times per year in January/February, March, April, May, June, July/August, September, October, November/December by WTT Media, Inc., at 2038 Ford Parkway #218, Saint Paul, MN 55116. Periodicals postage paid at Saint Paul, MN and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WhatTheyThink, 2038 Ford Parkway #218, Saint Paul, MN 55116. Subscriptions: Individual subscriptions are available without charge in the U.S. to qualified subscribers. Publisher reserves the right to reject non-qualified subscriptions. Annual subscription prices in the U.S.A $95; Canada $125 USD; all other countries $150 USD. Printed in the USA. Copyright © 2021 WTT Media, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recordings or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission. WTT Media Inc. does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any person or company for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in the material herein, regardless of causation. The views and opinions in the articles herein are not those of the publishers, unless indicated. The publishers do not warrant, either expressly or by implication, the factual accuracy of the articles herein, or of any views or opinions offered by the authors of said articles.

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DITCH THE EMAIL

It’s time to streamline your customer service. By Jennifer Matt

THE PRINT GEEKS

INVITING INNOVATION

DIGITAL SCHMIGITAL

STICK IT THERE

- PAGE -

Color Control 101 By Shelby Sapusek & Jim Raffel International inkjet experts come together to discuss innovation. By Elizabeth Gooding Who hearts offset printing? By Mark Vruno A Consumables Application Photo Gallery By Richard Romano

WhatTheyThink - Printing News | June 2021

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NTENTS COLUMNS

WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE

44 48 52 55 56

PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF JOHN WAYNE

SpeedPro Dallas was declared winner of the coveted 2020 Project of the Year Award. By Danielle Yuthas, VP Marketing SpeedPro BEYOND BRAILLE

The ABCs of ADA signage By Richard Romano TEXTILE TECH

Are you prepared for change in textiles and apparel? By Cary Sherburne

CASE STUDY

EXECUTIVE Q&A

BUSINESS TIPS

59 66

BEWARE OF SHINY THINGS!

How to keep your focus on your priorities. By Dave Fellman PIVOT!

How to strategically pivot your business amid uncontrollable change in four steps. By Burke Cueny, VP Marketing for Alliance Franchise Brands

Increasing the Value of Your Business By Tom Crouser

Looking Ahead with HP By Cary Sherburne

6 Habits of Productive Printers By John Giles ASSOCIATION INSIGHTS

PRINTING United Alliance JOHNSON’S WORLD

Musings, Droppings, Streams and Flashes By Steve Johnson

44 DEPARTMENTS

4 Voice Of The Industry 34 Watch List: Video 42 Product News

64 Classifieds/Supplier Directory

FOLLOW US twitter: @PrintingNews; @WideFormatSign; @whattheythink facebook: Printing News; wideformatsignage; @whattheythink linkedin: Printing News; linkedin.com/groups/1780044; whattheythink youtube: PrintingNews.com

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SPECIAL FEATURE ─ Top 100

By Richard Romano

ach year, WhatTheyThink | Printing News invites small commercial print business owners to participate in our Top 100 Shops Survey. The key word is “small;” the upper limit for participation at $25 million in annual revenues. Our “Top Shop” this year came in at $21.32 million. (Last year’s winner had barely qualified at $24.99 million, but

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this year exceeded our limit.) In 2020, the shops included in our Top 100 list accounted for just under half a billion dollars in revenue—$463,870,216, representing a 16% decline from 2019, which was not surprising given the pandemic year. If we look at revenues for our top shops, 28% saw a 25%+ decrease in revenues in 2020 from 2019, and only 8% said 2020 saw a 10%+ increase over 2019—but one half of top shops are expecting a 10%+ increase in revenues in 2021. Anecdotally, some of this year’s winners said they are already on track to achieve that. The theme of last year’s Top Shops survey was surviving the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year’s theme is the recovery—or, as I like to call it, the aftermath. Our survey was conducted in April and May of this year, so the survey responses reflect an industry in recovery mode, but still licking their wounds. Still, lest we think that it was all-COVID all the time for everyone, we added an open-ended question. “How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your business?” At least four respondents—including one of our Top Six—wrote in: “COVID did not have a measurable impact on my business” or “not applicable.” So nice work if you can get it!

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SPECIAL FEATURE ─ Top 100 Demographics Looking at the list of Top Shops, a large number are franchises. If you read our “Franchise Report” in the April 2021 issue, you know that franchises were well-positioned to fare better than average during the pandemic, given the support that a franchise network can provide. The oldest company in our in our Top 100 this year is Cleveland’s Foote Printing, founded in 1907. The newest company is Sir Speedy Tampa, founded in 2017. The median founding date for all companies in the Top 100 was 1989. The majority of our respondents have one location; AJ Images reported 21 locations. In the Top 10, 2.6 locations is the average (not that anyone has .6 of a location), and Alphagraphics Idaho Falls, Ida., has eight locations. In terms of employees, the average number of full-time employees in the Top 100 is 26; our Top Shop this year (Strategic Factory) tops the list at 131, with an additional five part-time employees.

printing/copying accounted for, on average, 22% of revenues and remains our Top Shops’ top application type. Four-color process color printing is holding steady, performed by 76% of respondents (up from 63%), and accounts for 17% of revenues, unchanged from last year. Wide format shot to the top of the list largely thanks to what has been called the “pivot”— during the pandemic. Print

businesses started producing the applications that were in demand, such as safety signage and the like. These offset— although not entirely—declines in print demand elsewhere. “We were able to produce more than a thousand safety shields,” said one respondent in our open-ended question. “Mail plummeted as people lost confidence in the USPS. We are still missing our printing for events

Applications Wide-format inkjet printing and color digital printing/ copying are both performed by 95% of respondents. COVID signage was the saving grace of many print businesses in 2020 (and traditional printers had been moving into wide format for years), and wide format accounted for, on average, 17% of revenues. Color digital

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and conferences as it has been more than a year. I don’t expect to see them back full strength until the fall.” Indeed, those businesses whose client base primarily consisted of travel, events, hospitality and other shutdown industries had the biggest challenges. “[Our] general revenue decreased due to our core clients, events and experiential marketing, and ad agencies changing their spend to digital,” another respondent wrote in. “Another core of our revenue was municipalities and public exhibits and with budgets slashed and many municipalities closed, we lost even more of our core revenue. We did produce PPE, signage and other graphics, but this increase in product offering did not offset our ‘typical’ revenue that was lost due to COVID.” Celebration signage was also a growth opportunity last year, especially around May and June graduation season. Some of our Top Shops noticed what was in demand and reacted accordingly. “We quickly noticed restaurants and stores moving to announce ‘Still Open’ signage, and it transitioned to ‘Curbside Pickup’ and directional signage,” one Top Shop respondent said. “Our A-frame, directional and floor graphic printing skyrocketed, and it stayed consistent for most of 2020. In May, the whole country realized we need to make our kids and families aware of big announcements like graduations and birthdays. We had several

weeks where it seemed like all we produced were graduation yard signs and yard letters! We were fortunate enough that we gained the new opportunities, but

quite a bit of our normal business stayed active.”

Top Challenges The top challenge, selected by

“The peer-to-peer support we get from the corporate team as well as other owners is priceless.” Eileen Rosenzweig Sir Speedy owner Sarasota & Ft. Myers, FL

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SPECIAL FEATURE ─ Top 100 three-fourths of our Top Shops, was “regaining business lost to COVID-19.” The other top challenges reflect some of the consequences of the pandemic that other industries are struggling with, such as staffing back up. This was of course an issue the industry has been struggling with even pre-COVID. “Local economic issues” also represents fallout from last year’s shutdowns, and “consumables and supplies prices” reflects supply chain issues stemming from the pandemic. Seeing “keeping my employees safe from COVID-19” is far down the list—which is actually a good thing as vaccination rates have gone up and COVID cases have gone down. This particular challenge was number two in our “Fall 2020 Business Outlook Survey”—before vaccinations had ramped up.

Top Opportunities The top two opportunities involve waiting for things to get better—whether it be the virus going away or the economy improving. “Hiring new salespeople” is always a top opportunity, but we rarely see “acquiring another company” so high on this list. We’ve already been tracking a pick-up in M&A activity, and we suspect another round of industry consolidation is in the cards, as the strong print businesses that did well during the pandemic pick up the assets, equipment and/or books of business of those that didn’t fare so well.

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As the economy recovers and people start going back to work and to something vaguely like “normal,” print businesses are seeing a recovery. “Online orders suffered for a bit, but have gained speed over the past two months immensely,” said one respondent. “Those were mainly business card and standard office collaterals that have picked back up since people are now back in the office and out

selling.” The key to survival for many Top Shops has been diversity of product and service offerings. “Small format took a nosedive and large format, especially floor graphics, went through the roof,” one respondent said. “Since the beginning of 2021, we have regained small-format business from our wide-format customers due to the strength of our relationships and the closing of their small-format

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For more information, visit PrintingNews.com/10003405

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SPECIAL FEATURE ─ Top 100 suppliers. The trust we have built and continue to build brought us the additional business as our goal is to be as close to a one-stop shop for projectsolution-providing as possible.”

Planned Investments Comparing investment plans to pre-COVID surveys doesn’t show that big of a difference. For the past few years, “We have no planned investments,” has topped this list. That is number two this year, which is a little bit of an anomaly, taking as it does a back seat to “finishing/ bindery equipment for digital production.” “Additional space/ new location” is also abnormally high on this survey.

Strategic Factory located in Owings Mills, Maryland is the #1 Small Commercial Printshop

This Year’s Winners Congratulations to the winners of this year’s “Top 100!” Two of the “Top Six” were in our Top Six last year. Our six “Top Shops” (by 2020 sales) this year are: ● Strategic Factory, Owings Mills, Md. —$21,322,863 ● Yunker Industries, Inc., Elkhorn, Wis. —$19,500,000 ● Professional Printers, West Columbia, S.C. —$17,926,000 ● Sir Speedy Whittier, Whittier, Calif. —$17,473,176 ● Allegra Asheville, Asheville, N.C. —$16,234,821 ● Allen Printing Company, Nashville, Tenn. —$15,000,000

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#1 Strategic Factory Strategic Factory (https://strategicfactory.com) was founded in 1999 by Keith Miller as a two-person quick print franchise, but has grown to a 40,000-square-foot production facility with more than 130 employees. The company offers commercial printing, as well as signage, vehicle graphics, branded apparel and promotional items, and a full range of creative and design services. “Our success in 2020 was largely attributed to the flexibility and perseverance of our amazing team,” said Miller. “We were able to help our customers stay safe by creating and supplying PPE. We also helped them

find new and innovative ways to stay connected with their employees, communicate with their customers and sustain business during a challenging time.” They also quickly leapt into the PPE fray. “As we began to notice the shortages in PPE-related items, we immediately leveraged our existing supply chain and equipment to source and produce various forms of PPE and other safety items at a minimum price for our customers— including government agencies, hospital systems, senior living facilities, schools and countless other essential businesses—in an effort to protect workers on the

WhatTheyThink - Printing News | June 2021

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SPECIAL FEATURE ─ Top 100 frontlines as quickly as possible,” Miller said. Strategic Factory also produced health-related signage, school packets for students, custom floor graphics to encourage social distancing in stores, large sneeze guards at check-out lines and window clings for restaurants to promote food delivery services. “As one client wrote, ‘You all have been such a great resource in this crazy time. You are truly helping us to protect a lot of people,’” Miller said. The company is launching into 2021 with a rebrand and enhanced customer communications. “We have spent much of 2021 working to develop and implement strategies to make our business more efficient, focusing on things like automation production efficiencies, and throughput,” said Miller. “Additionally, we took some time to focus on the next generation of the Strategic Factory brand, including a style refresh, launching a brand-new website and implementing a smart new CRM. We are currently working to redesign our customer journey to provide more personalized and relevant communication.”

#2 Yunker Industries Yunker Industries (www. yunker.com) is the second oldest company in our Top Six, founded as Yunker Sign & Display in 1948 by Warren and Mary Helen Yunker and is headed today by Kari Yunker.

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Yunker is a retail marketing services organization, handling all aspects of wide-format and signage, prototyping, design, fulfillment and installation. “We have a diverse client base that included multiple market verticals that were essential businesses throughout the COVID19 pandemic,” said Kari Yunker, president. “We were able to partner with them to provide visual communication tools and signage that helped educate and direct their employees and customers on the required protocols to keep their store environments open and safe for everyone.” Yunker will continue its R&D efforts. “We will be launching our CONVERGE Program Management tool,” Yunker said. “CONVERGE is a collaborative solution that allows all stakeholders to align with the program goals, execute the program on time and on budget, and measure overall progress real-time to make better business decisions.”

#3 Professional Printers With two locations, in Columbia and West Columbia, S.C., and 125 employees, Professional Printers Inc. (PPI, www.proprinters.com) was our number four Top Shop last year. A long-time offset “job shop,” the company recently began investing in digital printing, allowing the company to expand into shortrun and variable-data printing. During the crisis last year, “we made a commitment

to keep everyone working: no layoffs, even before the PPP was in place,” said Jess MacCallum, president. PPI also kept in close contact with its customers. “We paid close attention to the rapidly evolving needs of our customers and responded in step with them.” PPI delivered proofs to clients at their homes, set up Zoom meetings for press checks, and even recorded video introductions for their sales staff to help reach new clients who were still cautious about face-to-face meetings. For 2021, it’s back to the future. “We’ve hit the accelerator on the plans we had from 2019 that were put on hold,” said MacCallum. “We’ve hired two veteran sales people, a new inside account manager, and multiple production people. We’ve fully implemented our marketing campaign and sample program and will be increasing our lead generation with the help of a new intern. Our commitment to bringing youth into the company remains strong, and several of our interns have accepted full-time positions after graduation.”

#4 Sir Speedy Whittier (Calif.) Founded in 1979, Sir Speedy Whittier (www.sirspeedy.com/ whittierca510) was one of the fortunate ones. “COVID did not have a measurable impact on our business,” George Coriaty, owner, wrote in

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our Top Shops survey. Sir Speedy Whittier provides virtually every form of marketing communication, going beyond the high-quality color printing and book publishing they made their name with and offering signage, packaging and label printing, and data services, and is staying on top of new technologies and new media. They even have an in-house video production company called “Team Smart” for video marketing projects for clients. The diverse array of products and services meant that Sir Speedy Whittier didn’t have to “pivot”—they were able to offer whatever was in demand.

“April of this year was the highest grossing sales month in our company history,” said Campbell. “So it’s coming back. May looks pretty strong.”

#6 Allen Printing Company Returning to the Top Six this year is Allen Printing Company (www.allenprinting.com), which Continued on page 62

“We love being independent owners with the added benefit of strategic and tactical support. It’s been a lifesaver.” Emily & Steve Albritton Sir Speedy owners Tampa, FL

#5 Allegra Asheville (N.C.) Allegra Asheville (www. AllegraAsheville.com) was founded in 1998 as Mail Management Services and became an Allegra franchise in 2015. Its client base runs the gamut of businesses in the Asheville, N.C., area. It was teamwork that got the business through a tough year. “It really was a collaboration between our team and our clients, as well as the vendors that we rely on,” said Dave Campbell, owner and president. “Kudos to all those folks that are involved.” Campbell also cites being part of a franchise network as helping his center get through the crisis. 2021 started a little slow for Allegra Asheville, but March and April really saw business returning in force.

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH SUCCESS

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SPECIAL FEATURE ─ Top 100 Rank

Company Name

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Strategic Factory Yunker Industries, Inc. Professional Printers Sir Speedy Whittier Allegra Asheville Allen Printing Company Cedar Graphics, Inc. Speedy CPS LLC, dba AlphaGraphics DMS Color Allegra Marketing Print Mail Plymouth Haig Graphic Communications AlphaGraphics Seattle S2K Graphics Dynamark Graphics Group Allegra Princeton Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions PIP Printing # 500 H&H Graphics Inc. PDC Graphics A & B Printing LLC Raintree Graphics AJ Images Inc. AlphaGraphics #004

FireSprint

25 26 27

American Graphics Printing Co. AlphaGraphics Downtown Raleigh Plum Grove Inc.

AlphaGraphics in the Cultural District

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Sir Speedy Sarasota Curry Printing Ultra Graphics Allegra Marketing Print Mail AlphaGraphics #011 Phoenix The Sign Dude Graphic Creations, Inc. Sir Speedy Tampa PIP Printing Riverside/Corona, printmystuff.com Impressions Printing

More Business Solutions

Denise Roath

Professional Print & Mail

PIP Marketing Signs Print

JEB-PHI INC. dba PIP Printing Insight Communication, LLC DBA AlphaGraphics of Bountiful Yotta Sky Group, Inc. Braintree Printing PIP Marketing Signs & Print of New England (PIP#211) Econo Print Inc. K-B Offset Printing, Inc. Scott’s Printing & Design Bethlehem Business Forms, LLC PrintDallas, Inc. dba AlphaGraphics #54

Douglas Carlile Shane Parker and Chris Cochran Bruce and Belinda Pansky

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

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Management

City, State

Keith Miller Owings Mills, MD Kari Yunker Elkhorn, WI Jimmy Kohn West Columbia, SC George Coriaty Whittier, CA Dave Campbell Asheville, NC Shannon Heffington Nashville, TN Salma H. Igram Hiawatha, Iowa Lynn Nelson Idaho Falls, ID Ryan Cooper Pelham, AL Michael Marcantonio Plymouth, MI James Kalousdian Hauppauge, NY Chuck Stempler Seattle, WA Dan Pulos Chatsworth, CA Scott and Tom Fulner Indianapolis, IN David Kovacs Cranbury, NJ David Thompson San Antonio, TX Shelley Bramstedt Anchorage, AK Mary Kohler Lancaster, PA Jim Rosenthal and Carl Piccari Southampton, PA Damien Parks Las Vegas, NV Mike Seethaler Jacksonville, FL Janet Greebel Roeleel, NJ Mike Sparaco, Darin Osborne Tempe, AZ Gene Hamzhie, Mark Kistler, Omaha, NE James Hamzhie Bob Hindman Clinton Township, MI Owen Andrews Raleigh, NC Peter Lineal Hoffman Estates, IL Bill and Clare Meehan and Sarah Pittsburgh, PA Meehan Parker Eileen C. Rosenzweig Sarasota, FL Peter Gardner Westboro, MA Jake Eaton Billings, MT Jonette and Kyle Spencer Helena, MT Larry Furlong Phoenix, AZ Jim DeBoer Medford, OR Jim Caughorn, Jr. Knoxville, TN Steve and Emily Albritton Tampa, FL

Total Year Number of Employees Founded Locations (FT+PT) 1999 3 136 1948 1 1979 2 125 1979 1 32 1998 5 34 1931 1 120 1989 2 91 2006 8 89 2006 1 75 1978 2 53 1943 1 40 1989 4 51 1989 1 20 1972 2 55 1992 2 1964 2 54 1979 1 39 1973 1 42 1997 1 33 2000 1 31 1989 1 49 1967 21 21 1988 1 30

2020 Sales $21,322,863 $19,500,000 $17,926,000 $17,473,176 $16,234,821 $15,000,000 $12,125,000 $11,731,711 $11,000,000 $10,308,000 $9,599,110 $9,276,197 $9,000,000 $8,549,362 $8,000,000 $7,895,895 $7,031,455 $6,000,000 $5,750,000 $5,715,733 $5,647,000 $5,563,876 $5,347,080

2007

$5,100,000

1984 2011 1980

1 1 1

20 18 28

$4,996,450 $4,936,309 $4,723,149

2000

$4,700,000

1980 1981 1994 1982 1981 1993 1987 2017

1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

25 25 30 25 26 33 22 20

$4,609,669 $4,400,000 $4,381,719 $4,198,315 $4,046,705 $4,030,000 $4,000,100 $3,899,040

Tracy Family

Riverside, CA

1968

$3,828,240

Jeff Summerford

Oklahoma City, OK Peachtree Corners, GA Fresno, CA

1996

$3,800,000

1985

$3,700,000

1985

$3,635,325

Peoria, IL

1978

$3,617,958

Downey, CA

1969

$3,599,310

Grant Richey

Bountiful, UT

1994

$3,550,386

Jose Gutierrez Jose Tafur

Miami, FL Braintree, MA East Longmeadow, MA Billings, MT State College, PA Montrose, CO Bethlehem, PA Dallas, TX

2012 1989

2 1

24 10

$3,550,000 $3,464,772

1976

$3,424,263

1969 1955 1978 1986 1985

2 1 3 1 1

17 34 23 28 16

$3,418,759 $3,182,824 $3,148,535 $3,117,538 $3,089,456

Robert Pelzek and Michael Tarby Jim Berry R. J. Caravan Scott Beyer Frederick Fenselau Sherry Perry

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Total Year Number of Employees Founded Locations (FT+PT) 1990 1 23

Rank

Company Name

Management

City, State

Allegra Marketing, Print, Mail Winn Communications LLC, DBA Alphagraphics 34, 16 Hawk Graphics ASAP Prints Allegra Print • Signs • Design Allegra Marketing Print Mail AlphaGraphics Layton, UT Bradsher & Bright, LLC dba AlphaGraphics Franklin Allegra Print-Signs-Design AlphaGraphics #371, #600, #629 (A Dog Solutions, Inc.) Moran Graphics Inc dba AlphaGraphics Allegra Naples Sir Speedy Printing TruColor Palmetto Digital Solutions AlphaGraphics of Sioux Falls Sir Speedy Raleigh AlphaGraphics of Central Houston AlphaGraphics South Charlotte & Ballantyne ISMS Communications.Ltd/MJEM Communications, Inc d/b/a AlphaGraphics

John Fergusson

Richmond, VA

Brian Johnson

West Valley City, UT

2015

$3,010,005

John Battaglino Nikki Smith John Flynn Peter Marcus Jerron Hale Jim Bright, Gary Bradsher, Melissa Bradsher Bright Clyde Moses

Randolph, NJ Winter Haven, FL Dulles, VA Tucson, AZ Layton, UT

1981 2001 1988 1990 2002

1 1 17 1 1

11 11 17 16

$3,000,000 $2,990,000 $2,866,527 $2,863,536 $2,818,180

Franklin, TN

2012

$2,790,566

Show Low, AZ

2007

$2,778,623

Jane Harvey

Austin, TX

1994

$2,768,000

Richard F. Moran Paul Kessen Jody Weber Shaw Sallie Gold Jeff Holder Paul Van Veldhuizen Lloyd Newton Joel Kurian Rich Schepler

Chicago, IL Naples, FL Winston-Salem, NC Greenville, SC Greenville, SC Sioux Falls, SD Raleigh, NC Houston, TX Charlotte, NC

1993 2009 1974 1980 1979 1997 1990 1981 2015

3 1 2 1 1 1 1 3 2

23 16 20 18 18 12 15 14

$2,754,885 $2,730,000 $2,700,000 $2,646,750 $2,500,000 $2,464,658 $2,442,557 $2,341,800 $2,292,312

Ilene and Michael Stroh

Allentown, PA

1990

$2,291,821

Boston, MA

2003

$2,197,655

San Diego, CA Madison, WI Omaha, NE Sisters, OR Cedar Rapids, IA

2006 1998 1989 1990 1981

1 2 1 1 1

10 18 13 13 19

$2,195,000 $2,188,000 $2,181,522 $2,172,115 $2,169,411

Westbury, NY

1992

$2,100,000

Sterling, IL Burlington, NC Okemos, MI Surrey, BC Sandy, UT Cleveland, OH Berea, OH San Diego, CA Denver, CO Aurora, CO

1910 1983 1990 2009 1996 1907 1928 1980 2004 2015

1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3

15 20 14 10 15 12 17 15 20 21

$2,016,150 $2,013,464 $2,002,000 $2,000,000 $1,997,464 $1,975,000 $1,935,000 $1,923,220 $1,906,689 $1,900,000

Saline, MI

1973

$1,744,899

Sacramento, CA

1986

$1,706,482

Ottawa, ON

1987

$1,700,000

Orlando, FL North Liberty, IA Elkhart, IN Rocky Mount, NC Chandler, AZ Coal City, IL Englewood, CO Warrenton, VA Fargo, ND

1980 2008 2007 1990 2007 2013 2008 1987 1995

2 1 2 1 4 2 1 1 1

10 7 7 9 11

$1,657,247 $1,629,242 $1,587,000 $1,584,273 $1,569,693 $1,527,369 $1,500,000 $1,345,000 $1,200,000

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

AlphaGraphics Boston

73 74 75 76 77

Allegra Marketing Print Web Mail San Diego Bickers Printing dba AlphaGraphics.com FASTSIGNS of Omaha on 114th XPress Printing Allegra

Sir Speedy

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Pinney Printing Company PIP Triad/Triad Signs Allegra Marketing of Okemos Logic Group AlphaGraphics Sandy Foote Printing Inc. Master Printing Group, Inc. Streeter Printing, Inc. YellowDog Flatirons Marketing and Print Services, Inc.

Allegra Print Mail Marketing

ColorMarx Corporation

Allegra Marketing Print Mail

92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Sir Speedy Orlando AlphaGraphics North Liberty AlphaGraphics Allegra Marketing Print Mail AlphaGraphics Chandler | Gilbert | Scottsdale Allegra Coal City Harmonic Media, Inc. Piedmont Press & Graphics KLM Inc, dba Sir Speedy

Carmine & Victoria Camerato John Ferrari John and Karen Bickers Robert Danielson Tony Meyer Eric and Ben Van Kerckhove Jack Bloom, Evan Bloom, Brandon Bloom Charles Arp Jimmy Brumley Dave Muhleck Tony Marasco and Loris Lovison Andy Selcho Steven and Michael Duhr Jeremy Dobos Jack and Adrienne Streeter Jenny Mulligan Joseph Mullan Therese & Pat Mahoney, Kelly Parkinson, Joe DiMauro Ray and Kay McNaught Walter McGinn, Simon Wood, Catharine Osadec Mike LeVangie and Laurence Nye Dennis Tallman Erik Shultz Todd Hinson Brandon Bagley Todd Garcia Barb and Tyler Lindvall Holly and Tony Tedeschi Lora Elfstrum

11 14 9

2020 Sales $3,050,000

08-19_62_Top 100.indd 19

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW ─ Print MIS

DITCH THE EMAIL It’s time to streamline your customer service.

he history of email spans more than 50 years— first available for public use in the 1970s. Most traditional printers (excluding primarily online printers) are using email as their primary tool to engage with customers. It’s time to modernize, streamline and evolve the front office of your print business. Print manufacturing companies tend to focus on the manufacturing part of their business,

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which makes a lot of sense because it’s been the core value proposition forever. But there is another area of your business that is in need of your attention: everything that happens before a job hits the press. This area is unique in your business, because it is the area of direct connection to your customers. When you invest in the front office of your business, you should consider how you can save your customers’ time and build customer convenience as a differentiator.

A Centralized, Trusted, System of Record Typically, I’m referring to your Print MIS when talking about the centralized, trusted, system of record for your business. For artwork, it might be your prepress automation tool. For prospects, it might be your CRM. For orders and estimates, it’s likely your Print MIS. To manage anything efficiently in the modern business world you have to start by agreeing where the “thing” is going to be managed. That system has

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best here; reactive is a mess. We have engaged with too many printers put in a panicked situation when a critically important customer demands online access and causes all kinds of chaos at the printer to solve this strategic challenge in a hurry. Stop kidding yourself: print customers need to be doing a lot more with your company online without your parental (labor-eating) supervision.

Efficiency

be accessible to all who need it, can’t have a bunch of crap data in it, and should be recognized as the system of record by the business. This disqualifies: email, documents and spreadsheets on desktop computers, paper-based filing systems, Post-It Notes on monitors, etc.

Customer Self-Service Access It’s 2021. This internet thing was invented in the early 1990s, and that means you’ve had 30+ years to figure out how to allow your customers to engage with you online in a self-service fashion. Customer convenience is the most important aspect to building loyalty. Self service continues to grow as the preference of customers. Don’t assume that your customers don’t want self service just because they haven’t asked specifically for it. Proactive is

I get it. Today your customer service team works. They manage to keep lots of balls in the air, playing air traffic control with all your customers to get agreement on price, artwork and order specifications. It works, why mess with it? Well, what is your definition of “works?” Yes, jobs end up on press, and, yes, customers end up with products, but have you ever looked at how the sausage is made? The ingredients might not be that pleasing (e.g. 10+ emails, three phone calls, six PDFs, and 45 minutes of labor by your CSR team) all to get one job on press. You’re installing barcode scanners in your production facility to shave minutes off your finishing labor, yet customer service is paid more, and generally the more time they

spend requires more time from your customer.

Measurable Metrics We have lots of measurable metrics for print manufacturing. Every press vendor is obsessed with giving you more information to help you better understand costs, raw materials and waste. What metrics do you have for the front office? Do you have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) goal for getting a job from initial inquiry to on-press? Do you know what the average time is? Don’t immediately go to the exception workflow—that’s a standard resistance ploy. Think of the worst-case scenario as justification for why you don’t have an SLA for the more common scenario. There will always be outliers. You have humans staffing customer service, so basically you’re staffing assuming every order is an outlier vs. deploying solutions where standard orders are “automated”—or, better yet, skip customer service because customers place their own orders, answer their own questions about status, and do their own research about past orders. When I ask printers what would break about their business if it doubled tomorrow, they immediately think about their presses, because that’s what printers do—then they make

Jennifer Matt writes, speaks, and consults with printers worldwide who realize their ability to leverage software is critical to their success in the Information Age.

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5/20/21 10:28 AM

SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW ─ Print MIS it about the fact that you can’t scale customer service quickly. Understanding customer service will allow you to implement processes and software that make it scalable.

Steps to Modernization The first step of modernizing your front office is not to purchase Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Please don’t make this mistake. Software is a tool that you buy once you have determined your business goals and decided what you need to track and measure in order to determine whether you’re heading in the right direction. When you go to remodel your house, you don’t start with buying a hammer. Over the years I have become jaded by CRM solutions not because they don’t have great features or they don’t demonstrate well, but because I so infrequently see them fully utilized. Let’s talk about the prospect object for a moment. A prospect is a company or individuals in which you are spending labor and money to try to convert to a customer. Managing the prospect object is centered around managing the activities in which your sales team engages that presumably lead to a conversion. Now we’re in even more hot water because saying you’re going to track sales activity doesn’t make you very popular with most sales teams. There are two kinds of data to measure prospects: qualitative (how and why) and

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quantitative (what). all the bells and whistles that a Quantitative data is indisSalesforce has, but realistically putable raw numbers: win rate, you don’t need much to make a number of prospects generated, big impact on your sales process. average length of the sales cycle, And a CRM that is embedded etc. The qualitative data gives into your Print MIS comes ready the quantitative data meaning for prospect-to-customer conor context. What were the cusversion. I like to suggest as few tomer objections when you lost technology products as posa deal, or what was the unique sible; only get extra products value proposition that won the when you literally cannot live deal? So if you want to start without the functionality. Nonthinking about managing prosintegrated systems are a drag pects, you have to start by definon user adoption and also make ing what your goals are. There is it all that more difficult to bring no better way to fail than to start new people up to speed quickly asking people to change their in your business. behavior for no obvious reason. The customer object has to be Your goals should be specific and managed in your Print MIS. This measurable. A very common set means your Print MIS is your of goals around prospecting is to centralized, trusted system of increase prospect generation and record for your customers. This improve prospect close rates. means that you are not trackYou can’t improve things unless ing customers in other places you know where you’re starting (e.g. spreadsheets, custom docfrom. How many prospects are uments, paper logs, etc.). Get all in your sales cycle today? Start your customer information in there. Then track how many are one place and that place needs you generating and from what to be your Print MIS, because sources. Then go to how many that’s where the customer’s you win and how many you lose, order history and accounting is. and then track why. Most printers see their Print Your goals drive the activiMIS as an order management ties you’re going system, which it is, but it to track. Then you is also a customer manRead More… create KPIs to agement system. Look Find article at measure whether more deeply at the cusPrintingNews. com/21152125 you’re heading in tomer records in your the right direcPrint MIS. Can you add tion. All this has to be tracked in custom fields? Can you segment a centralized trusted system of your customers into markets? record—that’s where the CRM Can you add objective data comes in. Don’t immediately disfields that help you understand count CRM modules that are your customers in a way that built into your Print MIS soluyou know what they have in tions. I know they don’t have common? Looking back on how

WhatTheyThink - Printing News | June 2021

5/20/21 10:28 AM

COVID-19 drastically impacted some markets and accelerated others, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to easily access your market segmentation to understand how diversified you are? The other thing I like to see is a regularly scheduled account review. Once revenue comes in from an account, over the years businesses tend to take that revenue for granted and focus on new revenue generation. Nothing hurts more than when you lose a large client that has been consistently delivering revenue streams for years. Account reviews should dive into the subjective/qualitative aspects of the account to understand how you can build defenses to keep this client and understand where you might be at risk. Account reviews that are done centrally—meaning management is involved—also can help “account flight,” when sales representatives fly and take their accounts with them. One of the best defenses of “account flight” is to use technology to enable your customers to interact with you in a self-service fashion. This mitigates the attempts by some sales representatives to be the source of all value. The customer needs to see you as an entity with good people across the board— the sales person as just one member of the team. When the prospect and customer objects are managed in a centralized, trusted system of record - your business has one version of the truth and current status of either the prospect or the customer. This systemizes

what used to exist only in your employees’ brains. The idea is to get all the data about your prospects and customers out of the dead-end repositories it is

in now and to set up an expectation that all new data about prospects and customers will be stored in this centralized place moving forward. ●

For more information, visit Printingnews.com/10004777

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5/20/21 10:28 AM

PRINT GEEKS ─ Color Management

THE PRINT GEEKS:

COLOR CONTROL 101

n May 4, WhatTheyThink. com launched “Print Geeks” with a webinar to review several common causes of color management failure. Resident geeks Jim Raffel and Shelby Sapusek of ColorCasters were joined by contributor Dan Gillespie of Alder Color Solutions for this session. Richard Romano had the unenviable job of keeping three print geeks on topic and on the clock. The panelists set out to run through five common areas that color management fails in the world of inkjet printing. Along with presenting the necessary amount of color theory and color management basic knowledge, widely varied experiences from the field were shared by Raffel, Sapusek and Gillespie. This article only touches upon the conversation that took place during the webinar. Be sure to watch the recording to catch the lively back and forth between three of the industry’s leading color management print geeks.

RGB and CMYK are different than L*a*b*. A significant amount of design work occurs in the RGB color space, which is an additive color space where colors

24-25_Print Geeks.indd 24

are created by adding light to an otherwise dark surface. Think of your computer monitor which starts out black until you turn it on and display an image. Inkjet printing occurs in the CMYK color space, which is a subtractive color model. While this seems counterintuitive, since we are adding ink to a white sheet of substrate, what’s actually happening is that ink is allowing less and less light to reflect off the substrate and return to our eye. Both the RGB and CMYK color spaces are what we call device dependent. That means that a set of RGB values that displays the correct color on your monitor will likely look different on someone else’s monitor. The same is true of a set of CMYK values that produce just the right color on your printer, but an entirely different color on another printer.

The solution to this problem is the device independent L*a*b* color space. With just three coordinates, we can define any color in a 3D model, and those values are portable between RGB and CMYK color spaces when combined with ICC profiles and the color management Profile Connection Space (PCS). RGB is converted to L*a*b* with an appropriate ICC profile attached, and then the L*a*b* can be converted to the output CMYK space of your printer with an appropriate ICC profile attached.

Leaving source profiles defaulted to SWOP In your design apps and RIP software, there is an area to define your color management settings. One important setting to take a look at is the source CMYK and RGB profiles. The defaults many

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applications choose (U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 and sRGB IEC61966-2.1) are relatively small color gamuts that have other issues as well. The SWOP profile is more than 25 years old and pre-dates CTP plates and the G7 Gray Balance method. This makes printing with this profile in a digital space less than ideal. By changing this default to the Coated GRACoL 2006 (ISO 12647-2:2004) CMYK profile, not only is a larger color gamut achieved, but also one which is gray balanced. Gray balanced profiles create images that have a common visual appearance across medias, inks and printers.

Choosing the wrong rendering intent Basically, rendering intents determine how colors that don’t fit perfectly in one color gamut, like Adobe RGB (1998), get mapped into another, like GRACoL2006. The tradeoff is typically between color accuracy and pleasing appearance. The most accurate choice would be the absolute rendering intent with the tradeoff being lack of

pleasing color in some cases. The relative colorimetric rendering intent is a nice tradeoff between color accuracy and is visually appealing. Finally, the perceptual rendering intent is focused on mapping colors in such a way that is most visually pleasing but at the expense of color accuracy. There are other rendering intent, but they are variations on these three. Finally, when available, it makes sense to apply the Black Point Compensation option to the Relative Colorimetric rendering intent.

Skipping a daily nozzle check of your printer When it comes to monitoring overall print quality, there is no simpler or quicker tool at your disposal than a nozzle check. Doing this check daily is a great way to make sure your printer is ready to go and doesn’t need a cleaning. Also, by keeping all your past nozzle checks, you can refer back to past tests to see if today’s is better or worse than the past.

Lack of verification and process control

quickly without some form of color verification and process control program in place. Color management professionals use software tools to evaluate color quality as they are dialing in systems with profiles and other settings tweaks. These verification results can be used as your stake in the ground against which future prints are compared. Anytime a verification fails, it’s time to figure out why. Results over time can also Read More… be reviewed Find article at PrintingNews. to look for com/21152124 trends in color quality degradation. In this way color can be restored to the baseline before a verification failure and prevent bad product from getting out the door. The session wrapped up with some great questions from the attendees; but you’ll have to watch the video to hear the Q&A. The video can be found on WhatTheyThink.com under the Webinars tab. You can also download the presentation slides. ●

Color management will fail

Shelby Sapusek is a Certified Digital Color Instructor and loves to help brands, marketers and printing companies excel at using color.

Jim Raffel is an industry old-timer with a ton of print management, process control and color management experience.

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5/20/21 10:26 AM

DIGITAL & INKJET ─ Innovation

INVITING

INNOVATION

International inkjet experts come together to discuss innovation June 14-18th, 2021.

or Inkjet Innovation Week, Inkjet Insight wanted to focus on true innovators and their innovations, so we started by talking with an international group of experts about what makes something innovative rather than just new. “I might have read too many press releases but ‘new’ usually just refers to a minor iteration of something that already exists,” said Nessan Cleary of Printing and Manufacturing Journal. “True innovation means something that genuinely advances the market, usually by disrupting the market or solving a serious problem - such as introducing inkjet printing into the production of ceramic tiles.” Pat McGrew of McGrew Group noted that the ability to jet ink was observed in the 1830s, but it took years of experimenting and testing to create a practical implementation that enabled inkjet-based products. “To be innovative, a technology needs a practical implementation,” she said. Ralf Schlozer of digitalprintexpert agreed. “A true innovation has a lasting and perceptible economic, social or scientific impact,” he said. Kelly Lawrence of Lawrence Innovation shared another favorite definition: innovation = invention * commercialization. “Innovation is the intersection between target market desire, market viability and technology,” she said. “In other words, an innovation must solve a customer problem better than the next best alternative and improve the customer’s condition while being economically viable.” We tend to think of innovations in terms of things, or the results of an innovative development process, but the business model itself can be innovative, or the creation process. “Innovation can occur at different levels

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in the supply chain, at the equipment OEM level through technology, the peripheral supplier level through supporting equipment and supplies,” said Jeff Wettersten of Karstedt Partners. “It can occur at the printer or user level, the enabler/distribution level and the end consumer level.” Looking at the spectrum of production inkjet, packaging and labels, industrial systems and custom inkjet integration, we see innovation happening across the supply chain and through to the way that end users are buying, creating and using inkjet for their business. The way the printing industry has innovated around collaboration in response to the pandemic has had a lasting change on business models. “Video conferencing has gone from ‘no way’ to the new normal and enables efficient interactions between global supply chain partners from printing equipment manufacturer to ink and coatings manufacturer, to raw materials manufacturer, to drying equipment manufacturer to converter to printer,” Lawrence said. “It’s much easier to get all the players impacting the print process in a meeting to discuss and overcome the challenges.” The changes in business model extend to how OEMs provide remote service to their customers, remote demonstrations and participation in 3D rendered trade events like Printing Expo (https://www.printing-expo.online/). Eric Holdo of Avalon Ridge Technologies sees custom solutions as a hot-bed of innovation. “Having worked with several clients over the Elizabeth Gooding helps companies to streamline their business process, improve customer retention, and maximize new opportunities for document design, print and Internet technology. Contact her at Elizabeth@inkjetinsight.com.

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years to use inkjet hybrid components as retrofits to new or old analog processes, you see that good integrators are indispensable,” he said. “It’s the garage innovation mentality that makes some of these custom solutions so cool and in the end, hyper-useful to the industries and processes they serve. The price tags may favor the custom solution, or at parity with a commercial press, but at the end of the day, you get exactly what you need to get the job done.” Mary Schilling of Inkjet Insight, who works with numerous OEMs and integration partners agreed. “In the custom markets the inks, and printheads and drop configurations can be specialized for new and challenging substrates and client requirements, seeding new ground for future presses to follow,” she said. Cleary sees innovation in several areas. “We’ll often see something new in a dedicated press, which gives the developer complete control

over all the elements from media transport to printing and drying/ curing,” Cleary said. “But usually the same technology can be repurposed to fit existing set-ups to cut costs for customers and drive wider adoption. What I find more interesting is when print technology is retrofitted to a non-print environment, for example, adding a printbar directly to a manufacturing production line for labelling or decoration and this is something that I think we will see more of.” McGrew is a big fan of the many “DIY” and integrator-built solutions that use inkjet. “Adding heads to converting machines, analog machines and packaging lines, and even cutters, folders and gluers opens options for production by eliminating steps,” she said. In a DIY environment, there is much more flexibility to innovate because you have a customer base of one. When designing a solution to appeal to a broader market, many times the need to provide

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5/20/21 10:22 AM

DIGITAL & INKJET ─ Innovation incremental improvements to existing customers takes precedence over creating an innovative or even disruptive advance in technology. Schlozer sees the fear of endangering existing revenue streams or business models as a roadblock to innovation at many companies. There is also the challenge of justifying the cost of development. “There’s no reason why anyone would adopt a more expensive way of doing something, but there’s almost always a cost to developing something innovative,” Cleary said. “That innovation has to be funded until it develops to the point where it is cheaper than the existing approach. Just because we can develop an inkjet system, doesn’t mean that we should, if it’s just adding cost for no benefit. This is sometimes seen as inertia or an unwillingness to try new things, but most people will quickly adopt something new if they see it as offering benefits or taking away problems.“

So where are we expecting to see innovations come to market? Print quality is certainly a key focus of R&D investments with OEMs raising the bar on resolution, color gamut, dot formation and quality control. “In continuous feed inkjet, more manufacturers are mastering dot level, rather than whole sheet, priming as well as gamut expansion with orange, green and violet,” Holdo said. “Ink chemistry will continue to evolve accommodating things like direct-to-product, production level manufacturing.” Schilling agreed that ink breakthroughs have been opening new markets for many OEMs. “Ink development that enables compatibility with a wider range of media is critical to the growth of inkjet,” she said. “Water-based inkjet has struggled in the film labels and packaging area due to challenges in achieving ink dry time on a polar substrate without distorting the film or increasing the total cost to print beyond market viability,” Lawrence said. However, new, high-quality aqueous inkjet presses have recently come to the flexible packaging market. “Ink chemistry changes along with smaller drop sizes are opening up more substrates for packaging and industrial,” Schilling said. “Wide print widths have also advanced inkjet for packaging as well as in

26-29_Inviting Innovation.indd 28

innovation = invention x

commercialization

direct to board printing.” “There’s clearly a growing move toward corrugated inkjet presses, and there are a small number of flexible film inkjet presses - though the pandemic seems to have slowed these down,” Cleary said. “There’s also a growing trend towards direct-to-object printing, but I think the most interesting developments are in more industrial printing solutions, such as for flooring, wallpapers or leather. All of these things are dependent upon further development of ink.” While we do see OEMs releasing incrementally faster presses, or increasing the quality on presses that are already near the top of their speed class, much of the development focus is on opening new markets through better substrate compatibility and enabling inkjet integration into more types of manufacturing processes. McGrew said she is looking forward to seeing more migration to automation, auto-configuration on the presses, and continued evolution in color management and checking. “It’s still early days in the adoption of AI and machine learning in workflows, but new features come to market in a regular cadence,” she said.

How do customers benefit? Innovation must bring economic benefit – not only for the producer of the technology, but for the end-user of the solution. “It’s tempting to think that individual technology breakthroughs will lead directly to greater take-up, but that’s more likely to result from a complex web of circumstances,” Cleary said. “For example, the growth of digital photography really benefitted as much from the development of broadband internet access as from continual iteration of digital camera technology. Any breakthroughs in printing are more likely to come from improvements in process automation than inkjet technology.” However, packaging is one area where inkjet innovations are already driving value for customers. “Inkjet offers the advantage of low cost short

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runs that can be executed very quickly. This enables start-up brands where the cost of packaging was previously too high a barrier to entry,” Lawrence said. “Inkjet enables brands to experiment with their consumer engagement messaging on the label or package as consumer demands change. With the significant increase in e-commerce, the digitally printed label or package may be the only point of engagement with the consumer.” Innovative packaging is creating the opportunity to build customer loyalty and for cross selling relevant products. “The value of inkjet is much more than the print itself,” Lawrence said. “It’s become a viable alternative to traditional advertising with the potential to post more significant returns.” The ability to economically support short runs along with versioning and even personalization opens up customer/converter opportunities for distributed manufacturing or micro factories. “Mass production cuts the cost of manufacturing but leaves a logistical problem - getting the raw materials to the factory, and the goods from it, which distributed manufacturing can solve, whilst also cutting the environmental footprint,” Cleary said. Holdo also sees value to the customer in updated manufacturing processes, “Inkjet in textile printing will continue to grow as more economical sewing/cutting robots begin to process the materials at faster speeds, eliminating the transportation costs of fabric from one country, and assembly in another,” Holdo said. There are many aspects of inkjet sustainability seen as an added benefit, from the ability to avoid the wastage of mass produced products to reduced water use and inks with fewer volatile organic compounds. However, not all inkjet innovations have reduced the VOCs in inks. Some piezo systems have actually increased them. Of course even polymer based aqueous inks are less toxic and more “de-inkable” than UV inkjet. Some notable beneficiaries of OEM innovation in the past year have been integrators and their bespoke customers. There has been a push on the part of many inkjet technology suppliers to provide better service and more pre-configured components. This is

enabling print bars spanning wider widths in compact frames with streamlined electronics. Some initiatives are focused on opportunities for retrofitting analog presses with inkjet capabilities while others tailor their offers to adding Read More… inkjet to the manufacturing process. Find article at PrintingNews. The list of players in this market is com/21152187 growing, and the time to market for custom solutions is shrinking. Not all of these experts agree on what innovation is, or where it is happening, but the discussions have been fascinating. To join the discussion, register for Inkjet Innovation Week, June 14-18, held at 11:30 EDT each day here: https://inkjetinsight.com/inkjet-innovationweek/ There will be ample time for live questions and the opportunity to submit questions at registration. With 10 experts covering five distinct facets of inkjet innovation, this is a don’t miss virtual event. ●

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5/20/21 10:22 AM

OFFSET ─ Fits The Need

DIGITAL

SCHMIGITAL Who hearts offset printing? By Mark Vruno

s anyone buying offset equipment? The answer may surprise some people. Literally trillions of printed pages still are reproduced worldwide each year using traditional offset press technology -- not to mention “newer” offset product applications such as door hangers, pocket folders and packaging (keep reading). “People talked about ‘the last offset press’ a few drupas ago,” Doug Schardt, director of product marketing (Americas) for Japanese OEM Komori Corp., remembers with a laugh. “A lot of those same people have bought an offset press since then. The manufacturers never stopped research and development. Our engineers keep squeezing time out of make-readies. We now can change plates and wash blankets simultaneously.” “At recent GRAPH EXPO and PRINT exhibitions in North America, Ryobi was the lone OEM lugging sheetfed-offset ‘iron’ to the show floor. Since 2015, RYOBI MHI Graphic Technology Ltd. (RMGT) has installed more than 100 sheetfed-offset presses at North American customer sites,” said

Kian Hemmen, western region sales manager for RMGT’s print and finishing solutions. Offset press consoles have gotten smarter and can learn. “We’ve seen major advancements in software and electronic vision enhancements with ‘eyes’ on every sheet,” Schardt said. “Nobody can afford waste any more.” Auto-registration is built in, and live control of ink keys ensures proper density as well as Delta E color levels. “There’s a lot less waiting these days,” he said. More templates are used for job set-up, and the use of motors and parallel controls allow for multitasking. Capturing production OEE (overall equipment efficiency) data is the big trend. “That data can be accessed in the ‘cloud,’ if desired. We’re not at the point yet of totally ‘lights-out’ [offset] production,” Schardt said, “but we’re close.” “Offset printing is very different today than the old, mechanical beast of yesteryear,” said Clarence Penge, executive VP and head of U.S. product management for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg), a 170-year-old company that leapt

Offset’s transition: One printing unit (far left) represents the modern Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106 driven by Prinect Press Center XL 3 Console, AI and manufacturer-assistant programs. In contrast, toward the feeder (far right) is a vintage print unit with old-school levers and dials.

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RYOBI MHI Graphic Technology launched its 970 press series in mid-2020. The 25x38” model features UV-LED curing technology and fast make-ready times.

from letterpress to offset printing in 1962. Today’s machines “are digitized,” he said, “loaded with software that integrates upstream into prepress and MIS [management information systems].” Rapida sheetfed presses made by Koenig & Bauer Group (KBA), the world’s oldest press manufacturer, now feature LiveApps tools for press control available for mobile devices. Operators literally hold relevant job data, information on production times, press status messages and maintenance reminders in their hands, wherever they may be. Inventory management becomes a completely new experience, and tracking of the use of particular ink and consumable batches has never been simpler. KBA’s new-generation B1 press for the commercial printing and packaging markets, available since November 2020, is the Rapida 106 X model. With a maximum speed of 20,000 sheets per hour (sph), the offset press was demonstrated as an eight-unit perfector with coater for the commercial market. Koenig & Bauer says that the new commercial Rapida 106 X was developed from “the ground up,” based primarily on customer feedback. RMGT’s 970 series models, introduced some 10 months ago, are eight-up, 25x38-inch format, LED-UV offset presses featuring automated smart assist printing (ASAP) featuring full camera systems. With the literal touch of a single button, ASAP allows a press operator to autonomously manage the entire printing process — from ink and paper presetting, blanket and impression cleaning, and plate changing through verification of test printing, register adjustment, ink-density adjustment and full sheet inspection — without even pulling a sheet. Four-minute makereadies “can start at wash-up for a new job,” Hemmen said. There’s far less waste, too. For Heidelberg, too, it’s all about artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous manufacturing.

“These features allow a pushto-stop manufacturing approach where the machine automatically carries out all the tasks and continues from job to job until the operator tells it to stop,” Penge said, “or [until] a manual intervention is needed, such as changing a Pantone color. Offset has been very strong in packaging and label [segments], with large growth in the in-mold label segment. Over the last year, there has been good growth in book publishing, which we have benefitted from and sold many pressed into this segment.” Book and magazine printing have seen an uptick on Mwanroland Goss presses, too, “especially in countries like Ethiopia,” said Wolfgang Hiesinger, senior product manager and newspaper and packaging Systems VP at manroland Goss Group. “Offset is alive, especially in packaging,”

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OFFSET ─ Fits The Need The VARIOMAN f:line web-offset press was developed by manroland Goss for package printing.

Hiesinger said. “We see a lot of advantages we can bring into this segment.”

Doing More with Less The challenge for offset is how to increase press uptime and achieve double-digit profit increases while operating less equipment. For customers with “vintage” equipment, one newfangled offset press may replace two or even three older presses, said Eric Frank, senior VP of marketing/product management in the U.S. and Canada for KBA. Press “make-readies” from job to job have been reduced by 75%, down to eight minutes on an eight-color press. Advancements such as aforementioned inline color control systems drastically reduce paper waste, while ultra-violet (UV) curing with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) reduces cost. In addition to printing more efficiently, today’s offset presses offer versatility, allowing progressive print service providers (PSPs) to delve into new markets, such as packaging, folding cartons and labels. “Some of our offset customers are now printing POS and POP [point-of-sale/purchase] signage on paperboard and rigid plastics,” Frank said, “while others are producing direct mail.” Despite the global pandemic, KBA had a robust year in 2020. Its strong performance was largely due to packaging segment growth, Frank said. “Our offset sales are booming. They’re alive like never before.” Frank believes digital printing has peaked. Aside from the transactional segment, “How many halfsized machines can you place?” he asked. That said, digital presses are ideally suited for many types of printing applications. Some manufacturers, such as Komori, sell digital and traditional offset equipment – and some projects call for a blend of offset and digital printing. It’s like the old adage, “using the right tool for the

right job,” said Schardt. “Digital and offset [presses] are not really competing products,” noting that there is not much crossover in the type of work each process produces.

The Value Proposition Why invest in offset print? It offers the highest quality and lowest manufacturing cost, according to Penge. He points to a recent example at Heidelberg. “I had a performance call with a customer who has a XL 106-8P and ran 125 makereadies on the first shift and 112 makereadies on the second shift. Offset printing out-produces other forms of print and, in most companies, this ties into more than 70% of their revenue. With a modern Heidelberg [press], our customers are more competitive and profitable, while at the same time capable of meeting the speed Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106-8P+L.

to market needs with quick turnaround dates.” In addition to working closely with coating, ink and substrate manufacturers, “KBA has extensive returnon-investment (ROI) calculation tools,” Frank said, that measure efficiency and profitability for modern-day equipment owners, “who are financially savvy.” The aforementioned OEE data are used to analyze processes from workflow and prepress to postpress. The OEM also employs application specialists who can optimize operations for customers by identifying efficiency opportunities. “They point out things like, ‘Hey, did you know you can also produce this?’” Frank said. Print firm owners and managers base decisions Continued on page 60

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CASE STUDY ─ Maximize Your Business’ Worth

INCREASING THE VALUE OF YOUR BUSINESS Ask yourself these key questions before you sell.

rinting-type businesses often don’t sell because we don’t prepare them for sale. I don’t mean the basics, like financial statements and a real organization. Those are a given. Rather, I mean things that create value above and beyond the company’s asset value. First, you need monthly financials statements, so you may have a road map of where you’ve been, and a plan for your future (budget). Second, a solid organization is fundamental. You can’t be detached from the business either. That said, no function should be totally dependent on you, so no function shuts down when you sell the business. But there’s more to it. Cathy Roper, CPA, a specialist in business transactions, cited some of the following in a recent National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts post. ● Does the business have value that is derived from what it owns, rather than who the current owner is? ● Does it have an appropriate brand name, matching

website, specialized phone number, location, logo, specialty technology or secret recipes? ● Are employees just waiting for you to sell to call it quits themselves? Or do you have a good mix of ages and skills amongst workers, so they can carry on for the new owners? ● Do you have adequate and enforceable employee contracts in place, so employees won’t start a competing business, for instance? ● Do customers buy from the company because of price, value, reputation, quality, location, convenience or unique product/service offerings? These are attributes of the business. Or do they buy because of a personal relationship with the owners or key employees? That goes when the business sells. ● Can you replace your current staff or are workers “irreplaceable?” Although you’d hate to lose anyone, can you reasonably find and train someone to do what they do within a reasonable time within the local market?

If they are truly “irreplaceable,” then that is a problem. ● Is your location a significant factor in attracting customers? In some cases, it could be a key. A barber provides a personal service and usually doesn’t Read More… have much Find article at to sell. Yet, a PrintingNews. com/21152123 barber with a key location beside a military base may be uniquely situated so another barber will be willing to pay for it and add value to the deal. ● Are sales highly reliant on the efforts of any one individual? If that person leaves, it is a problem. ● Importantly, how’s the customer mix? Does the top customer represent 20% or more of total sales? If so, the value can decrease. Does the business have a diverse group of significant accounts? Who “owns” the business relationship, the company or the sales guy? ● Does the business rely on a limited number of suppliers based on the owner’s personal relationship? There’s more but you get the idea. There are no fixed rules on how the business “must be.” More simply, grow the business and grow along with it to maximize your business’ worth. ● Tom Crouser can be reached at tom@cprint.com for more information on how CPrint International can be of help to you in your business or call his cell 304.541.3714.

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WATCH LIST ─ Videos Trending On Printingnews.com

2021 TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK -

DIGITAL PRINTING

Warren Werbitt Talks Augmented Reality with M.J. Anderson Warren talks to M.J Anderson of RealityBLU, a developer of augmented reality (AR)-based content. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151412

2021 Technology Outlook - Digital Printing What was the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on global print volumes and digital press sales? What are the expectations for 2021 and 2022? Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152343

Robert Stabler Talks about the Koenig & Bauer Durst Joint Venture and the New Products It Has Spawned Hear what Managing Director Robert Stabler has to say about the vision becoming reality. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151565

Golan Landsberg on the New HP Indigo LEPX Architecture Golan Landsberg, R&D Director, Future Products Platform at HP Indigo, provides a technical overview. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151610

2021 TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK -

LABELS & PACKAGING

Warren Werbitt Goes Printer to Printer with Howard Owen Warren talks to Howard Owen, Owner of Stafford, Va.’s Stafford Printing. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151871

2021 Technology Outlook - Labels & Packaging “Packaging is transforming.” The traditional printing processes for labels, corrugated, and flexible packaging are in flux, with hybrid and bespoke solutions emerging. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152344

FOW #548: “Puzzled” Envelope Cross with Zip Strip Trish Witkowski shares her super-cool folding samples and helpful production tips. Visit http://www.foldfactory.com for folding ideas, downloads, and templates. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151377

The Nicole Saunders Story: A Passion for Graphic Arts Nicole Saunders has joined Kirkwood and is currently working her way through various departments in the company under the mentorship of its managers. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151943

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New Entrants Bring New Ideas to On-Demand Manufacturing in Textiles Marleen Vogelaar explains why she decided to enter the apparel industry with her company Ziel. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151741

Fiber is the New Computing Platform We spoke with Sasha Stolyarov, CEO of AFFOA, about the subject of fiber-based computing. Now, a year later, he has plenty of updates to share. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21151427

2021 TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK -

WIDE-FORMAT, SIGNAGE & APPAREL Ricoh’s New President and CEO Carsten Bruhn on Doing Business Post-COVID David Zwang talks with Carsten Bruhn, newly appointed President and CEO of Ricoh North America. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152083

2020 Technology Outlook - Wide-Format, Signage & Apparel Wide-format printing was the saving grace of many print businesses during the pandemic year. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152345

2021 TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK -

WORKFLOW & SOFTWARE

2021 Technology Outlook - Workflow & Software Software is the collection of tools to support your workflow processes. This session offers “Three Ways to Keep Your Customers with Software.” Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152346

SAI-TEX USA Brings Sustainable On-Demand Denim Apparel Manufacturing On Shore President Kathy Kweon explains the benefits of on-demand production to apparel manufacturing. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152342

2021 TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK -

FINISHING

Color Calibration on the HP Indigo 100K Digital Press Basil Verdene, Color Group Manager for HP Indigo, talks about the advanced color management capabilities of the HP Indigo 100K Digital Press. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152224

2021 Technology Outlook - Finishing What impact did 2020 have? What new technologies, products, and applications are emerging post-pandemic? Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21152347

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EXECUTIVE Q&A ─ HP PageWide Press

LOOKING AHEAD WITH HP HP’s GM shares insight and his outlook for production inkjet printing. By Cary Sherburne

n a continuation of his nearly 20-year tenure with HP, Carles Farre took on the role of vice president and beneral manager, HP PageWide Press, about a year ago, after relocating to the U.S. in 2018 to work with then-VP/GM Eric Wiesner, responsible for its PageWide Press Commercial business. In this Q&A session, he talks about his background, current role and views of the future of HP’s production inkjet business and the industry at large, including both commercial and corrugated applications. Printing News: Carles Farre, VP & GM Thanks for speaking with us, Carles. Let’s start with a brief overview of your background. Carles Farre: I am an inkjet guy … I started with small consumer printers. Then over time, I moved to wide format in Barcelona with different roles in technical support and operations. Eventually, I moved to the “big” PageWide presses with an initial focus on the commercial market with applications like transactional, book and direct mail printing. When Eric retired, I took over responsibility for the entire PageWide Press operation, which also includes our corrugated solutions. PN: Talk to us about the general state of the industry and how you see your technologies being able to move the industry forward. CF: If we look at the high-volume production printing industry across the different segments, I think there is a growing demand for high-speed inkjet solutions. It all comes down to the megatrends of those industries. There is a megatrend towards personalization to deliver more value with the printed product, with a focus on the quality,

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rather than the quantity of the printed pieces. Another megatrend is the need for supply chain optimization. Let us stop wasting paper and useless inventory. Let us stop repulping books; that is a clear need. PN: And there is also a sustainability impact with the ability to produce closer to the point of need, right? CF: Right. The runs need to be shorter, more purposeful, and printed closer to the end customer. And finally, on top of everything, is the need to reduce the environmental footprint. Inkjet allows you to tackle all of those things, from the environmental aspect, to the short runs, to the personalized content, to a more efficient supply chain – at the right speed and with the right economics so that you can replace conventional printing technologies. So in book printing, there is a need to print on demand, close to the end customer. In direct mail, this combination of the need of personalized valuable content for you, the end customer; but also how we, the OEMs, are bringing new capabilities that are able to deliver with inkjet. PN: What trends are you seeing in the corrugated market? CF: Corrugated is a massive opportunity. This segment will collapse unless and until someone comes with a more responsive supply chain. From the demand side, the brands want more relevance in the supermarket and to reduce time to market. Conventional technologies cannot deliver on a more efficient supply chain and faster time to market. It’s impossible. And that’s why we see in corrugated an opportunity for digital solutions. Unlike the commercial market, which has been adapting digital technologies and building expertise for years, corrugated is not there yet. The way to accelerate adoption of digital technologies in corrugated is to deliver end-to-end solutions; you need to deliver more than just a printing device to

WhatTheyThink - Printing News | June 2021

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HP PageWide T-490 Press for Corrugated Pre-Print

the customer. You need to provide them with a fully digital printing in-plant in order to be successful. PN: You have both pre-print and post-print offerings in corrugated. Where do you see these two solutions going? CF: You need to look at the type of company and process. If you are downstream in the converting process, you can only do post-print, and that’s where the C-500 fits. If you are further upstream, closer to the corrugator or laminator, then preprint is the solution. But it requires volume, and it requires being close to the corrugation or lamination processes. That’s where the T-1100 Series fits. In the digital journey, post-print is an easier way to start. Sometimes people will jump directly to preprint, but often they start the journey with a C-500 and migrate to the T-1100 Series later down the road when the volume goes up enough to justify a pre-print solution. PN: HP tracks the volumes that your equipment prints. On the commercial side, what did 2020 look like compared to 2019, and how do you see it shaping up in 2021? CF: Overall, the industry has been resilient during the pandemic; and that’s an important message we need to bring to the market. I’m saying this because when I look to our installed

base, the page count in 2020 was higher than 2019, by about 3%, because our mix of applications got us to a positive place, especially because books were strong throughout. Transactional print was down; and direct mail was down in the beginning but came back later in the year. So we ended the year with positive page count growth. Obviously, there was a significant slow-down in hardware placements. Given the uncertainty, customers did not want to invest. If we look now to 2021, we will be growing supplies and pages double digit, and in terms of equipment placements, we are reaching the same level or higher than we saw in 2019. PN: In commercial, what do you see as the biggest opportunity in 2021 and beyond? CF: For us and for the market, we believe direct mail is the biggest opportunity. If you look at transactional, it is going to go down; electronic distribution will win there. Books are strong and will be very strong going forward, but we also have a very strong position already in book printing. Direct mail, all the analysts say, will grow double digits – 13% to 15% in the years to come. There is still a lot of offset shell printing, and most of it will move to digital. That’s because all of the OEMs are coming to market with better solutions for this application.

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EXECUTIVE Q&A ─ HP PageWide Press HP PageWide T-250 Press for Commercial Print

For example, the new T-250, the post-coater and the Brilliant inks we have introduced, this will boost not only direct mail, but commercial applications and full-color books as well. PN: What can we expect to see in terms of new developments from HP? CF: We never stop. We are raising our R&D investments significantly across all segments. In commercial, we introduced in 2020 the T-250 with HP Brilliant Ink. These inks can now print on coated stocks; but there is a hidden gem: we have increased the gamut a lot, enabling the accurate printing of many more of the brand colors in fourcolor. The next step will be how we use these inks across the rest of the portfolio. We always focus on four areas for R&D investment: the press platform, inks, print heads and then all the software and workflow. You will see exciting new developments coming from these investments. In corrugated, we announced the T-470 with six colors, adding orange and violet inks. We had them available for the T-1190, and now we are bringing them to the T-400 Series for corrugated. PN: How did the pandemic affect the way HP worked in sales, installation and training? CF: Our industry is very much about face-to-face interactions and being hands on with the equipment during the sales process. In sales, I think we did a good job with our virtual setups. We were even able to sell a press to a new customer with a virtual demo. In installations, we evolved to a hybrid set-up, with our local service technicians doing the installs, remotely supported by our team specialists using smart glasses. PN: Do you see this hybrid approach continuing in the future? CF: I think it will be a blend. We will

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I also think our relationship with customers is like a bank – you have an account filled with trust. And the way to fill that account with trust is to visit them, learn from them, and establish this trust. leverage the things we can do virtually. But I also think our relationship with customers is like a bank – you have an account filled with trust. And the way to fill that account with trust is to visit them, learn from them, and establish this trust. So I think where we are going to go is to less massive events and trade shows, and more personalized, meaningful conversations with customers. Our demo centers in San Diego, Atlanta and Barcelona are already very busy. We have also invested a lot in virtual training, sufficient for customers to ramp up, supplemented by the local service technicians. PN: What is your position on returning to in-person events? CF: I think they will come back. And I think the OEMs will participate and HP will participate. But we will be very selective, investing in fewer shows. PN: What about Dscoop? CF: Dscoop for us is an important platform. We want to support the community, and we want to

Cary Sherburne is a well-known author, journalist and marketing consultant whose practice is focused on marketing communications strategies for the printing and publishing industries.

WhatTheyThink - Printing News | June 2021

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find a way to bring more and more inkjet into that community. PN: With the broad product portfolio HP has, how is the sales force configured to present these solutions to potential customers? CF: We have technology sectors across the product categories. The glue comes two ways: Our go-to-market team in commercial sells everything, and they need to present the entire portfolio, including Indigo. In corrugated, our sales team presents both pre- and post-print solutions. In terms of wide format, we don’t see that much overlap. There are some commercial customers who have wide format, but it is not that common that large format is an important part of their business. But our Industrial organization encompasses Indigo, Scitex and PageWide production presses. And for larger accounts, we have global account managers who can work

across all the segments. PN: Anything else you would like to add before we close? CF: It is important that we give a message of optimism and positive energy for this industry. It’s a combination of three things: the industry megatrends towards digital printing. Second, the resilience and Read More… strength of our customers and Find article at how they have been able to PrintingNews. com/21152121 cope with the pandemic is just one proof point. But in general, I believe our customers are willing to invest and willing to transform the way they work. And finally, the OEMs – the printer manufacturers, their finishing partners and their software partners – I see investment. I see a bet on high volume printing. And I think it is a good business to be in, from the end customers down to the OEMs. ●

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE ─ Consumables Applications

STICK IT THERE:

A CONSUMABLES APPLICATION PHOTO GALLERY By Richard Romano Variable-temperature graphics installation. Vaccine site graphics. Outside art exhibits. Home décor. Superbowl graphics from the “Before Times.” In this photo gallery, we highlight some recent projects that users have produced using a variety of consumables types, from labels, to vinyls, to fabrics. Like our occasional Flatbed Application Gallery (see our April 2021 issue), these ideas are intended to serve as “food for thought” in developing creative applications for clients.

1 2 Read More… Find article at PrintingNews. com/21152190

When conferences come back later this year and next, there will be demand for trade show and other events graphics. This project, completed by ArtSoft Expo Solutions, was created for the Grocery Innovations Canada conference just before the pandemic shut everything down. The challenge with this project was finding an adhesive vinyl that could be installed during extreme changes in temperature. ArtSoft ultimately chose Drytac Polar Premium printable vinyl. (Image courtesy Drytac.)

Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK’s Globe Print used five different Drytac substrates for a new vaccination center in Marlow, including Protac AMP antimicrobial film for door pushes and SpotOn Floor 200 non-slip PVC film for floor/carpet graphics. (Images courtesy Drytac.)

Last year, Oshkosh, Wis.-based Art City Wraps launched the Oshkosh Mini Mural Project in which 20 local artists’ original works were transformed into murals festooning exterior walls in 20 locations around downtown Oshkosh. The artworks were printed onto weather-resistant Avery Dennison MPI 1405 PVC-free, digitally printable film and mounted onto brick and concrete surfaces. (Images courtesy Avery Dennison.)

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4 3

5 7

Mount Diablo Distillery, Antioch, Calif., worked with local printers to create a new spirit bottle label called the “Bartender’s or Tender’s Grip” (patent and trademark pending), which features a textured surface to keep the bottle from slipping out of a bartender’s hands. The labels are printed on Mactac’s StreetTRAX non-skid, grit-coated pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) film using an HP Latex 315 printer and then die-cut. Tom Cruise could have used these in Cocktail. (Image courtesy Mactac.)

This hotel safety seal, introduced by Mactac last year, uses as its facestock a 1.5-mil top-coated gloss polyester film, available in clear, red or blue, and also features a 60# blue glassine liner, in which one side is polyethylene laminated. When the label is removed, the word “VOID” appears on the facestock. If the VOID lettering is visible, hotel guests know a room has been accessed. Also perfect for James Bond to ensure that a villain’s henchmen are not lying in wait. (Image courtesy Mactac.)

Back in early 2019—if you can believe such a time ever existed—Kennesaw, Ga.’s Parallax Digital Studios used Top Value Fabrics’ Supernova fabric to create signage and other graphics for Super Bowl LIII held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga. (Image courtesy TVF.)

Last year, Top Value Fabrics launched a new line of 100% polyester home décor fabrics, ranging from silky chiffon to “vegan leather,” designed for dye-sublimation or UV printing. (Image courtesy TVF.)

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INDUSTRY NEWS ─ News Trending Online

Canon U.S.A., Inc. Introduces New High-Performance Print Server: PRISMAsync Mark 8 Canon U.S.A., Inc., announces the upcoming availability of the PRISMAsync Print Server Mark 8 for the imagePRESS C10010VP Series, imagePRESS C10000VP Series, imagePRESS C910 Series, and varioPRINT 140 Series. Canon’s PRISMAsync Print Servers have helped print providers and brand communicators achieve great consistency across print campaigns using short-run targeted digital print, and their benefits continue to evolve in this updated version. As the first DFE-embedded Idealliance G7 Certified System to combine in-RIP G7 calibration with a highquality embedded color profiler, the PRISMAsync highperformance Print Server offers many unique and intuitive color tools to help users create consistent, predictable, and vibrant output. This latest version introduces yet another significant feature in color management efficiency with the introduction of the new Automated Color Tasks tool that combines multiple color management functions into one single customizable action. www.printingnews. com/21152026

Ricoh and Ultimate TechnoGraphics Enhance Partnership to Deliver Increased Workflow Efficiency, Control and Faster ROI Ricoh USA, Inc. and Ultimate TechnoGraphics announced their enhanced global partnership that will offer digital print providers improved upstream workflow automation at a reduced price. This expanded collaboration between the companies will equate to increased flexibility, control, and visibility over jobs at any point in production for printers. The timing of this arrangement coincides with the latest release (version 2.4) of the vendor-agnostic RICOH TotalFlow BatchBuilder solution, which includes the merging of all features into the base product. BatchBuilder enables a quick turnaround on a variety of short-run jobs from multiple sources by performing batching work upstream, automating scheduling, and reducing back-and-forth setups for print and finishing. Designed with productivity in mind, Ultimate Impostrip optimizes every aspect of the prepress imposition workflow with tools that are easy-to-use yet extremely versatile. Ultimate Impostrip delivers power, speed, and flexibility to automate the creation of complex imposition for high volume print production. www.printingnews.com/21151982

Kornit Digital Announces MAX Technology, the Next Generation Solution for On-Demand, Sustainable Fashion and Apparel Production Kornit Digital announced the release of its new MAX technology, establishing a new standard for on-demand fashion and apparel production. MAX technology surpasses industry norms for retail quality on multiple fabric types and breaks new grounds of versatility with previously unattainable print applications, significantly expanding the reach of digital on-demand textile production into the center of mainstream fashion and apparel. A key feature of Kornit’s MAX technology is XDi, which delivers revolutionary 3D capabilities for new, high-density graphic decoration that can simulate embroidery, vinyl, and heat transfer in a single, waste-free digital process. The new XDi, which is based on Kornit’s patents, allows fulfillers and brands to expand their offerings to include new-to-market, innovative decorations without the inefficiencies and cost of operating analog technologies. Kornit also debuted the ActiveLoad Automation technology, a new robotic system to significantly ease the burden of manual and labor-intensive media handling in the textile decoration industry. This increases total output per shift while ensuring minimal downtime and exceptional reliability. The new patent pending ActiveLoad Automation technology ensures continuous production and consistency, while decreasing human error and fatigue, regardless of employee experience and training, for ultimate results and best operational efficiency. www.printingnews.com/21151779

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Elevate Efficiency and Accelerate Growth with the New Canon ColorStream 8000 series Canon U.S.A. Inc. announced the new ColorStream 8000 series of web-fed inkjet printers. An addition to the ColorStream family, this new series represents the next stage in the evolution of the platform. The ColorStream 8000 series has been designed to meet the current and future production challenges of corporate and public sector inplants, print and communication service providers and specialized commercial printers to transform them into opportunities. This new platform delivers high quality prints for commercial and book printers. The expanded media range, including lightweight papers, broadens the application focus to include publishing and packaging inserts. Featuring advanced technology that takes the ColorStream to a new level of quality, efficiency and productivity, the ColorStream 8000 series gives users the ability to produce more in less time, broaden their application reach, explore new markets and grow their revenue streams. Comprising two models, the ColorStream 8000 series maximizes throughput with print speeds of up to 525 ft/min and prints up to 2290 letter images/min easily handling production peaks and providing the capability to reduce labor and run costs by consolidating volumes from offset and web-fed toner presses onto the ColorStream. Productivity is more than just speed. www.printingnews.com/21152217

Fujifilm and Inca Digital Announce Launch of Advanced Automation Options for Onset X HS range Following the success of Fujifilm and Inca Digital’s Onset X HS range, the ultra-high productivity large format series now comes with automated technology to assist with long run production. It also slashes job changeover times and reduces the need for manual intervention between runs. Utilising Dual Flex and High Five robotics, the range includes a semiautomatic configuration and a fully automatic loading, take-off and stacking system, designed specifically to handle flexible and difficult materials, such as unconditioned corrugated board. There are four automation options for the Onset X HS range – the 3/4 semi-automatic system, a fully automatic material loading system, a fully automatic handling system for unconditioned corrugated board, and a fully automatic handling system with integrated flexible loading. The 3/4 automation system allows for single sheet, multiple sheets or double-sided print in registration. The operator loads sheets onto a preload table and the system takes over the rest, stacking it on a pallet for simple removal of the printed media. www.printingnews.com/21152078

Label Traxx MIS Integrates with batched.io for Automated Scheduling

Label Traxx MIS announces its integration with batched.io to provide label converters with a cutting-edge automated scheduling tool. Batched is an automated scheduling tool for label printers that sequences job tickets using an advanced algorithm resulting in the best job, on the best machine, at the best time – every time. Batched connects directly to Label Traxx, leveraging your data to create previously unrealized efficiencies that add up to big savings in time and money. Batched also includes advanced reports providing insight into capacity planning, real-time order status, key business indicators and more, increasing productivity across all areas of your business. Most printers struggle to optimize the entire planning and scheduling process due to the number of variables that need to be juggled. Changing lead times, machine and labor constraints, machine changeovers and waste all need to be taken into consideration. With Batched you establish a set of rules and priorities to tailor the program to your specific manufacturing environment. You customize your machine and labor availability and Batched generates a real time production schedule for each order and machine based on your priorities. Once the rules are established, generating the complete schedule is automated. www.printingnews.com/21152306

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE ─ SpeedPro Project Of The Year

JOHN WAYNE

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SpeedPro Dallas was declared winner of the coveted 2020 Project of the Year Award. By Danielle Yuthas, VP Marketing SpeedPro

peedPro Dallas was recently announced as the 2020 winner of the prestigious SpeedPro Project of the Year award for its masterful work on behalf of “John Wayne: An American Experience.” Located at the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District, the SpeedPro Dallas studio jumped at the opportunity to keep the spirit of an American icon alive through the production of creative printing and graphics for the eponymous museum. The general contractor of “John Wayne: An American Experience” specifically approached SpeedPro due to its long-standing reputation for quality, as well as its ability to rapidly turn around work. The museum needed to be completed rapidly, in order to be finished by the opening of the National Finals Rodeo. Every visible element in the 11-room museum (other than memorabilia, costumes, display cases, the barnwood entrance and station wagon) were produced and installed by the fourperson team at SpeedPro Dallas in just 16 days. With more than 8,000 square feet of rolled and rigid media printed and installed, the team illustrated the multi-faceted history and persona of The Duke authentically and compellingly. SpeedPro Dallas worked directly with John Wayne’s son, Ethan Wayne, and several designers to create

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE ─ Project Of The Year

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“John Wayne: An American Experience” as an homage to one of the most renowned Western actors in history. The museum was still being built while SpeedPro Dallas was designing and installing the various graphics and lighting, and it required having the ability to effectively collaborate with contractors, electricians

and sound engineers throughout the venture. In addition to the general wall, window and floor vinyl and graphics, SpeedPro Dallas constructed a walkway of 5- by 10-foot backlit boxes, each with an image of John Wayne throughout his career. SpeedPro Dallas ensured that the floodlighting was correct so that the graphics printed on acrylic panels appeared crisp and captivating, without looking washed out. LED lights were strategically placed to create a smooth shadow effect across the image. Another challenge was maintaining the consistency of the print so that the color saturation was correct across walls as big as 35 feet wide. By stitching together 16-foot high by 54-inch wide sections of vinyl with 10–12 sections in a row, SpeedPro Dallas maintained the clarity of the image from

panel to panel. It was an honor for the SpeedPro Dallas team to produce and install one of the largest projects in the business’ 13-year history in order to fulfill the vision of the extraordinary Read More… tribute to John Find article at PrintingNews. Wayne in order com/21152088 for the legacy to live on. SpeedPro Dallas’ Studio Owner Mike Taylor was elated to be involved with this initiative. “As a 67-year-old and a John Wayne fan since the ‘60s, working with Ethan Wayne to make John Wayne’s life alive again was a thrill,” Taylor said. “It was a great experience and I am very proud of it.” Watch a video tour of “John Wayne: An American Experience” here: https://bit. ly/3xTyDN6. ●

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE ─ ADA Signage

BEYOND

BRAILLE The ABCs of ADA signage By Richard Romano

ast year marked the 30th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the far-reaching law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. Included in the requirement for businesses to provide reasonable accommodations to employees and the public, is the need for signage. Sign companies and other display graphics providers who produce, or would like to produce, wayfinding and other interior graphics for public buildings need to understand what requirements are necessary to comply with the signage aspects of the ADA, in much the same way that anyone producing exterior signage needs to understand how to comply with a particular state or municipality’s sign codes. After all, a non-ADA-compliant sign can subject the sign owner with a fine—$75,000 as of this writing— and that’s not even including any litigation that may result from non-ADA-compliant signage.

What Is ADA-Compliant Signage? When we refer to “ADA signage,” to what are we specifically referring? Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is braille on interior wayfinding signs, but it does encompass much more. “The first concept that I’d keep in mind is that the ADA doesn’t apply only to groups like the fully blind or the deaf or wheelchair-bound,” said Kenny Peskin, director of industry programs for the International Sign Association (ISA). “ADA signage is meant to work for individuals having a wide range

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of conditions and includes those who may have diminished capabilities—not necessarily a total loss, but a reduction in or inability to use all the senses.” For example, in addition to the blind, ADA signs are also designed to aid individuals with impaired visual capacity, such as those who have macular degeneration or other types of reduced visual acuity. “Among the other regulations that apply to ADA signage, there are requirements for color contrast, surface glare and reflectivity, and the standardization of symbols, just to name a few,” Peskin said. “There are all sorts of different things that are part of [the ADA], whether it’s handicapped accessibility, such as ramps or bathroom accessibility,” said Dan Bruk, president of Image360 Brookfield (Wis.). Bruk’s Image360 franchise serves as a signage wholesaler for Alliance Franchise Brands’ network, as well as independent sign shops or even other sign franchises and direct customers. One of his specialties is ADA-compliant signage. Braille and raised copy on interior signage are the emblematic examples of ADA-compliant signage. “It’s tactile, things that people are going to touch,” added Bruk. “Typically, on wayfinding, arrows or other directional information such as ‘restrooms down the hall’ are included, or you might have room signage that says ‘maximum capacity of 55 people.’” Ultimately, most interior signage identifies what is behind a door. “This is a closet, vs. electrical or mechanical or a conference room,” Bruk said. It’s information useful to just about anyone

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wandering a particular premises. Within the ADA regulations, there are sign elements that are required be in raised copy and braille and other things that don’t. For example, a rest room sign needs to have “Men,” “Women,” “Gender Neutral” in raised copy and braille, but the pictogram doesn’t need to be, although some locations do create the male/female/gender-neutral figures in relief as a courtesy. The same goes with wheelchairaccessibility. By the way, we say “raised copy and braille” because not all blind people read braille, and many prefer to simply tactilely sense raised lettering. Thus, ADA-compliant signage requires both.

The Devil’s in the Details The regulations get very specific and spell out in great detail the size that lettering needs to be, the height of the raised lettering, the proximity of the braille translation to the English text and more. And this is not just an academic or typographic issue— fines for non-compliance start at $75,000 for the first incident, and get progressively steeper if the issue is not corrected. (And, again, this is in addition to any kind of litigation that may result.) The most basic design requirement is that copy needs to be in a sans serif typeface and in all caps. “What you need to keep in mind is people are going to be touching these things—that’s how they’re going to be reading it,” said Bruk. “They want it as simple as possible.” Other requirements include: ● The minimum character height is 5/8 inch. ● The maximum height is two inches. ● The distance between the characters (kerning) needs to be a minimum of 1/8 inch. ● The thickness of a stroke needs to be 0.15 of the overall height. ● The height of the raised copy needs to be 1/32 inch. ● Copy needs to be 3/8 inch from each side or the top or the bottom. ● The braille needs to be 3/8 inch below the English copy, and the bottom of the braille

needs to have a 3/8 inch minimum distance from the bottom of the sign. ● The braille beads need to be domed (see sidebar “Tools of the Trade”). There are more, but you get the idea, and complete guides to specifications can be easily found online. After all, these are important considerations when the visually impaired are visiting unfamiliar locations. “Any user who’s encountering either raised letters or braille dots needs to have a very consistent and repeatable experience in trying to read those signs,” said Peskin. Then there are requirements as to materials that can be used as substrates (they need to be non-glare) and the color contrast (there must be strong contrast so lettering doesn’t blend into the background—navy blue on a dark gray background is a no-no) as well as how and where the sign is mounted. “You have to follow regulations and be thoughtful about signage placement,” said Bruk. “I’ve walked into buildings where the braille signs are on the door. Well, if the door is open and a visually impaired person is coming up to it, they won’t know what’s behind the door.” Signage that indicates what a particular door leads to needs to be outside of the room on the wall beside the door. It needs to be low enough where someone who’s in a wheelchair can reach it, but it also can’t be too low. A challenge arises when creative architecture affects where signs can go. Say a conference room has glass windows on either

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE ─ ADA Signage

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE There are a few ways of making ADA-compliant signage (aka braille and raised lettering). The most basic tool is a router. Holes are drilled into the substrate and then round beads get inserted into those holes. (This process is called “raster braille.”) In the case of the raised copy and any pictograms, the router cuts out the desired shapes. “Another piece of technology we use quite a bit is a laser engraver,” said Dan Bruk, President of Image360 Brookfield (Wis.). Flatbed UV printers can also be used to create raised lettering and braille. Some systems do it by repeatedly layering the ink until it is the desired height. Others can do this in one pass. “We own one from a company called Direct Color Systems,” said Bruk. “It lays all the ink down in one pass, so you don’t have to go back and forth repeatedly, saving on machine time. Once finished, it’s cured with UV light. In some ways, it’s kind of like an Easy Bake Oven.” Regardless of the specific technology used to produce or print braille, the dots need to be domed or, essentially, have a semicircular top, so as to eliminate sharp edges. Not all printing processes will produce a braille dot with a domed top—one more fine detail to ensure you are in compliance with.

side of the door. The sign can’t go on the door. So does it go on the window? Yes. The sign is affixed—at the correct height—to the window, often with doublesided tape. But that raises an aesthetic issue. “Sitting inside the conference room, looking out, you can see the tape and the back of the sign,” said Bruk. “To remedy this challenge, I’ll adhere a courtesy panel behind the sign. It’s usually blank just to cover up the tape and adhesive, however it’s being adhered to the glass.” And then there are special conditions that a particular facility may present. “We’ve provided ADA signage for prisons and behavioral health clinics that require special considerations,” said Bruk. “When there is concern for someone who may harm themselves or others, signage must not be able to be dismantled or removed for ill intent.” There is a material called no pick caulk that provides such a tight and permanent seal that the signage cannot be removed without special tools. As is true in all ADA signage situations, you have to know the facility and their needs to provide the best solutions.

Code Comfort If you are familiar with municipal sign codes regulating exterior signage, you know that some of the

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most important provisions are found at the local rather than the federal or even the state level—and can vary from municipality to municipality. This is also true of ADA signage. The ADA standards for accessible design were first published in 1991 and were revised in 2010. What’s important about this for signmakers, said Peskin, is that “the key provisions that folks need to be concerned about aren’t so much from the federal law, which only gets adjusted very infrequently and may not have the level of specific detail that a fabricator or designer would use. The more important way to figure out how to comply with the ADA requirements is by consulting your local version of the international building code.” Specifically, that is the ICC A117.1 standard: “Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities.” ISA served on the committee to develop that set of regulations, which is usually updated on a three-year cycle. “But sometimes things take a little longer,” said Peskin, who was part of that development process. “The most recent edition that was released was the 2017 version, but there is a 2009 and earlier versions out there. That accessible building standard is where people will find what is specifically relevant to designing and installing code-compliant ADA signage.”

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(A good place to start is at https://codes.iccsafe. org/content/document.) “Anyone who wants to do wayfinding should look at not only the national law, but also go to whatever the local building code would be,” said Peskin. This also means that any shop that serves more than one locality needs to be conversant in local variants of the building code that pertain to signage. “I’m based in Virginia, and right near Maryland and the District of Columbia,” added Peskin. “It’s entirely possible that all three jurisdictions might have three different versions of the building code.” Now, this is not to say that there are going to be dramatic changes from one place to another, or when a given municipality—or even the Feds— revise the regulations. Most of the changes that get debated and often adopted involve new technologies, new kinds of facilities, or new ways of people navigating the world. “One of the ones that we’re dealing with right now is a standard requirement in accessible building codes in the UK or Australia for something known as ‘accessible changing stations,’” said Peskin. This is something that’s beyond an accessible lavatory—it’s basically a toilet and change facility that would cater to users with a high support need or to accommodate two adults and have additional space or specialized equipment. Where this becomes important for signage is that, once the decision is made to require these kinds of facilities, what are they called and how are they visually indicated in a standardized manner? Other changes can involve dealing with new technologies like electronic messaging centers and other forms of digital signage. In those cases

where a local code has been revised in a way that impacts signage, very often preexisting signs are exempt from the change, but when a facility does a renovation, rebrand or other major construction, their signage will need to be brought up to the new regulations. And then there is COVID Read More… signage, some of which would Find article at technically fall afoul of certain PrintingNews. com/21152315 building codes but are exempt due to emergency provisions that were enacted during the pandemic. As things get back to normal, those emergency provisions will expire. “One example of this is that there are rules under a particular UL standard—essentially for fire doors and elevators and things like that,” said Peskin. Sometimes, however, very basic specs can differ from place to place. “Where you see those differences, typically, are in stairwells,” said Bruk. “Let’s say it’s floor five—for the actual ‘5,’ some municipalities may have a minimum height of six inches for that character. Others may need it to be a minimum height of 12 inches. Some have certain verbiage that they need to use.” Some municipalities may also require certain kinds of wayfinding to be photoluminescent, so if the lights go out, signage and exit routes can still be seen. “You need to make sure you’re talking to the fire marshal or other regulators within the community to confirm the requirements for these things,” said Bruk.

Call Before You Dig As you can tell, there are a lot of considerations, details and risks when doing ADA-compliant signage and while there are tremendous opportunities—especially as the construction market and the demand for signage increases post-COVID—it is imperative that potential signmakers understand all these considerations, details and risks. “People really need to understand what they’re getting into,” Bruk said, “or have somebody that they know and they trust that can guide them along the way.” ● All images courtesy Alliance Franchise Brands/Image360.

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TEXTILES ─ Reinvention

TEXTILE TECH Are you prepared for change in textiles and apparel? By Cary Sherburne

“A

pparel is an old industry that is not doomed to being low profit and low technology. It’s in the midst of a reinvention, and that can be very exciting.” So says John Thorbeck of Chainge Capital, a company name that is a play on words meant to communicate change in the supply chain. He points out that brands that have plans to restructure their supply chains three to four years out can’t wait that long and must begin making changes now. Why? Well, obviously, the pandemic caused major disruption. It also raised awareness about how contracts tend to favor brands more than suppliers in an unequal relationship, and suppliers are not likely to be as compliant as they have been in the past. The second, and perhaps less obvious, was the week-long blockage of the Suez Canal when a ship became lodged in its banks, causing a huge backlog of ships trying to navigate the canal and long delays in delivery of materials and finished goods. And weeks later, there are still logjams in key ports as delayed ships compete for dock space with those previously scheduled.

Growing Interest in On-Demand Manufacturing of Apparel Prior to the pandemic, some brands had begun to dip their toes into the on-demand manufacturing world to experiment with new technologies, do market tests of new products with smaller lot sizes, accelerate sample production, and in some cases, be able to deliver made-to-order products. But it was just that for many – dipping their toes and not with a real sense of urgency. The upheavals in the supply chain, together with rapidly changing consumer demands, is starting to increase the sense of urgency, and more brands are looking seriously at how to effectively work on-demand or madeto-order manufacturing into their go-to-market processes. Now that appears to be changing somewhat, and both existing and new manufacturing operations are stepping up to the challenge of delivering apparel on demand, reporting growing interest on the part of brands in taking advantage of these services. Although labor rates in Asia have continued to climb, they are still lower than those in the West. That means that manufacturers in the West must leverage technology to compete, and that’s what many of these relatively new businesses – often called microfactories because they are vertically integrated under one roof – are doing. While digital textile printing is an important element for many on-demand implementations, it is also important to move upstream a bit and look at the overall infrastructure. That’s the goal of Ziel, founded in 2015 by entrepreneur and industrial engineer Marleen Vogelaar. During the pandemic, Ziel turned its on-demand manufacturing expertise to the provision of PPE. (Image compliments of Ziel)

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The Runway Kit factory. (Image compliment of Runway Kit/MAS Holdings)

Providing a Consistent Software Infrastructure Vogelaar is not new to the idea of introducing groundbreaking technologies into the market as the founder of 3D printing marketplace Shapeways in 2008. Ziel has a goal of delivering a transformative and innovative platform that rethinks the traditional apparel and retail model altogether. While Ziel does have a test bed manufacturing operation in Newburgh, NY, and produces apparel and PPE for its customers, Vogelaar’s ultimate goal is to be an infrastructure provider. “As we develop the software infrastructure that makes on-demand manufacturing of apparel more SAI-TEX efficient,” she said, “we will USA employs skilled textile deploy it to our vendors so workers (Image they can work faster and compliments of SAI-TEX) be more efficient. And then eventually, we will roll it out to the larger market.”

On-demand manufacturing doesn’t have geographic restrictions. While producing at or near the point of need is often desirable, it is not necessarily the only answer. On-demand manufacturing does not necessarily have geographic restrictions. The key differentiator is the deployment of the appropriate technologies that enable more efficient – and ultimately, more profitable – manufacturing of apparel – whether it is near-shore, re-shored or off-shored. One example of this in action is Sri Lanka-based Runway Kit, helping smaller and emerging brands to easily enter the market in a sustainable way with reasonable minimum order quantities (MOQs) that

they might not be able to achieve with conventional manufacturers. While Runway Kit has an extensive on-demand manufacturing platform and would prefer to do the manufacturing itself, the tech pack that is created can be used by any apparel manufacturer. In addition to the tech pack, Runway Kit provides clients with a sample kit that includes a made-up sample, fabric swatches and more. In 2020, SAI-TEX, Vietnam-based apparel manufacturing, constructed a brandnew highly automated factory in Los Angeles. “Our goal was to bring apparel manufacturing back to Los Angeles, where we still have a good skill base but few jobs,” said Kathy Kweon, president of SAI-TEX USA. “In order to do that, we needed to leverage technology and think outside the box.” The factory, which opened in 2021, is currently focused on the manufacture of sustainable denim apparel. Dyed fabric is sourced from mills that are using relatively sustainable processes, and in the not-too-distant future, will be also sourced from the company’s new dyeing facility in Vietnam that industrially recycles all of its wastewater. The company uses unique automation solutions, including a laser cutting system that cuts a single ply and simultaneously distresses the fabric for desired effects. “This is usually an entirely separate process that is done after the garment is sewn,” Kweon said, “and that takes extra time. Also, if the garment is damaged at that time, it is more costly than if the damage occurs prior to sewing. There are only two of these systems installed in the world, and we have both of

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TEXTILES ─ Reinvention Read More…

them. Our headquarters in Vietnam doesn’t even have these. I’m sure there will be more installed over time, but right now we have the only ones.” Because laser cutting is being done with a single ply, SAI-TEX is also able to accommodate demand for lower MOQs that can be acquired from conventional factories. SAI-TEX has hired unemployed skilled workers from Los Angeles to perform the final manual sewing tasks. There are about 85 people employed in the factory as of this writing, with a goal of ramping up to 300 employees. A drone video tour of the new SAI-TEX USA factory can be found here: https://vimeo. com/522505357

history would show that in any Find article at analog-to-digital transformaPrintingNews. com/21151911 tion, in just about any industry, it is not the established players that drive change. It’s the non-traditional competitors that transform the industry. That’s a cautionary tale for existing brands as they think about their future and how they can develop a more efficient supply chain. Experts estimate that some 20% of current apparel manufacturing could be produced on demand – a significant accessible market opportunity that innovative players are surely not going to ignore. And if history repeats itself, their gain will be at the expense of traditional players.

Knitting can be on-demand, too!

Thorbeck is right in insisting that now is the time for serious consideration of how textile and apparel supply chains can be updated to better meet the needs of today and tomorrow, rather than relying on the way things have been done in the past. While not all apparel can be manufactured on demand, at least not yet, there is a significant existing volume that can be migrated to that model. And there is new volume that could not effectively be produced using conventional technologies, especially for smaller, emerging brands. Digital printing is a key element of making the move to on-demand, but it’s not the only requirement. There is significant infrastructure work that needs to be done as well, along the lines of Ziel and others who are looking to develop a common workflow language. A huge industry like textiles is never going to make substantial changes quickly. But there is hope on the horizon that we are on a path toward a more sustainable industry. ●

On the knitting side, 3D knitting is playing a big role. Companies like Tailored Industry in New York and Evolution in St. Louis have made huge strides in leveraging this technology to more efficiently create even complex knitted garments that require little to no hand work to complete. Evolution St. Louis, as an example, operates 30 Stoll flatbed knitting machines with just 14 employees. How exactly does it work? “The best analogy I can equate to is a 3D printer,” Founder John Lewis said. “You program something into the printer, and you print out a piece of jewelry or a car part or whatever. It’s the same thing with knitting. We receive designs and concepts from our customers and put that into digital form, algorithms that feed our knitting machines. When the data goes out to the knitting machines, the yarn goes into the top, and a full sweater comes out of the bottom. It’s like Willy Wonka; it just sort of happens.” It should also be noted, as Lewis points out,

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The future is now.

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MANAGEMENT ─ Urgency & Importance

BEWARE OF

SHINY THINGS How to keep your focus on your priorities.

teven Covey was an educator and author, probably best known for his book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” He covered a lot of ground in that book, but there’s one element that I think is more important than any other. Covey wrote about urgency and importance, and specifically about how any task on your plate can be both of those things, just one of them or neither of them. If you have more tasks on your plate than you have time in your day, it’s really important to know exactly where each one fits in terms of importance and urgency.

Four Possibilities The combination of urgency and importance yields four possibilities. Something can be urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, or neither urgent nor important. It’s pretty obvious, I think, that anything that’s urgent and important should sit at the top of your priority list. But what about something that’s important but not urgent? I hope you’ll see that any task in this category should sit lower on your priority list. It needs to be done, but it doesn’t need to be done now. And I’m sure you see that

something that’s neither urgent nor important should sit at the very bottom of your priority list. (I’m sure you see it, but I’m not sure you really embrace it. More on that to follow.) The real killer for most printing salespeople is the things that are urgent but not important, although in this case, “urgent” may not be quite the right word. Let’s substitute a word one of my clients like to use - “shiny” as in they are easily distracted by shiny things. That’s a serious problem, especially in any circumstance where time is money – like printing sales, or probably any other aspect of managing a printing company. Too many salespeople are guilty of putting time into activities that aren’t

going to generate revenue, profits or commissions. Here’s a classic example. The salesperson’s plan for the day includes a block of time for making prospecting calls. Just after the start of that block, an email arrives. It’s a request from a lower-tier customer – low volume, low profit, low potential and high maintenance. It expresses some level of urgency on the part of the customer, but it’s not really important in terms of the salesperson increasing sales, profits and/or commissions. But it’s there – bright and shiny – so the salesperson abandons their prospecting and tends to the request, and by the time that’s completed, the time set aside for prospecting has passed, and the salesperson has to move on to other things. Let me be clear on something. If this same request had come from a top-tier customer, it might have been urgent and important. But coming from the lowRead More… tier customer Find article at I described, it PrintingNews. com/21151951 was not. And the time spent tending to the request didn’t turn into nearly as much money as it might have, and that’s what I’m really talking about here. Let’s make it a simple question. Which Continued on page 63

Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact him at dmf@davefellman.com.

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MANAGEMENT ─ Changing the Direction of Your Business

PIVOT How to strategically pivot your business amid uncontrollable change in four steps.

By Burke Cueny, VP of Marketing for Alliance Franchise Brands

here’s no doubt that the pandemic and other forms of uncontrollable change can be detrimental for businesses. However, to offset initial disruptions and potentially larger, more long-term implications when hit with the unexpected, leadership at organizations must act swiftly and rally their team. Even multiple departments and business units can work together to overcome the crisis. For instance, at the onset of the pandemic, our leadership team at Alliance Franchise Brands, parent company to Image360, Signs By Tomorrow and Signs Now, formed a crisis response planning group of franchise members and corporate executive team members. The group quickly assembled to rethink our operational strategies to help diminish uncontrollable pandemic pressures. Each impactful meeting left an indelible imprint on all three brands in 2020 and into 2021. Together, the crisis response planning group created a four-step plan, and immediately executed it to support our franchisees, their customers and their communities.

Step 1: In Times of Crisis - Internal and External Communication Plans Once mid-March 2020 hit and pandemic restrictions were put in place, it was vital that our brands and Alliance Franchise Brands immediately increased communication to all customers and the franchise members themselves. Effective and rapid messaging was needed so that as much clarity as possible could be brought to a murky situation.

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Within Alliance Franchise Brands, email communication quadrupled; we called it “email-a-palooza.” For our customers, which are businesses too, it was important that they understood our status as an essential business in most states. They needed to know that the majority of our locations remained open and could assist them with solutions to help keep their businesses operating. Where allowed, we were assuring customers that we could build signs and other essential products to keep their employees and customers safe.

Step 2: Revenue Replacement Producing and Sourcing PPE Something very special that came out of these challenging times was how many of our owners pivoted and produced new products to meet the growing need for social distancing, sanitization and PPE. Signage businesses, like those under the Alliance Franchise Brands umbrella, were quick to jump in due to the wide variety of knowledge, equipment and materials we possess. We began thinking of products we could produce or source to help local businesses in need. Our specialized routers and other cutting tools used for signage allowed us to begin producing acrylic barriers. Our advisory board provided input on market opportunities, sourcing, raw materials and pricing for other forms of PPE, so we could assist in supplying masks and face shields. Our crisis planning team instantly became a research and development group as well as a sounding board for emerging COVID-19 related news and happenings.

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Step 3: Healthcare Heroes and Community Support It’s remarkable how communities rally around their local businesses – and specifically – signage centers. Each signage location has the opportunity to become the community go-to source for local businesses, and our franchise members achieve that status within their trade areas, building on relationships that often that go back multiple decades. As the pandemic set in, and even as it continues today, our franchise members have felt an obligation to keep spirits up in their local communities by supporting first responders and frontline workers. Our brands produced and donated inspirational and positive signs to local hospitals, restaurants and grocery stores to show appreciation for the hard-working doctors, nurses and other valued workers. One great example of this was an Image360 in Vancouver, Wash. Image360 Vancouver produced and donated signage that read “Heroes work here,” which were displayed outside the entrance at PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center.

Step 4: The “New normal” and Opportunities within Existing Supply Back in March 2020, almost every company – signage businesses included – had planned client work brought to a halt. Many business owners sought alternative opportunities to earn revenue. For us, entering a “new normal” forced us to look at our operations differently, and we had to step back and devise new revenue opportunities within our operating model. Even though our franchise members have done similar work in the past, we put extra emphasis on graduation signs and banners to make graduates from all types of schools feel special. We also rallied behind businesses that needed new ways to innovate and bring in customers. Restaurants and other retailers were launching initiatives like curbside

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pickup and delivery, and our franchise members partnered with them to strategize on messaging, design and for types of signage they may not have used before. Our Image360, Signs By Tomorrow and Signs Now operators felt humbled to be able to provide solutions for very critical visual communications that helped other businesses operate despite the major challenges thrown at all of us. As a multi-brand sign company with many stakeholders, our crisis plan had to cover all of our brands, individual franchise members, customers, employees, the corporate team and the communities we serve. Though we were thrown into a complex and challenging scenario, we were able to persevere successfully with teamwork, execution and grit. ●

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BUSINESS TIPS ─ Make Marketing A Habit

HABITS OF

PRODUCTIVE PRINTERS

Are you ready to re-emerge from the pandemic?