Customer Case Study

DPC Limited - Just Seventeen

Being seventeen years old doesn't make Dave Taylor's DPC company an unruly teenager; indeed it's maturing very nicely as a highly respected screen and digital print supplier, with great capabilities and impressive capacity.

With his initial acquisition of a Mimaki JV3-160, the company entered a new phase, which brought about substantial growth and expansion - and a burgeoning customer base.

Expecting to fund the purchase over three years or more, Dave was naturally delighted when he broke even on the Mimaki in well under a year, and with his constant drive for satisfying the excellent service and products that his customers demand, he and his team got to grips with the machine from the off. "We project manage every job," said Dave, "and with the JV3 bringing us some major new customers, we've ensured that they stick with us for all the right reasons."

Having landed a substantial (and worldwide) chain of clothing stores on the back of his digital business, he was able to utilize all the other facets of his business to meet their creative needs, mixing high quality digital output, solid colour screen print and even vinyl lettering. "We finish and lay-up all the jobs here, then package them off around the world," said Dave, clearly very proud of the standard of work that his team produce.

Dave Taylor (2nd right) and his JV3 Team

New JV3-250SP

Earlier this year - and on the back of the work that he was already doing with the JV3-160, Dave took the decision to purchase the wider, baby grand format Mimaki JV3-250SP from Hybrid's North West based reseller, Granthams Graphic Technology, in order to meet his needs for larger format work, yet at the same quality as his customers were used to from the smaller machine.

This now sits next to the original machine, producing metres of highest quality photographic, in-store work, which they laminate onto foamboard. Dave says of his decision to go down this route; "We considered a large, pricey flatbed, but opted to stay with the high quality JV3, and add on a laminator, which together not only cost a fraction of the flatbed, but retained our existing workflow and kept the quality where our customers expect it."

Things are now so busy on the 2.5m machine that he's looking at working two shifts, and with the Colorgate software from Granthams allowing him to queue jobs up for printing overnight, he's able to handle work for up to fifteen stores a fortnight - vastly in excess of how their previous supplier managed it.

"I find it unbelievable that we can do this amount of work compared to what we were doing a year and half ago," smiled Dave, recounting how not only he has seen an increase in turnover of at least 40% since he installed the first machine, but also how during one recent quarter, the digital part of his company accounted for more than 60% of his total business!

Creative ideas

Whilst they're a very creative company - DPC have been know to screen print onto bricks and the bottoms of frying pans - they're not forgetting their core business, so in conjunction with their 10' x 5' screen print and 6 colour T-shirt carousels they are now approaching customers for their trade, wide format banner work - and with up to 2.5m width available from the new JV3, it will encompass a huge range of possibilities.

Dave's most recent purchase is the Mimaki CG-160FX vinyl cutter - having spoken with Sue Wright at Granthams again in recent weeks, he added the perfectly matched cutter to his inkjet printing capabilities, tied together by the cracking free Mimaki FineCut software, that allows his designers to cut directly from their vector graphic creation programs.

"We've gained accounts purely through the quality of work that we've produced on the Mimaki printers," says Dave, "and as a company that lives and breathes through consistently producing work that exceeds our customers' expectations, it's the kind of tool that we'd been waiting for."

New Mimaki JV33 fires expansion at Jactone

With a 30 year heritage designing and manufacturing a vast range of fire and safety products, West Midlands based British manufacturing stalwart, Jactone have gradually moved into more and more markets using their specialist skills in a number of different ways.

If you take a visit to their website (with a fantastic new e-commerce on line shop due up and running in the first quarter of this year) you’ll see a staggering array of safety signage to accompany their UK manufactured fire extinguishers and blankets that has seen them expand their digital capabilities with the investment of a Mimaki JV33 wide format solvent inkjet printer and matching CG-FX cutting plotter.

Jactone were one of the first companies in the UK to install the new Mimaki JV33 and have already found that this next generation machine is paying great dividends for them. Sporting a host of features typically associated with machines costing significantly more, the JV33 is the latest piece of kit to come off Mimaki’s continually rolling production line and delivers very high quality and speed, coupled to impressive ease of use and maintenance.

Digital is nothing new to Jactone’s UK Sales Director, Ian Halford, who some years ago, got digital solvent printing off the ground with an ‘all-in-one’ mild solvent printer/cutter. With a policy of continually investing in state of the art technology, a trip around their 30,000ft2 plant demonstrates an impressively varied manufacturing capability, but the real excitement is found within their digital room.

Ian Halford with his Mimaki JV33

The Mimaki JV33’s ability to print solid colours

Of course, something that’s been core to the success of introducing volume digital production at Jactone is the Mimaki JV33’s ability to print solid colours. The bulk of safety and wayfinding signage tends to be large expanses of green, blue and red and Ian felt that during his demonstration at Mimaki’s UK distributor; Hybrid’s showroom in Crewe with members of the Granthams team, addressing this was one factor central to his investment. “We were used to the old mild solvent printer struggling to hit the colours at the quality we wanted, and as we were stood chatting by the Mimaki, the speed at which the print came out – plus the colour and quality we saw – made it a complete no-brainer.”

The step up to a full solvent printer has benefited Jactone in a number of other ways as well – most especially when combating a problem experienced with some vinyl printed on the old printer that suffered from some rather too judicious cleaning at a local NHS hospital. Forming part of one of their ranges of extruded aluminium modular sign systems, Jactone print to self adhesive vinyl and mount it to a plastic insert, and the full solvent ink is exhibiting a vastly longer life and resistance to chemical attack – even when left without a protective laminated layer – than their previous machine was capable of.

Whilst they do still produce a lot of cut vinyl work on their Mimaki cutter, Jactone are finding that printed digital output has a bigger and bigger role to play, as it’s far more resistant to idle fingers and relatively ‘innocent’ vandalism than a series of cut vinyl letters may be! Ian knows a lot about working with resellers and customers, as that’s an integral part of how Jactone operate; and moving to a digital workflow is something that’s already working in another area of his business.

A large number of the end products that they sell are branded specifically for the particular reseller – printing contact details on labels for fire extinguishers and die cut self adhesive stickers are just two examples of products that Jactone deliver with a very localised feel, but they also assist their resellers with impressively comprehensive – and digitally output – brochures.

The value of long term relationships and the advice and experience received over the years of working with Granthams (who supplied his original hardware and now the Mimaki machinery and RasterLink Pro RIP software) was one of the main reasons they chose to invest further. Spending half a day at Hybrid’s offices in Crewe allowed Jactone to put the kit to test. “We walked away knowing we would buy it,” said Halford. “We were very well looked after during the day and although Granthams had practically sold it to us already, the demonstration using our own files really clinched it for us.”

Jactone have the skills and experience to offer a full service

So what lies ahead for Jactone with this newfound capacity? “There are plenty of things we’ve found that we can do with the JV33, and a whole host of new materials we’ve not had the ability to print to before. We’d never have thought we’d be digitally printing to photo luminescent vinyl for example – and we want the trade to know we have the skills and experience to offer a fully comprehensive service,” says Halford. “Be it a single die-cut safety sign or a series of complex site maps, we have the ability to respond to all this – in addition to our traditional fire and safety product ranges.”