Sign & Digital brings in diverse audience of print producers

The Sign & Digital exhibition drew a wide range of visitors, many of whom would never think of themselves as printers.

Sign & Digital is transforming from a purely printing industry event into an event attracting those with a need to print – and that means artists, photographers, packaging designers and design students are as likely to be walking the aisles of the NEC as are sign makers and display printers.

This is an audience looking at printing graphics in the widest sense, what some are calling industrial print, but is more akin to creating bespoke decorative pieces than printing on an industrial scale. There were even 3D print machines in the show, though no screen printers, to underline how this sector has developed.

And there is more to come. HP was ushering prospects into a small room for presentations on its new page wide technology and on the floor had an unmarked machine printing posters but without a name, without available specifications and without price details. Those will follow next week when a worldwide embargo is lifted.

It will come up against two other machines which were definitely on the show floor. One is the Colorwave 700, Canon’s high-speed printer using its toner pearl technology. The other is the Memjet powered Vortex 4200 which is being introduced to the UK by CMYUK. The Shrewsbury distributor is putting together a nice collection of products “from premiums brands” and is distributor for Mimaki JF-200 flatbeds, EFI’s 162 LED printer and Zund plotters. Managing director Robin East says the strategy is to return to old fashioned methods of selling, using phone calls rather than email blasts, and bringing people in to the showroom for discussions and demonstrations. “It’s about getting in front of people and into the building,” he says. “And we have done this show.”

It is working, with sales of ten machines during the show to underline the point. “The price includes the full installation, service and training,” says East. “There are no hidden extras.” The hardware is being backed by a consumables strategy which stresses more unusual hard to find substrates rather than price sensitive standard films and compiling these into an private-label portfolio.

The change is also happening in the profile of customers. “Three years ago all our customers were printers or print service providers. Now we have noticed that we are selling to people outside that area who find us through Google. We sold the £64,000 Mimaki to a professional photographer,” he says indicating the flatbed machine, “and a glass company bought from us to produce bespoke kitchen splashbacks.”

Canon’s area included similar types of non standard products, including the bed of a pinball machine, printed and then finished with the sort of ultra hard lacquer found on luxury cars. Dominic Fahy points out that finishing is often crucial. Canon has created a team of experts able to advise on this. “Some customers are asked to print on a type of material and then come to us to ask how to print on it and how to finish that print. We have put together a kind of recipe book for the Arizona flatbed containing some of the best applications from the 4,000 or more installations around the world.

“We believe that the more time we invest in this, the more the customer will produce and we want to be part of their success. Is this industrial printing or commercial printing?”

Either way, there is growing interest in being able to decorate different surfaces that previously had to be plain. Canon had welcomed a group of students from the Royal College of Art. “The central core of customers remains the same, but there is an additional layer of diversity coming through with artists, designers, different types of manufacturers and we are seeing how some printers are beginning to morph into companies supplying these higher value applications,” says Fahy. “This is why we spend a lot of time ensuring that we can support them, because theses are the higher value applications that make the companies more profitable.”

The interest is coming too from the packaging world, with Hybrid Services attracting attention for its small format plotter. This is the CFL 605-RT, a B2 machine intended for samples production after they have been printed on the UJF 6042 UV flatbed and perhaps finished on the Digifoil from i-Sub. “It’s a package of plotter and printer at £50,000,” says Duncan Jefferies. “We have been seeing a lot of packaging companies and designers at the show, which is good.

“We think that packaging is about 15 years behind textiles in adopting digital in this way. In the old days a textile designer might lay out pieces of paper across a bed to represent what a duvet might look like and hand the customer a sample of the cotton. Then we were able to print directly to the textiles and the buyer no longer needed to imagine what the finished item might look like. That is where in 2015 we are now at with packaging. It has to change.”

There was plenty too for the traditional display print business. Car wrapping demonstrations continue to draw an audience, signage business were perhaps less while Vivid Laminating, returning to Sign & Digital for the first time in three years, had to bring in extra staff to cope with interest in its laminators and the new easy mount launched at the show.

Mimaki had brought its new JV 150 entry level solvent printers as a smaller version of the JV300 model introduced last year. InkTec was pulling crowds with the 3 metre roll to roll Jetrix KX7 device and talk of a 5.3 metre wide version and there were flatbed machines aplenty.

Die hard Roland DG dealer PrintMax displayed both Roland printers and printer plotters along with a couple of latex Mimakis and a flatbed. Managing director Mike Boulton explains that each has a slightly different segment of the market and that customers that have grown up with Roland are seeking more powerful machines, like the flatbed. And Mimaki customers he says come an want to stay with Mimaki as they move to flatbed. “Of course I want to sell them what they want,” he says.