There’s a burgeoning sector of the signmaking market flying under the radar. Its primary product is temporary signage for point-of-sale advertising. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of these temporary signs are plastering convenience stores, bars and restaurants.

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The Coors Distribution Center in Denver, estimates that more than half of the 14,000 or so signs they print per quarter are produced on small-format OKI Data C9650n printers.

Over the past few years, these businesses have increasingly brought sign production in-house to more efficiently and cost-effectively brand the brands they carry and ultimately drive sales. If you guessed “beer distributors,” I’ll buy you a beer, paid, of course, by the good folks who publish this magazine.

 

The more accurate and politically-correct way to identify these businesses is to call them “beverage distributors,” since they have expanded beyond the beer market and into energy drinks, juices, water and other liquid sundries.

 

As their business models have changed and the brands they carried have multiplied exponentially, finding the best way to get the word out has occupied much time, money and energy. While in-house print shops at beverage distributors share much in common with the sign and wide-format printing industry at large, there are also a number of characteristics peculiar to their operations.

 

These different approaches may provide some new ideas and insight into temporary sign production. They also reveal potential and profitable applications and markets you may not have previously considered.

 

The Konica-Minolta MagiColor 7450 is another small-format printer that can be used to produce temporary indoor signage.

INCREASING PRODUCTION

Chuck Black, print lead for the Coors Distribution Center in Denver, estimates that more than half of the 14,000 or so signs they print per quarter are produced on small-format OKI Data C9650n printers they got from LexJet.

 

A second OKI printer was installed in the sales department, which helps ease the print shop’s burden while providing the sales reps with the ability to print point-of-sale signage on-demand. The print shop created templates so salespeople can plug-and-print price changes and promotions and get them out to their accounts quickly.

 

“We have periods where most of what we print is small format—things like table tents, price promotions and cooler stickers,” says Black. “It cuts down on our workload of trimming and finishing and we can get it into the market quickly.”

 

Speed is the name of the game in the beverage market. Competition is intense and rival distributors are rumored to “accidentally” deface and remove their competitor’s signs, so any way to pump up the volume and beat competitors to the punch is extremely valuable.

 

“Before I got the OKI, the static clings, table tents and menus were being printed on vinyl in strips of 11. I was taking them off the printer and cutting them up individually. Now I have the ability to print them on the pre-cut material. It was so time-consuming before, but then the OKI came along and we can spit out case cards in the blink of an eye,” says Amanda Hill, lead graphic designer for Odom Southern’s print shop in Wenatchee, Wash.

 

In-house print shops at beverage distributors share much in common with the sign and wide-format printing industry at large, especially in the area of pre-press file preparations.

For the typical commercial print shop, the addition of a small-format printer provides a plethora of short-term promotional sign possibilities. Thanks to the demand in the beverage market, suppliers who serve this market, such as LexJet and Big Systems, provide a wide range of sign-specific materials and various do-dads for hanging and installing them.

 

Pre-scored media for these small-format laser printers includes: shelf talkers, decals, table tents, card stock, window cling, window film, cooler stickers, posters, danglers, banners and even wrist bands. Accessories include things like shelf clips, sign holders, banner hangers, s-hooks, foam tape, installation poles, mobile kits, ceiling fasteners and grommets.

 

“If you have a market for producing a lot of short-term promotional signage, supplementing your wide-format poster and banner printer with a small-format printer makes a lot of sense. You’re looking at a piece of equipment that’s around $3,000 and can print in pages-per-minute rather than square feet per hour. Plus, you’re using toner that basically melts to the media, so it’s waterproof. It’s a very cost-effective print solution, and it takes out the labor of cutting smaller items individually from a large-format print,” says John D. Peterman, executive vice president with Big Systems. In addition to the OKI sign printer models, Big Systems also sells Konica-Minolta and Xerox Phaser small-format printers.

 

A small-format, sign-specific printer can also be used for business printing applications, postcards and proofs, so it’s not a one-dimensional piece of equipment. It can be used as a multi-function printer, but its strength is in printing promotional materials.

 

Like any equipment purchase, adding a small-format sign printer should be based on market realities. For beverage distributors who are constantly running seasonal promotions and price changes, it’s a no-brainer.

 

Large-format indoor signage definitely plays an important role in the temporary signage game. They are inexpensive to produce and can add some marketing clout to any counter front display.

“We print as much on the OKIs as we do on the large-format printers, volume-wise. We print a lot of table tents, 11x17s and cooler stickers. Unless it’s a really killer sale we try to place it logically where the impact decision will be made,” says Mike Marcinkowski of Chicago Beverage.

 

That’s one of the benefits of small-format: the ability to place the call to action closer to the action where the sale will be made. The market and application question as it relates to small-format for a commercial print shop is: Do we have enough customers and potential customers in our market that could use point-of-sale impact? Look for places where it might make sense and quiz your customers.

For large-format work, Chicago Beverage employs two Canon printers (imagePROGRAF iPF8000S), an HP Z6100 and an HP 9000. Most beverage distributors use aqueous printers—either Canons or HPs—for their larger temporary promotional signage.

 

Though aqueous media prices are higher than those optimized for solvent and UV-curable because they require an inkjet-receptive coating, beverage distributors are looking for low-maintenance, plug-and-play printers that are as simple to operate as possible. Moreover, their material costs are usually lower because of the high volume of media they print and since the entry cost of aqueous versus solvent, and certainly UV-curable, is significantly lower.

 

Whatever the technology, small-format printers, at least in cases where there’s a viable market for short-term promotional signage, free up the large-format printers and the finishing department to do what they do best.