58 ■ October 3, 2010 • GRAPH EXPO
Official Show Daily • Cygnus Graphics Media
Making a Challenge into a Grand Opportunity
EFI’s VUTEk GS5000r provides Georgia Printco with premium projects
With backgrounds in the commer- cial sign business, the partners assist franchises by selling wholesale to the trade. This has enabled Georgia Printco to develop a client base that includes franchisees from some of the biggest names in the business, includ- ing Fast Signs, Sign-A-Rama, and Sign World. Focused on service, qual- ity and on-time delivery, the company employs 36 people, has a customer base of 12,000, outputs three million square feet of printed material per year, and reports more than $4 million in annual revenue. Hurst and Clarke purchased their
G
first VUTEk 5300 in 2001 and housed it along with other printing equipment in a 17,000 sq. ft. building. In 2004 they purchased a second VUTEk 5300, and by 2006 their expanding line of equipment required a move to their current 40,000 sq. ft. facility.
eorgia Printco, LLC was founded in Lakeland, GA in 2000 by Sheldon G. Hurst, Jr. and Tom Clarke.
Tractor trailer covers One of Georgia Printco’s markets is printing covers for tractor trailers. These truck covers wrap the entire trailer, eliminating the need for strap- ping down materials to the truck bed. Not only does Georgia Printco print the sides of the cover with seam- less full-length murals, it even helped in the trap assembly design, which includes heavy webbing to prevent spills in case of a roll-over accident. This fully automated system has been approved by both the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Canadian Ministry of Transportation. “The covers are approximately 1.400 square feet, and when you include reprints to eliminate the seams and the time it takes to change rolls, printing the entire assembly on a VUTEk 5300 at a standard speed of 250 sq.
ft.per hour at 300 dpi can take as long as eight hours,” says Hurst. “We were running three full shifts five days a week, and often up to seven days. Our two VUTEk 5300 printers could
not keep up with our volume, so we looked at new technology.” After researching five-meter options, Hurst decided on EFI’s new VUTEk GS5000r grand format machine. “We signed up for the printer as soon as EFI announced it—before it was even widely available. We would wait for it,” says Hurst. Georgia Printco took delivery of its
new printer in April, 2010 and imme- diately sent sample prints to 12,000 customers.
Pressroom efficiency Since the April installation of the VUTEk GS5000r, Georgia Printco has been able to accomplish in a sin- gle shift what had previously taken three, and use the second shift to accommodate new premium qual- ity jobs. The speed and quality has allowed the company to quickly turn around large point-of-purchase qual- ity jobs for clients such as Pentair Pool and Spa, Scott’s Home and Gar- den, and Watermill Express.
“Eighty-five percent of our out- put is now printed on our VUTEk GS5000r. Of that, we are running nearly 50% at 600 dpi and 3,100 sq.ft./hr., and our customers agree that the print quality is beyond their expectations. The other 50% has been with the machine’s heavy- smoothing capability at 2,000 square feet per hour, allowing us to easily please customers who expect POP- type banners,” says Hurst. Hurst reports that the company has been able to run five-meter rolls, as well as three rolls of smaller material side by side and accomplish a much higher quality at speeds five to six times faster than their other machines. “Even before increasing our sales volume, we were able to eliminate two shifts and save enough cash to cover the cost of the GS5000r,” says Hurst. “In addition, based on the high quality of the printer and the response we’re get- ting, we expect a 10-15% increase in sales.”
InfoPrint Solutions Launches New Brand
Identity as Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Ricoh InfoPrint to Remain a Globally Integrated Business Unit
year joint venture between IBM and Ricoh to its planned completion. Info- Print Solutions helps enterprises and print-for-pay customers increase rev- enue and reduce costs within highly complex, digital print environments. The company’s new position combines the strength of the InfoPrint Solutions name with the global prominence of the Ricoh brand, illustrating its close relationship with Ricoh while main- taining its distinct identity. The new brand identity and logo is on all products that have come out of production after May 14, 2010; prod- ucts currently in the market will keep their current logo. The new logo will be on all corporate materials and the InfoPrint Solutions website has been
I
nfoPrint Solutions Company (Booth 2017) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Ricoh Com- pany, Ltd. This brings the three
re-branded to include the new brand identity. “The new logo illustrates the strategic evolution of our brand,” said Peter Lazaroff, InfoPrint Solutions’ Vice President of Marketing Commu- nications. “It is a logical progression from the joint venture logo—which our many stakeholders have come to recog- nize—to our new logo, which includes several familiar elements, yet speaks to the progress of InfoPrint Solutions.” “We are extremely excited for Info- Print Solutions to fully join Ricoh as we continue to expand our ability to fulfill requirements for customers who man- age mid-to-high volume output,” said Shiro Kondo, President and Chief Exec- utive Officer of Ricoh. “With a com- plete line of industry leading, analyst endorsed solutions consisting of print- ers, professional services and software, InfoPrint Solutions fits perfectly into our family. Built on a rich IT heritage,
InfoPrint will enable the Ricoh family to offer even more broad-reaching ser- vice, support and technically superior solutions for our customers.” InfoPrint Solutions combines IBM’s 50 years of enterprise printing experi- ence with Ricoh’s office solutions and production printing expertise, placing advanced research and development capabilities at the heart of its solutions. The company specializes in deliver- ing and implementing market leading Automated Document Factory (ADF), data driven Precision Marketing and best-of-breed Print On Demand solu- tions, along with award winning hard- ware and professional services. These solutions and services provide busi- nesses with truly customized offerings to address unique challenges, increase cost savings and enable a higher and faster return on investment (ROI). Where a customer has multiple or
complex needs, InfoPrint Solutions
and Ricoh will offer the best solution for the customer, ensuring seamless service and support—before during and after implementation. “When we embarked on the joint
venture in June of 2007 we looked with great anticipation toward this day,” said Daisuke Segawa, President and Chief Executive Officer of InfoPrint Solu- tions. “We bring key differentiators to the industry illustrated by our solutions- centric philosophy, and we are looking forward to continuing to enable our customers’ ongoing success through our expanded reach as a part of Ricoh.” InfoPrint Solutions was formed on June 1, 2007 as a joint venture between IBM’s Printing Systems Division and Ricoh. Over the past three years, own- ership has increasingly transferred from IBM to Ricoh. This transition period concluded on June 30, 2010.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64