HAVING deep impact
Forward thinking graphics companies continue to seek out new markets and products to grow. Duncan Jefferies, marketing manager for Mimaki’s exclusive UK and Ireland distributor Hybrid Services, gives his take on developments and highlights companies that have done just this.
For a relatively young technology wide-format inkjet printing has matured at an astounding rate and brought with it incredible ways to produce work for clients big and small. A few years ago, those clients’ choices were limited through creativity, run length and associated costs but now; the creative floodgates have opened, spurred on by a multitude of factors, but ultimately powered by the evolution of wide-format printing.
The speed and quality of machines, the variety of ink and finishes available and the means to getting print on substrates has opened so many creative doors that it’s almost impossible to predict where things will stop. However, this creative flexibility coupled to tough economic times has seen a marked change in how the successful graphics company is required to operate in order to not only grow, but also survive. At a time when the technological solutions are available, it’s challenging to implement them in a workflow when funds may be tight, but at Hybrid, we’ve seen investment in the latest groundbreaking Mimaki kit skyrocket, as forward-thinking professionals see such progress as key to clawing their way to recovery.
Borders have greyed between the roles that graphics companies provide – the signmaker can now produce flags and the switched-on commercial printer is adding wide-format output to the regulation business stationery and brochures; it just takes a little vision. A lot of this has been through a desire to retain custom; the fundamental fear that if you’re not supplying a product to your customers someone else may well be, and that’s what spurred Digital Blanks onto creating a real ‘one-stop-shop’ solution for users of the Mimaki UJF-3042.
This is not a large-format printer, it’s an A3 desktop UV LED machine pitched at a multitude of applications, but suits the promotional products market perfectly. Not content with supplying just the blank products, the team at Digital Blanks (www.digitalblanks.com) has come up with an innovative way of serving and retaining customers through offering every aspect of the task – from a range of specially designed imprintable items through to custom made jigs and the backup that goes with it.
“The Mimaki breaks down all the barriers for price and appeals to so many people,” remarked Digital Blanks’ marketing manager Rob Hayes. “It enables cost-effective production of one-offs and small runs for which there’s a high demand in the promotions industry – and currently there’s just no other way of doing it.”
Digital Blanks’ market is not just limited to the UK. Having started off servicing Mimaki distributors who showed the printer at foreign exhibitions, it now has customers in the USA and Canada. “We want to give the turnkey solution – an all in one package, a one stop shop for everything they need for their Mimaki,” adds Hayes.
Another area of technological progress that’s met demand from those seeking to diversify has been the increase in soft signage production. Now far from being a specialist application, the progressive graphics companies are catching onto the lucrative, green and creatively expansive solution and one such success is The Image Group (www.imagegroupuk.com), the first UK company to invest in the new Mimaki Tx400-1800D along with a Transmatic GFO76 industrial heatpress.
Director, Neil Cousins, explained the reasons behind choosing this technology: “We wanted to be able to offer our customers the best digitally printed textile products with vibrant colours that other technologies simply cannot achieve. We chose the new Mimaki due to its production capabilities and versatility in terms of products we can now offer our customers. This was a new venture for us and we are already reaping the benefits of adding high quality digital textiles to our existing in house print capabilities.”
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which route you take – so long as you keep looking beyond your perceived boundaries and take advantage of the impact of wide-format print on all our industries. Such is the breadth of capability of the technology, it’s not so much ‘what’s impacting on wide- format?’, but ‘what’s wide-format impacting on me?’ Strike out in 2011 – you never what you might produce next!