Looking to expand our Horizons, any ideas?

[LeiftheLucky]

Hello all I've been on this site for almost a year now as I was recommended it from a tech but haven't used it a whole lot so I guess I would still consider myself "new" to the site. We are a print production facility in SoCal that has been around for a while but has primarily been focusing on direct mail/mass production printing until recently when it expanded its Oversize dept and brought me in. I've been working with oversize machines for a while but have been here about a year. Since I've been here we got a HP FB700 Flatbed and its pretty awesome. We used to be using a latex HP26500 which is still limping along in the corner and is still great for some stuff but is on its last leg. Since getting the flatbed it has been great to experiment with its capabilities and have printed on Guitars, phones. ipads, plywood, glass, etc. some with more success than others but always educational. This is all fine and good but for the most part it is seen as "not profitable" or "not worth the hassle" by management. Once I put my artist brain on the shelf I realize they are usually right

Our bread and butter seems to be posters and banners and direct print foamcorp, gatorboard, corplast, etc. Although I understand this will probably continue to be the case I'm wondering if anyone has any cool ideas that might be worth bringing to the table as new products as I would love to drum up more business give this machine more of a workout. I've had pretty good luck with most things I've run through it but 'cool' and 'profitable' are two different animals which don't always cross paths. Another key point is we are dealing with almost exclusively Businesses.

All that said, this is a really awesome melting pot of the industry and have found all kinds of interesting stuff in a lot of the posts thus far. Glad to be part of it and I appreciate any feedback. Thanks guys

 

[Jean Shimp]

I don't have an answer to your question about what "cool" products can be profitable also. I might suggest you check out some of the on-line vendors such as Etsy where people are coming up with new and creative products. Maybe you can find a trending product that you can make.

 

[Gino]

What was the intention of getting the original HP26500 ?? Why did they upgrade to an HP FB700, if they didn't think it was a good investment ??

 

[ams]

Check into DCS (Direct Color Systems), try to snag a sample from them.

 

[The Big Squeegee]

Welcome from OK

:Welcome: 2 :signs101:

 

[LeiftheLucky]

thanks for the responses

Thanks for the feedback guys, I will definitely check out the mentioned references. I would like to answer some of the comments:

- As far as why did we get the FB700... They had been thinking about expanding the Wide Format side of things and this seemed to make sense if only for the crazy amount of time it would save from when we used to have to print, lam, apply adhesive to boards, mount the print, then final trim, we now precut with a keencut (also new) and direct print. We just did a job we do annually (about 90- 30x40 posters) in just a fraction of the time it has taken in the past and turned a 5 step process into 2. It was actually a surprise but people don't even care about lamination anymore as we print on Styrene. Our laminator is now unplugged and in the corner because it was taking up space. It also opened many options for possible products to offer.

- The 26500 we still use for paper posters and looks great (when its cooperative). We have have had for several year (way before I came on board) and I think we ended up with it after buying out another local company. This planted the seed for offering oversize products. Eventually we expanded and the oversize department (and FB700 ) with it.


- I guess I might have worded it wrong but we aren't necessarily looking for "cool" things to print but rather profitable things we could now use the flatbed machine for that we couldn't offer before. If its also fun thats fine but it just so happens that by being able to print on just about anything, a lot of ideas thrown around are more 'cool' than practical/profitable. We do enough prints to be worth having the machine but it has a lot of downtime and we are looking to do more.

- As stated before we are primarily a Business to Business, direct mail production facility so this new department is trying to grow on top of that in a logical direction (ie, same type of clientelle)

we've been figuring it out slowly but surely and I'm confident we will continue to expand this side of the business but figured I'd toss it out there.

Thanks again

Leif

 

[Andriy]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I will definitely check out the mentioned references. I would like to answer some of the comments:

- As far as why did we get the FB700... They had been thinking about expanding the Wide Format side of things and this seemed to make sense if only for the crazy amount of time it would save from when we used to have to print, lam, apply adhesive to boards, mount the print, then final trim, we now precut with a keencut (also new) and direct print. We just did a job we do annually (about 90- 30x40 posters) in just a fraction of the time it has taken in the past and turned a 5 step process into 2. It was actually a surprise but people don't even care about lamination anymore as we print on Styrene. Our laminator is now unplugged and in the corner because it was taking up space. It also opened many options for possible products to offer.

- The 26500 we still use for paper posters and looks great (when its cooperative). We have have had for several year (way before I came on board) and I think we ended up with it after buying out another local company. This planted the seed for offering oversize products. Eventually we expanded and the oversize department (and FB700 ) with it.


- I guess I might have worded it wrong but we aren't necessarily looking for "cool" things to print but rather profitable things we could now use the flatbed machine for that we couldn't offer before. If its also fun thats fine but it just so happens that by being able to print on just about anything, a lot of ideas thrown around are more 'cool' than practical/profitable. We do enough prints to be worth having the machine but it has a lot of downtime and we are looking to do more.

- As stated before we are primarily a Business to Business, direct mail production facility so this new department is trying to grow on top of that in a logical direction (ie, same type of clientelle)

we've been figuring it out slowly but surely and I'm confident we will continue to expand this side of the business but figured I'd toss it out there.

Thanks again

Leif

Buy a laser and start running sheets of acrylic through the printer. That should give you more work to cut all kinds of things after print. Kern 4x8 to complement the printer should be just enough.