CS Labels is the largest Xeikon site in Europe specialising in short-run colour labels. Melony Rocque-Hewitt finds that amidst this, is a trio of wide-format printers producing decals for children’s wellies.
Our unpredictable and unseasonal weather of recent years has meant that the humble Wellington boot has been elevated to almost iconic status. Wellies are everywhere and have become a portable canvas (albeit a rubber one) for children’s cartoon characters, spots, stripes, Union Jacks, vegetables, flowers et al.
Last summer, cut price UK shoe store Shoe Zone reported that it was selling 23,000 pairs of wellies a week, that’s two pairs of boots sold every minute! Another company that is enjoying this seemingly insatiable demand for wellies is CS Labels, a family–owned labels manufacture business based in the West Midlands. This is nothing to do with a love of rubber but the fact that CS Labels is responsible for printing decals for thousands of pairs of children’s Wellington boots.
These days the company uses a trio of Roland VersaCamm SP-540i wide-format printers to output its transfers. These are then sent to the welly manufacturer to be moulded and adhered to the boots, which are then delivered in vast numbers to stores such as Top Shop, John Lewis and Debenhams.
CS Labels has enjoyed a long-standing, on/off association with kid’s wellies stretching back some 15 years. The company, previously known as Creative Screenprint, and the sister company of Creative Labels based in Hereford, serviced the main Wellington boot manufacturers by outputting children’s cartoon characters such as the Teletubbies and Tweenies (remember them?) using spot colours screen-printed to self-cling. The company more or less had the monopoly on this application, as it was pretty much the only company that had solved the problem of getting the self-cling to mould to the welly boot without any image damage.
Simon Smith, current managing director of CS Labels and son-in-law of Roger Hughes, previous owner of Creative Labels, describes this solvent-based process as slow, cumbersome but very profitable.
Smith joined the company in 2000 and very soon afterwards, the company’s welly work got the boot and a swift kick was delivered by China. “We lost all the work in one go,” he says. “There was immense pressure from China. The Chinese were using bench presses, they had lower production costs and lower labour costs; we just couldn’t compete but we knew it was coming.”
It was at this point that the reinvention began with Creative Screenprint Ltd. Although screen-printing accounted for 80% of output, Smith decided to steer away from it, installed some KDO flexo presses and focused on the labels market. In 2007 the company installed the first of its Xeikon digital presses, (changing its name to CS Labels Ltd in 2009), and now six years on it has three Xeikon presses and is the largest Xeikon site in Europe producing digital short-run labels for every market sector imaginable as well as innovative niche products such as double-sided window stickers and peel and reveal labels.
However, just over two years ago, the trusty Wellington boot made a return to the company.
Its ex-client re-approached the company as it wanted to bring production of decals back from China to the UK.
Due to the geographical distance involved, and the ensuing long lead times, China-based production could not respond to new patterns of market demand - shorter-run lengths and multiple designs per season. In addition, the cost of Chinese production, which once had been as cheap as chips, was going up.
“When we were approached again to do the children’s Wellington work, we agreed to do it but wanted to do it in a different way. It had to be done digitally,” says Smith. “Since 2007 when we installed our first Xeikon press - the Xeikon 330, our approach has been digital. Now 90% of our labels are produced digitally. In fact, we were one of the earliest companies to adopt Xeikon technology because we could see the true commercial benefits of digital labels,” he adds.
Smith believes that the decision to adopt digital technology for labels at an early stage is due to his non-printing background (he had been a bank manager). “Many printers were critical of the quality of digital presses but I always say, one of my strengths was that I knew sod all about printing therefore I wasn’t constrained by traditional views and I could see the bigger picture.
“We got into digital labels production very early on and this has given us a real advantage. We are now a beta test site for Xeikon; we really push the boundaries and go beyond the traditional thinking. We are innovative and experimental and that gives us a competitive edge,” he says.
Initially, the company tried putting the production of the welly decals through a Xeikon 3300 press but there were technical difficulties such as the heat generated during the moulding of the transfer to the Wellington boot melted the toner.
Therefore the company turned its attention to its Roland VersaCamm SP 300 which it had bought in 2005 for the output of four-colour process labels, when its traditional screen-printing method of producing dots of 70dpi wasn’t good enough for certain client needs.
“Roland Eco-Sol inks are flexible, scratch resistant and waterproof,” says Smith. “The Wellington transfer has to expand and shrink in line with the boot. Children’s wellie boots only last a season or so as they grow out of them, so no lamination is required. The inks can more than cope with the application.
“Now the company uses two Roland VersaCamm SP 540i printers to produce its wellie decals (we also retain the SP300 as a back up). Decals are reverse printed on large sheets and then white ink is put down.
“When we lay down the white we have to make sure that the registration is accurate, and rather than using the Roland eco-sol white, we use a solvent white which adheres to the boot much better.”
Once the decals are printed they are then sheeted down by hand and each one then cut out with a hand-held sliding cutter.
CS Labels has its own in-house design studio and once it has been given the designs, the studio prepares them for printing. Proofs are then output and sent back to the design licensee for approval and once the go-ahead has been given, they can then be printed.
“Our decals mirror what’s happening on TV,” says Smith. “Every year we get new children’s characters to print but there is a pool of characters that never change such as Barbie, Winne-the-Pooh, Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder.
“These days you can expect to produce two to three design styles each season. We output different designs of the same character that go on to be supplied separately to different retail outlets, so that stores have their own exclusive designs.
“Multiple variable designs are perfect for wide-format digital work. We can compete with the Chinese because of our speed of turnaround and we can respond to the fluctuations of the local weather,” says Smith.
In the old days screen-printing a single press proof of say “Thomas the Tank Engine” decal would have taken a whole day, now it takes just two hours.
Another major change is that CS Labels no longer uses the same self-cling material on which to print its decals. Self-cling contains Phylate, which is a chemical carcinogenic that is about to become a banned substance due to a EU ruling. What Phylate does is make self-cling supple – vital for a Wellington boot application.
“We were faced with a big challenge,” says Smith. “We had to find a Phylate-free self-cling. There were no manufacturers producing it but when Tesco said it wouldn’t accept any Phylates things changed. In the end we found a manufacturer in the US but it took 12 months to get resolved.”
Last year CS Labels output over 750,000 Phylate-free decals across multiple designs for its Wellingtons. This year whether the company will top this is really down to the weather which is a major decider in such a market, but if for any reason we get a serious, barbeque-sizzling summer, CS Labels will still be in a win/win situation, as it also produces decals for kid’s jelly beach shoes for the same client. Whatever the weather, it looks like those Roland wide-format inkjet printers will be hard at work.