NEVER STOP LEARNING Slays ISA at

By Justin Pate, The Wrap Institute

The 2024 Never Stop Learning Contest, a collaboration between ISA and The Wrap Institute, was a huge success this year. And the best way to gauge this? All the smiles! They say bigger isn’t always better but the Never Stop Learning contest proved otherwise.

The contest this year was the biggest one to date. It went from 108 competitors to 135, 4 material manufacturers to 5 and $20,000 in prizes to over $45,000! In addition, we added The Wrap Institute Wrap Warrior Contest which included our Bing Bing plates and balloon cutting challenge. We had a daily pinata smash-up with daily prizes given away for both. On day 2 we announced our official partnership with ISA which was extra special. We had two daily demos a day featuring Rainer Lorz. Finally, we celebrated The Wrap Institute's 10-year anniversary!

If you don’t know what the Never Stop Learning contest is it’s simply the funnest and most educational wrap contest in the world. It’s made up of 3 rounds per day. A top trainer from each manufacturer gets 3 participants and gives them a free 75-minute workshop on how to wrap an object. The contest is open to any skill level so the groups are made up of true beginners to advanced installers. This facilitates an environment more focused on learning and sharing than competing.

At the end of the round the judges, this year Jim Miller and Austin Smith, assessed the quality of the wraps and, more importantly, asked them how much they learned about the film and process (at The Wrap Institute, we believe the best wrap professional is one that can wrap with high quality as well as knows the product details/process in and out). The team with the best combination of knowledge and skills was the winners!

The theme this year was Willy Wonka so everything was wrapped in candy and pastries. I even got to dress up as Willy Wonka, wrapper style of course. The objects to wrap this year were plexiglass cutouts, hoods, doors, a kitchen and recessed doors. The material varied as well from color change, PPF, cut vinyl and digital print cast/calendar films. Our trainers were dialed in the entire show:

• Krystal from Orafol

• Preston from General Formulations

• Marcelo from Hexis

• Andrew and Tanor from Briteline

• Dimas from Avery Dennison

The Wrap Institute team and ISA staff did an amazing job setting up and running the booth as always. We had local help from Candy Wraps and their staff helped take the booth to another level.

The show can’t go on without the top sponsors and this year they were: Avery Dennison, ORAFOL/KPMF, General Formulations, Briteline, Hexis, CWT Worktools, Mutoh, LX Hausys, Fedgrigoni, NT Cutter, POD steamer, Monkey Strips, Banana Buffers, The Rag Company and Diamond Protech.

Next year's Never Stop Learning contest will be back in Las Vegas at the ISA Sign Expo so be sure to register as soon as it opens. The waitlist to get in each round is always big so signing up early and locking in a spot is key.

The chance to learn from top trainers for free plus the chance to win amazing prizes is as good as it gets. It’s truly a special event to take part in as you can see from this overview of 2024 plus all the amazing pics by Tim Evans from Wrapper Mapper.

See you next year in Vegas and, in the meantime, Never Stop Learning!

Justin Pate The Wrap Institute