Artgrafix Blog

As a custom house, we continually fabricate new items.  Most of these are for a customer who has an existing job and is having difficulty getting that job done.  We come up with a way to make that happen and often these needs have a wider audience.  Examples of this would be our Gator pouch board, matte film large pouches and Bubble-Free boards.  In each of these cases, we start with a solution which works, but has certain deficiencies.  The customer who we are working with happily works around these deficiencies because we are able to solve their immediate needs, but as we move further afield, these can become issues.  Examples would be with gator board where black is more difficult to stick to than white gator or that the process which creates the veneer surface sometimes is not as smooth as required.

Because of the internet, franchises and associations, we get demand to remake certain products for others because they feel they have the same need as the first customer we spoke to and believe our approach will work for them.  We also believe these products will work for them, but because they may use different materials we run into issues.  As we review these, talk with suppliers, learn by doing, we make changes which address those issues.  If you look at our gator products, our process has evolved and includes sanding boards and cleaning them with tack cloths and we worked with our supplier to modify the adhesive.  Compare to a year ago, we now have a smoother product which has a more consistent adhesive.  In our pouch products, we have a film which is top-coated, mapped and matched top and bottom which is easier to process and achieve flat results and by applying the adhesive with less pressure, our buuble-free boards have a deeper texture which lets more air escape.

There are times when I wish our products were as bullet-proof as say 3M, when they were introduced, but I know our customers have immediate needs which requires us to act fast.  I know that as we go forward, we always work with our customers and make them whole if there was something we should have foreseen and they appreciate that.  They also know that each time they re-order, they are getting a better product and over time these products become solid.

We are not a 3M, but as long as our products keep getting better all the time, I know we will be successful and our customers happy they came to us to fabricate a product for their needs.

When we look at new products, we usually are looking at ways to streamline the mounting and laminating process.  And to be fun, that is fun and we like to do this.  But this month we have been working on a new concept to combine equipment and supplies purchases and by combining the revenue streams, help to lower costs for our customers and give us a more secure annuity on supplies business.  We have termed this program our “Purchase To Own” (PTO) Laminator program.

The  PTO program allows customers to receive a Free laminator by making a 2 year commitment to buy supplies from us and buying a certain level of supplies.  We built-in a deposit on those purchases up front to secure the 2 year commitment and amortize that at a 25% rate over their purchases.  This gives the customer a very tangible reason to stay “loyal” to us and insures the supply stream.  When compared to the cost of sales calls, customer attrition rates and alike, this helps to justify paying for a laminator to secure that business.

We also needed a partner to build a program around and be comfortable that we were not going to hurt the market pricing on their products.  D&K worked with us to do different things such as free good and extended warranties.  This insured the equipment performance which of course is needed to consume the supplies.   In what we offered, the value was significantly higher than the cost which further helped the customer’s value proposition.

The major challenge is in communicating the program as not some form of black magic (although I always liked magic and believe you need some in business).  The key is that an average customer’s volume on mounting and laminating supplies is worth a lot.  For example, the average proseal customer sells $20K worth of mounting and laminating services a year.  Based on a 4 times mark-up, their average purchases are $5K a year - hardly an insignificant sum.  To secure that business is worth a lot to me.  And for larger laminators the averages are even higher.  And this values is actually worth much more than the cost of a laminator.   So what we are trying to do is have our customers understand how valuable their business is to us.  We think this would be better than any loyalty program we could create.

We are also looking at this angle from our purchasing side and seeing what reaction our key vendors may have to blanket 1-2 year commitments and what that would be worth to them to secure our business with them.  I think this may be a way for us to stay very competitive over the long term - both securing our volume of business and procuring supplies at competitve prices to support that.

An exciting new product we are working on is our pressure sensitive or cold Liner Free Laminates.   Most conventional cold over-laminating films have a crack and peel liner which you need to remove to expose the adhesive. Removing this can be a little tricky and require a learning curve.  You need to insure they are afixed to the take-up mechanism securely and you need to take them off in a continuous motion so you do not get lines in your finish.  This is the toughest part of learning to use a cold laminator and the leading reason people spend more money to buy a hot laminator to use heat adhesive films. 

We have been working with polypropolene films top-coated with a non-stick silicon coating which eliminates the need for the crack and peel liner.  These can be used on any cold laminator, even those without a take-up mechanism such as the Drytac Jetmounters and inexpensive laminators.

What we have found is that while you can get some silvering (which you can also get with conventional laminates), the results are more than acceptable for short-term graphics which need protection.  And you have to give the adhesive some time to flow which eliminates and ridges in the adhesive.  But you won’t get a line in your in your print and your success rate will increase tremendously.  And as with all cold adhesives, they will stiock to more types of papers than heat adhesives.

we are at the beginning of this product category and if you want to try a sample, all it will cost you is to call us up with your feedback.

While we can not replicate all of the embossed textures and hard coat surfaces of traditional films yet, the represent a good choice for many applications and with their speed and success rate, can help to improve the profitability of laminating jobs.

A couple of months ago, we wrote about mounting and laminating giclee or fine art digital prints.  Working with customers we have now launched our range of acid free films.  The toughest part was not the acid free but also getting non-yellowing adhesives with hi tack components.  Like all things, these cost more, but right now we have a robust group of 3-4 customers who like having these and we have sized them for their printers to get sales going.  The products are now listed on our website and have a separate product grouping for the acod free pressure sensitive films.

We are also looking at new adhesives which have a textured release liner to make grooves in the adhesive to help air escape.  This helps eliminate bubbles in mounts from trapped air, especially common with hand applied graphic mounts.  The films we are evaluating are silicon top coated polyesters which can be self-wound as cold over-laminates.  Eliminating the release liner not only makes the laminates easier to use, but is more environmentally friendly and eliminates the silicon paper waste people now face.

We are getting a lot of inquiries for how to mount (and less so overlaminate) fine art or giclee prints in roll laminators.  The major needs as we have been told are for the adhesives to be acid free, non-yellowing and last at least 50+ years.  We have found cold or pressure sensitive adhesives to be the best choice as the thicker papers make heat activated adhesives more difficult in a roller press (dry mount adhesive in a press would be easier and archival dry mount adhesives are available).  We have identified acid free acrylic adhesives and are testing them now.  While they seem fine to us initially, any experience others have had would be appreciated.

In our previous post we described improving the sleds or non-stick support board used for laminating.  One of our goals was to be able to ship a sled roll-up to minimize damage and UPS shipping charges.  What we are testing currently is a sled made from 20 mil polyester film (10 mil sheets laminated together).  It is pretty rigid and only rolls up into a 12″ diameter, but our test results here have been pretty good.  It is not quite as non-stick as we would like, but minor adhesive on the surface is easy to remove with rubbing alcohol and the prints easily remove from the polyester.  We’ll keep you posted on our further tests this month.

For the type of laminating we do, a sled is used often.  A sled is a non-stick rigid surface which supports a print and laminate film as it is processed through a laminator.  Common sleds are made from silicon paper-faced foam boards and specialty materials such as formica. Our goal is to make sleds more durable, easier to ship and use to make pouch laminating and single-sided laminating easier.

What we are looking at includes:

1.  Foam board has the issue of forming to the size of the print being laminated creating an outline which can them subsequently be embossed into larger pieces that are laminated with the same sled.  Materials such as Formica are up to 3 times more expensive than foam boards.  We are looking at alternatives such as mat boards, paper boards and other harder materials.  We are still laminating these materials with silicon papers to have a non-stick but more durable board.

2.  Regardless of the sled material, the print and laminate is usually held in place by taping the edge which will be inserted first into the laminator.  Making sure the leading edge is smooth is critical to preventing wrinkles and can be difficult because many tapes do not adhere to the non-stick surfaces.  Also, if you wrap the tape to the back of the sled, the tape can tear the back of the board and make it not last too long.  We are experimenting with creating a flap over the leading edge of the sled such that a user could slide their print and laminate under the flap and when it is inserted into the nip of the laminator, the pressure would hold everything in place smoothly.

3.  Finally, sleds are expensive to ship.  They are larger thank the prints being laminated and usually are the width of the laminator and twice as long as the width.  Also, one sled should be good to last for 25 to 50 uses.  What happens is that people need to buy a half dozen at a time to last several months.  But the cost to ship 6 foamboards is often more than the value of the boards and becuase they are fragile, companies such as UPS can damage these easily.  We are looking at rollable materials which can be shipped easily.

Any thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome.