Forget the film stars, now thanks to digital printing technology; it’s the carpet itself that’s hogging the limelight finds Melony Rocque-Hewitt.
Are you optimising your existing wide-format digital printing equipment? That’s the question that Jon Price director at Wokingham-based CMYUK Digital has been asking his customers of late. The reason? CMYUK has become the exclusive UK distributor for the European product range from Printing Carpets – the Netherlands-based supplier of plain, white, ready-for-printing carpet stock and vinyl flooring.
If customers aren’t making the most out of their assets, then CMYUK is out to show them just how they can, by simply utilising their existing kit – a cutter and a digital inkjet wide-format printer (be it solvent, UV, latex or dye-sublimation) to offer new revenue streams that many clients are happy to pay good money for. Yes, temporary branding on carpets is becoming quite the thing. Think exhibitions, product launches, corporate branding, retail spaces, film premiers, product merchandising, sporting events, you name it; you walk on it.
The digital printing of carpet is not new, but it has taken time to catch on. Part of this is due to the early horror stories, which, almost like urban myths, recall expensive printing systems going into meltdown due to carpet fibres snagging up machines. Happily these days are long gone as is the idea that you can put any carpet into a printer and Bob’s your uncle!
With over a year under its belt of introducing carpeting apps to its customers, how is CMYUK faring? Initially progress was slow, says Price, as selling this product is firstly about education and gaining market confidence. Customers have to see what can be achieved and understand the potential, and be confident in the product. The trick it seems is about matching the right product to the right system for the correct application. “It’s one of those things that takes time to seed,” says Price.
However, it seems that the theory part of the equation is paying off. In the last four months CMYUK has witnessed a growing momentum in carpet sales. It has been sending out A4 carpet samples to its customers and complete carpet sample sets to the sales reps of these companies. “The issue is about getting any new product to the specifiers,” says Price, and in the last three to four months we have been very successful.”
While CMYUK is helping its customers add new revenue streams to their existing portfolio of services, for the past four years Mark Deveney in South London has been focused on nothing else but promotional carpets.
Deveney is UK business manager for Floor Promotion and while he is London-based, the production side of the business - the actual printing - happens in Belgium. “It makes no difference,” says Deveney, who cites a three-day turnaround on jobs.
Floor Promotions was initially set-up to service the exhibitions industry, but segued into events, in-store retail, visual merchandising, film premiers and sporting events and the like when recession hit that market. The company has gone from strength to strength. “We’ve seen massive growth - it’s the product that everyone wants,” says Deveney. Carpet does seem to have that undeniable X factor. Once you get that first order, customers come back for more. “It’s a no brainer,” he says.
Price too agrees with the star-quality appeal of carpet. He tells us that after taking carpet samples to nine different customers on a mini tour in the north of England recently, each one responded with a big Wow! when they saw the carpet samples. For his customers’ customers too, once they have seen a sample, they will make that order, it’s just a question of when. And when they do, there doesn’t seem to be any sensitivity around cost.
The majority of work carried out by Floor Promotions is for short-term branding and promotions that typically lasts between two to six months. The company was recently responsible for printing the carpet for the premier of ‘The Avengers’ film and counts high profile brands such as Harrods and Westfield as clients.
Sign-Away in Weybridge, Surrey is a full service signage company that has steadily evolved into digital carpet printing. Established four years ago in its present form, Sign-Away has an impressive pedigree in promotional flooring stretching back a decade. Historically, the company has serviced the sporting events market but over the past 18 months has concentrated its efforts on the opportunities that are fast becoming available in the corporate arena including hospitality and exhibitions.
Sign-Away has solid experience in promotional flooring and long before digital printing was a viable production method, the company was making masques and using paper templates to paint plain carpets. In those days it took four days to produce a 50m2 carpet. Thanks to the company’s investment in wide-format digital printing technology, producing the same size carpet takes an hour and a half.
Sign-Away specialises in short-term temporary branded and promotional carpets but, says director Greg Craigan, can produce longer life products if required. However, what is interesting about Sign-Away is that the company has developed its own flooring - two grades of carpet - Gold and Silver and a vinyl. The Gold grade has a 3mm carpet pile backed with a 1.8mm thick rubber which is actually sprayed on to the back of the carpet.
“It has taken us ten years to get to this quality and special depth for a digital printer,” says Greg Craigan director, adding, “the rubber back gives the carpet weight and a rigidity to help it pass through the printer.”
The silver grade carpet is similar but features a felt –like texture rather than pile. Both carpet grades are available without the rubber backing for jobs where perhaps carpets are being placed on grass.
What is really important about Sign-Away’s developed carpet stock says Craigan, is that it doesn’t fray. Carpet stock can be cut into any shape and size and will retain a stable edge.
In the days before digital printing, the company was using vector files and limited to three/four colours. Digital technology of course, allows for the matching of thousands of Pantone colours and enables the reproduction of complicated shades and colour gradients
There is no doubt that the floor and now carpet is fast becoming prime real estate for brands across a range of market sectors. “Designers are becoming more ambitious,” says Craigan. “Demand is growing upward and steadily. We will do whatever our customers ask us to do. We get a number of interesting requests and we are never surprised by them.”
By his own admission Raymond Kluit lives and breathes digitally printable carpets. Running a small family company for the last decade or so, Kluit is on a serious mission to get the international wide-format fraternity to print on his range of white carpet stock and vinyl flooring.
According to Kluit, Printing Carpets sells a million square meters of carpet and vinyl a year, and 8,000m2 of vinyl per month.
Carpets are available in standard and special sizes, and delivered in rolls with 3in cores. Servicing 41 countries, the company has a number of distribution partnerships in place, with CMYUK Digital growing the product in the UK. The company’s largest market is the US, followed by Sweden and Germany, with the Netherlands being the lowest.
Servicing this niche is tricky. It’s all a question of logistics and freight. Customers want quick delivery of carpet rolls, and don’t want to hold stock. Early claims by wide-format printer manufacturers a decade or so ago, didn’t live up to the hype and made the market somewhat skeptical of this niche. “You have one chance to get it right,” says Kluit.
Printing carpets is growing year on year, with new customers says Kluit coming on board each month. Much of this is down to his rock solid personal conviction. “This market is growing because of me,” says Kluit. “I’m pushing it to the limit. I have so much knowledge, I convince people.”