Wide-format Blogs
The sky’s the limit
The sky’s the limit
There is a massive, largely tapped, global market for wide-format technology: airplane graphics. Traditionally, airlines have painted their jets but a few years ago, New Zealand Air carried graphics on its plane promoting the Lord Of The Rings movies. Now, more airlines are using their planes to make a statement. The US airline Southwest has decorated one of its Boeing 737s so that it looks as if passengers are flying in Shamu, the killer whale at Sea World. Other Southwest’s Boeing 737s has been styled so they look like flying flags for the states of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. The graphics for Air New Zealand weren’t printed directly onto the plane but onto a special material developed by 3M and approved by the Federal Aviation Authority.Time to write that book
Time to write that book
Every printer can sell its services with a Powerpoint, while a select few have slick iPad apps showcasing their wares but Oxford publisher Infinite Ideas (www.infideas.com) suggests that if you really want to make your business stand out, you need a book. That’s right – a good old-fashioned book. This might sound counter-intuitive but the company has launched a programme called Firebrand to help businesses market themselves more effectively. The company’s research found that 87% of companies said that a book had helped them firm up their prices.How to test a good idea
How to test a good idea
It’s a common problem: someone in your company has a new idea, but because it’s new you have no idea if it will work. Scott Anthony, managing director of a company called Innosight Ventures, has helpfully blogged on this very challenge for the Harvard Business Review (http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2011/03/60_minutes_to_a_more_innovativ.html) and lists nine ways to test out innovative ideas – from watching customers, to making a simple calculation using just three or four variables on the back of an envelope. One especially thoughtful proposal was to conduct what he calls a “past pattern” exercise, where you sit down for an hour and review past successes and failures seeking to tease out the patterns that typify success and failure.Blame and shame
Blame and shame
Few things are quite as enthralling in business as reading about other people’s mistakes. There’s the cheap, vicarious enjoyment of another company’s misfortune and stupidity but there is also, if we’re thoughtful enough, the chance to ask: how many of those blunders would I have made?
Steve McConnell, an American author who specialises in software, has posted an intriguing blog on why software developments go wrong (http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm). And many of the classic mistakes he so clearly enumerates apply to any kind of business and any kind of project – his remark that too many projects fall because they are based on wishful thinking seems especially apposite. “How many times have I heard statements that none of the team members really believed they could complete the project according to the schedule they were given?” asks McConnell rhetorically. Maybe that should be the first question you ask when you start your next project: who here really believes this is going to work?
Some words from the future
Some words from the future
Tim Greene of consultants Infotrends predicts that “in 2011, we’ll see a UV-curable metallic inkjet ink that could be applied to either wide-format printing or packaging” and that the aqueous durable inkjet segment could be worth around £560m by 2014. This segment is being pioneered in California by large-format specialist Graphics One (http://www.graphicsone.com/press/SEPIAX_Ink.html ) and could, Greene predicts, replace traditional aqueous inkjet printers and older light solvent or eco-solvent printers. The wonderfully monikered Dan Barefoot, president of Graphics One, says: “This is a game changer. It will cause a major shift in the way substrates are used. All a user has to do is preheat the substrate and print it.”
And finally, a blast from the past…
Some wisdom from that underrated management guru, Aristotle. The smartest man who ever lived (with the possible exception of Albert Einstein) said once: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
March 2011
March 2011
Is a merger an option for me? I started in this business as an ‘entrepreneur’ and, after 15 years in it, I think it’s fair to say I’m defiantly a ‘printer’ now. But, from time to time I think about my exit strategy - do I still want to be doing this in another 15 years? Or do I sell the company to another person or company to retire or try something else?Fresh insights into the challenges that face your business
Fresh insights into the challenges that face your business
3D or not 3D?
To use an old political cliché, there is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. And judging from the Economist’s latest cover story (http://www.economist.com/node/18114327), that time is now and that idea is 3D printing, hailed by the authoritative business magazine as “a manufacturing technology that will change the world”. The magazine even hails inkjet for performing “a multitude of printing roles” and possibly changing “the economics of making customised components”.
At Loughborough University, Dr Neil Hopkinson and his team have invented a high-speed sintering system which, the Economist says, uses “inkjet print heads to deposit infra-red absorbing ink on layers of polymer powder, which are fused into solid shapes with infra-red heating”. One of Hopkinson’s projects is to supply plastic buckles for a winter-sports equipment company.
The Economist is hardly a lone voice in predicting such a shift. Pira predicts healthy double-digit growth in the inkjet market between 2011 and 2015 and points out that “researchers are examining inkjet as a method of seeding artificial tissue engineering… inkjet is also being used to label and decorate pharmaceutical tablets and decorate confectionery and bakery products”.
Many of the opportunities created by these technological shifts will fall outside the remit of traditional wide-format printing. But the industry can ill afford to ignore a technology which could replace mass manufacturing and reduce the time to take a digital design from concept to production by 50-80%.
The ramifications are stupendous, varied and revolutionary. And now is a good time to start considering its affect on your business.
February 2011
February 2011
Talk to anyone in the industry and the same comments keep coming back - I’m busy but my cashflow is a nightmare!
Getting
paid for our work seems to be harder than actually doing the work at
the moment. There is a trend among some of the major retailers to raise
money by extending credit terms with suppliers. More and more the terms
have slipped from 30 to 60 days and now I’m sure you will have all heard
the line ‘60 days end of month’, that’s a polite way of saying “I’m not
paying you for three months”.
The innovation blog
The innovation blog
Fresh insights into the challenges that face your business
The Maine attraction
You’d like to put your business on a more sustainable footing, but who has the time and the money?
With pressure on prices, time and cash flow, it’s easy to be deterred by rules and regulations and decide that becoming greener is just too difficult. The experience of Portland Color, a wide-format printer in Maine, New England, certainly suggests there is no quick or easy fix (http://blogs.whattheythink.com/going-green/2010/08/learn-from-the-winners-portland-color) but the company is saving serious money on waste disposal and shipping costs and has much stronger bonds with the local community. Portland’s environmental credibility helped it win a prestigious valuable deal with retailer Bloomingdale’s.