Making better margin
Why Superior Creative is shifting its emphasis from litho to digital, and how significant a part wide-format is playing in the transition.
“Many litho printers find it difficult to make the transition into digital wide-format print because they don’t have the knowledge-base. But with margins the way they are in litho it’s important to find other avenues and opportunities. For us that means moving to digital in general as that’s what will drive our business forward, and wide-format in particular will be a major area of investment.” So says Ian O’Connor, managing director at Superior Creative in Wiltshire, a company founded in 1976 as a design and litho print operation. Today litho still accounts for the biggest slice of its print business, but that’s changing.
Since a management buyout in 2005, Superior has expanded significantly, increasing its turnover to £9.6m. In the past two years Superior’s growth has predominantly come from the retail sector, having won several major contracts which also required large-format print. “We have some roll-to-roll wide-format capacity but we were also having to outsource a lot of it, which just didn’t make sense,” added O’Connor. “Margins are much better on wide-format than litho and so we decided that what we really needed to do was find a flatbed machine that would enable us to deal with all our clients’ wide-format requirement in-house. We then spent a considerable amount of time visiting printers and suppliers for demonstrations of their wide-format offerings to ensure we made the right investment.”
In attending Sign and Digital UK in 2009 to get an overview of the market, Superior saw the Inca Spyder V in action for the first time and subsequently visited Fujifilm’s demo suite to put it through its paces before opting to install a unit in a newly refurbished digital department in November 2009 where it sits alongside a 3m digital Zünd cutter as well as a dedicated finishing area.
“From the moment we arrived at Fujifilm’s demo facility, the professional treatment we received was in a different class altogether compared to some of the other suppliers we had visited. This matched perfectly our strong belief in providing exceptional customer service, and after spending a few hours testing the Spyder, we knew this was what we wanted to invest in,” says O’Connor. “It is by far the most versatile printer that we saw, and we were impressed with its ease of use and high quality print at great speeds. Its ability to print so well onto corrugated board was also a big plus point for us, as this is a substrate that we regularly use.”
The Spyder V prints directly onto rigid and flexible media at up to 1000dpi and has a production speed of up to 93m2/hr onto substrates up to 30mm thick. Using Fujifilm’s Uvijet series inks, it has a 3.2 x 1.6m image area and is available in four or six colour models, plus an extra white option.
“The quality jobs we have been able to produce right from day one are fantastic,” says O’Connor, pointing out that the Spyder V printer/Zund cutter combo have already made a marked difference to the company, handling business from new clients as well as bringing in-house the requirements from existing customers. Staffing in the wide-format department has been increased by four and the company is now running a double-day shift pattern to keep up with demand.
“Wide-format is still quite a small proportion of our business - 6/7% - but we see that growing,” enthuses O’Connor. “The added-value potential is quite extraordinary, especially when you look at the likes of W2P and variable data print. We already had people who could sell wide-format as they were already doing that when most of the work needed to be outsourced. But it has been a real learning curve for us – in terms of understanding what we can print and finish. We’ve got a big studio and a lot of pre-press knowledge so the transition is perhaps not as daunting for us as it might be for some other litho-based companies. Digital is certainly where we see the future and we will continue to invest in this area. We have a Kodak Nexpress coming in September to take on some of our SRA3 output, and then we’ll be looking at whether we need to buy more wide-format machines.”