Isle of Wight-based print shop, DNN Signs has been trading for around eleven years. Damon Larter, Managing Director says, “We started with a 610mm plotter, doing a few vans and signs for friends and family. We were doing a couple of jobs a week and news spread through word of mouth. After around three to four years, we were in a position to go full time and invested in a cheap Rockhopper printer. It took a day to print a banner, but it was a worthwhile introduction into the digital side of signage. After spending an hour a day getting the printer ready every morning to do its job, we invested in a Valuejet 1604 and a Summa D160 SE. Now, seven to eight years later we have introduced the Lightbar UV640Plus printer to our arsenal along with a Rolls Roller, the closest we could get to a flatbed printer at a third of the price.”
Damon continues, “We had been using Colorific inks in our Valuejet 1604 when we were emailed with information on the Lightbar. We spoke about converting our machine but then thought as it was eight years old we should really look at upgrading. Obviously no one likes to part with money, never mind wasting it. We had such great experience with our Valuejet as it had never put a foot wrong with easy maintenance, so we were hesitant in making a decision. We went to the NEC Sign Show to look at a range of printers. Sometime after the show when new funds were available, we visited the Selectech show rooms to spend some time printing ourselves and getting a feel for the machine. After a thousand questions and every one of them answered, the selling point was taking a print home that we had printed and rolled up earlier that morning and walked on as a further test for durability. We had it in our shop applied to dibond, and everyone that came in commented on it. The inks are more expensive than our previous machine by almost double, but we are finding that the machine uses less ink, therefore decreasing the gap. Because we are in a high street location, we are asked all the time for jobs to be printed for collection same or next day. With the Lightbar, this is always possible and we charge a premium for the service. The Valuejet was a very large machine but the Roland fits into a smaller area and has double capacity inks. We looked into Latex as well but were told by numerous people that Latex takes a while to start up and warm up, and the electricity bill would be sky high. We also do not laminate signs anymore due to the increased durability. The great thing about the Lightbar UV640Plus is that we can produce items same day. This impresses most customers and is talked about. We are a business that has survived on word of mouth so we feel that this will be an asset for when we start to advertise. We have definitely seen an increase in our repeat custom, as the quality of our work has been increased along with the speed of service.
Damon concludes, “Our workload is comfortable, which is great news as we do no advertising other than a Facebook page. The Lightbar has been an asset to our company and is an economical way to get into UV printing. We took around a year to choose the right machine and we have not been disappointed. Hopefully this year we can push the sales and see where we can go.”