by admin | Sep 9, 2015 | Company News, Customers/Examples, Technical
Now that we are back from the Chicago Technical conference, we are starting to apply all the good lessons we learned. I also wanted to share more detail about my presentation. It was fun to share out story with the room full of excited learners. The presentation was 15 minutes.
Slides for the lecture are available here in PPT format. Here are the main take a ways:
1. Hiring – this is the hardest part.
Because of our reputation, and the fact that our average employee has been with us 12 years, we have a much better pool of qualified applicants than most. Even with this advantage, our best new hires come from our existing team. Our people know what it takes to do the job at Rose City Label – they don’t want poor performers to make their own job harder. And, they don’t want anyone upset with them if they recommend a bad apple.
2. Training – learn from within.
Our very best option – and the one that people in Chicago agree is best – is to train from within. We let our senior press operators mentor the newer people. Printing is a craft – you can’t learn it from a book, or a classroom training session. Hands on learning, in our shop, with our best operators by their side, is the best option for us.
3. Retaining – the fun part.
“People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses” – this was a great quote from another one of the presenters last week. I couldn’t agree more. We work very hard to make Rose City Label a place people WANT to work and are proud to work for. We have fun and celebrate success, we are green and we are moving forward with new technology. These two things, along with a good crew to work with and a flexible personnel policy, are the keys to long term retention.
Of course NONE of this would be possible without you – the people that read our blog and share our passion for great labels! Thank you for trusting us with your labels – we are honored to serve our customers every day.
If you are still a ‘future customer’, please call us today. We look forward to serving you.
by admin | Sep 3, 2015 | Customers/Examples, Technical
I was thrilled to again be invited to speak to the best label printers in America.
The TLMI Tech Conference brings together the leaders of all the best people in our industry – more than 300 people in all.
This year I spoke about how we:
The very best people – the ones that keep promises to our customers every day. It was fun to share our success and help others in the industry.
Basically, we hire by referral, we train in house, and we retain by being green, keeping current with technology and taking time to have FUN with our team.
I’ll post more lessons learned, and links to my slides, in a later post. For now, I am just thrilled that our session was recognized as the BEST of the entire conference.
Cheers!
by admin | Aug 27, 2015 | Customers/Examples, Technical
This image shows a label that we tried to fix for a customer – but it was too big of a mess to save. Sadly, we had declined to bid on this project because we saw the red flags flying a mile away. Instead of redesigning as we suggested, the customer went to an out of state vendor that agreed to try the job. It is a mess.
The concept of this label is great – they want an adhesive label that ‘appears’ to only have adhesive on the tips of the label. This way, they can wrap the label around a product without getting the ‘sticky’ on the actual product and then just adhere the tips of the label to each other. That sounds great, but it doesn’t work for roll labels. Unfortunately, these guys were set on this concept because they wanted to imprint a date/lot code onto the label with a roll printer – big mistake.
The end result is what you see here – a mess.
The customer and the vendor will have to fight about who pays for the very expensive cutting dies (two separate dies are needed to make a label like this), plus the cost of the print run, all to get a product that is almost useless to them. Ultimately, they will have to hand apply (a very large order) and separately hand apply a second label with the lot code.
The critical flaw in the engineering of this label is that the other vendor thought they could slit this press roll (above) into individual rolls by slicing that very narrow space (1/8″) on a consistent and precise basis – no way! We tried to save the day, but the job was doomed from the start.
We love new, challenging projects, but we also no when to run the other way – this is one we are happy that we passed on.
If you want labels from experts, people that aren’t afraid to walk away from a job that is doomed, please call us today. We will work hard to keep you, and ourselves, out of messes like this.
by admin | Jul 20, 2015 | Company News, Technical
These Coke bottle labels show an example of one of the most innovative marketing campaigns in years. Coke – clearly one of the most mature, established brands in the world – saw a huge sales increase when they introduced personalized labels. The Share a Coke campaign has been very successful by any measure. It is nearly impossible to get a sales increase like they did with such a mature product.
More importantly, they didn’t change the actual product in the bottle or lower the price – they just changed the packaging and created a huge buzz about it.
This was a big win for Coke, but also for HP Indigo – the press manufacturer that supplied the technology to make this campaign happen. The story has been written up in dozens of places as an example of the power of variable content marketing. Variable content – meaning variable text, bar codes, and even photos – provide options that were never possible with conventional printing. Forget about the better print quality, or the lower cost, this is something that is physically impossible with a conventional printing press that uses plates.
Now that we have our HP Indigo digital printing press, we can offer options like this too. Creativity is the key – what could you do to personalize your product? How could you build buzz and excitement around your brand? What would it take for your loyal fans to be competing to collect a full set of all your different labels? Answer these questions and we can help you execute your plan. The technology is here – right now. All we need is creative marketing people to make it happen.
Want a huge lift in sales with new labels? Please call us today. We can help.
by admin | Jun 17, 2015 | Label News, Technical
by admin | May 23, 2015 | Technical
The AMAZING HP Indigo Digital Label press has really been a great upgrade to our production capacity. The print quality is unmatched by any other digital press in the world. Here is how they do it:
- Image Plate (PIP) is electrically charged to 600V
- Plate is imaged with HP Electro Ink (for this particular color)
- Image is transferred to the Blanket
- Process is repeated 2-12 times to transfer each color to the blanket
- All overlaid colors are transferred with ‘One Shot’ technology onto the label stock
It is because of this ‘One Shot’ system that the image always has perfect registration, with no dot gain and no trapping required. This is the heart of the Indigo printing system.
Other interesting facts:
- The ink comes in an aerosol style can and is the consistency of tooth paste
- The ink is suspended in an imaging oil solution to become fluid before it is applied to the image plate
- Label stock is pre treated with a special ‘sapphire’ coating. This allows excellent printing on uncoated stocks
- The blanket is heated to 100C to keep the ink fluid and ready to transfer
- Resolution is 819 x 819
- Minimum text size is 1.5 point
We could talk much more about the details of this technology, but the important thing is how we use it to serve you! Please call us today if you want to work with a company that stays current with technology (to help you).
