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Screen and digital unite for success
Printers face a range of challenges: adapting continual technological developments; the decline of traditional sectors; fighting off competition (foreign and domestic); all while keeping demanding customers happy. Add the difficult economic climate and it's easy to see how adapting and enhancing one's service offering is critical to long-term survival.
Stoke-on-Trent based Times Square is a typical case. As the largest manufacturer of screen printed decals for ceramics and glass in the UK, the 30-strong company made the move into wide-format digital technology a couple of years ago. Since then managing director, Mark Chilton, and his team have worked hard to promote the company's screen/digital technology among new markets and customers.
Mark explained: "Times Square's ceramics printing heritage was largely focussed at the upper-end of the marketplace, in which the company was well recognised for its speciality and niche capabilities. This focus on the more ‘unusual' applications has remained as Times Square has sought new printing opportunities beyond ceramics."
As Mark described, one such opportunity recently led the company to explore the availability of a suitable substrate required to fulfil a particular customer requirement: "We were approached by a company that wanted to print traditional board games like snakes and ladders and chess onto tables for use in soft children's play areas found in pubs and restaurants. The customer had previously tried the idea through another company, but after a short time, they discovered that the print began to crack and peel off."
Along with his technical director, Gail Eaton, Mark searched for a transfer system that would provide the quality and durability needed to ensure long-lasting performance.
Mark said: "We contacted Madico Graphic Films in Maidenhead, who seemed to focus more on the niche types of specialist requirements, rather than merely supplying bulk substrates for high-volume: a bit like ourselves."
After considering the application, Madico's technical development team supplied a specialist screen-printable clear film. Times Square screen-print a thin layer onto the substrate, before running it through its wide-format digital printer. Thus the film acts as an under lacquer substrate for producing one-off board game graphics, which are then spray-lacquered to the tables.
Mark explained: "Fundamentally, we need good, bubble-free adhesion onto the difficult surface of the wood. Also vital is to obtain good key between our coating and the surface of the polyester."
Of his supplier, Mark said: "We approached three or four different substrate suppliers, but unless it was to purchase standard products in volume from their catalogue, they were not too interested in investing much effort in our requirement. Madico actually enjoy the technical aspect that goes into supplying specialist bespoke materials for the more unusual applications, so they were a good fit for us."
With a relatively new wide-format digital print arm providing added impetus and flexibility to the company's print arm, Times Square is already developing the sign/POS aspect of its service offering.
Mark added: "We already have an established heritage on the screen-side, but wide-format digital offers us a great deal of potential. The new markets that we are addressing with some of Madico's signage substrates, and more recently, its glazing enhancement films, are already beginning to write a new chapter in Times Square's history.
"The game is basically all about timing. We have to ensure we promote our capabilities in new business areas, faster than the older markets decline. With the versatility of a screen and wide-format digital stable, together with a continually developing relationship with Madico, we can now print onto more substrates and for an ever-widening range of applications to ensure we meet client needs.
