Adding Brand 
Owner Value

Picture this: a shopper is browsing the aisles at a local wine and spirits shop, or maybe glancing at certain products on the shelves at the supermarket. From a brand owner's perspective, grabbing the consumer's attention with its product is the greatest challenge when competing against so many choices on the shelves. The best way to make the consumer stop and grab your product is to have a label that stands out. And, more often than not, when consumers reach out and take a product off the shelf, they buy it.

"That's the biggest opportunity," Stacy Daly, vice president of operations at ASL print FX, explains about getting the consumer to reach out and grab it. "Eighty percent of the time, if they pick it up, they buy it."

Those are some pretty good odds, so it stands to reason that labeling is everything when it comes to point-of-purchase sales. ASL PRINT FX believes it has a proven formula for success: HDFX. It's a combination of technology that produces a 20 micron dot and a photographic image. But that's not all HDFX is about.

"It's the perfect union of creativity and technology. We reach out to brand owners and collaborate early in the process to gain understanding of brand owner objectives and to direct the project management process with key stakeholders," Karen Blumel, ASL's marketing director, says. "We add value. It's what sets us apart. A good package is a result of compelling design and very good print."

The company hasn't always been known as ASL Print FX. It was founded in 1965 as All Stick Label, reflecting its heritage as a label printer. In 1975, it was acquired by Mike Adam, under whom the company became recognized by brand owners as a high-end, quality flexo label printing operation. In 2004 Charlie MacLean and Daly purchased the company and MacLean is currently president and CEO. The latest change came last spring when the company rebranded from All Stick Label to ASL Print FX to reflect its current role as a label printer that adds value. "We enhance, promote, and protect brand owner image to help drive brand owner revenue," says MacLean. ASL's primary markets include wine and spirits, personal care, and food packaging, working with companies such as Procter & Gamble.

Adding value

McCormick Canada Inc., a spice, dry sauce and seasoning, extract, and specialty foods operation, recently approached ASL Print FX for help with its label development. At the time, McCormick used a traditional single-ply label. ASL and McCormick collaborated and developed a label solution with peel back features called label-on-a-label. The new label creates a much larger footprint for recipes with a goal to increase frequency of use with consumers.

"Our goal was to meet all of the sales and branding objectives," Blumel says. "At the same time, the label needed certain performance characteristics in order to be consumer friendly." Peel back labels have been used in pharmaceutical products for years, but had not been commonly used in the food category. The new label has three panels and takes full advantage of the entire spice bottle, which creates a much larger label footprint. The facestock top sheet carries the prime label, nutrition facts, ingredients, promotional copy, and company information. When the top panel is peeled back, consumers will find six recipes in both English and French.

Blumel says that ASL Print FX focuses on adding value with high-end decoration capability. "We talk about the possibilities—possibilities that help brand owners stand out and differentiate their brands and package at shelf."

For its rebranding, ASL hired Larter Advertising of Aurora, Ontario to conduct a survey on how ASL's clients view it as a company. The results weren't completely surprising to Blumel, but flattering none the less. The responses most associated with ASL: innovative, quality, and technology leader.

"Clients know that we add value at the shelf," Daly says. "They know we protect the integrity of their brands. We live by a certain standard in-house. If I'm a brand owner, and I have requirements for equity colors no matter what medium I'm using, I'm going to want to go to a printer who is G7 certified. It's all about gray balance, curves, and color density." Currently, ASL is G7 calibrated but it had virtually completed the requirements for becoming G7 Certified, a standard that carries weight.

The IDEAlliance G7 Expert program identifies and certifies G7 Experts that have completed and passed the G7 Expert Training and are specialists trained in the field of color management, process, and quality control for proofing, prepress, platemaking, and print processes in methods including offset, flexographic, screen print, digital print, and gravure, according to the IDEAlliance Web site. In an article for FlexoGlobal, a Web-based technical journal for the global flexo industry, titled, "Calibrating, Printing, & Proofing by the G7 method for Flexography," by Michael Bayard, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, G7 was characterized as cutting edge. "The G7 method represents a radical departure from old measurement specifications and introduces calibration techniques based on ISO standards. The goal of G7 is to achieve a common, similar, or shared visual match between a digital proof and what is produced on the press. Using tone or contrast reproduction and gray balance are the two central principles G7 uses to achieve a visual match."

Pressing ahead

"We have five different types of presses and Gallus is our premier machine," Daly says. ASL Print FX also has digital capabilities. "We have earned 25 print-industry awards since 2009, including the World Label Award for technical achievement in printing of the Dan Aykroyd Sauvignon Blanc label. The Dan Aykroyd label was printed on the Gallus," Daly adds.

ASL also does all its proofing in-house with Kodak Matchprint Inkjet Proofing System. "Our proofing system is driven by the GRACoL standard. This is the highest standard in commercial printing available today," Blumel enthuses.

Before buying any equipment, ASL looks at which markets its capabilities can add value. "We don't believe build it, and they will come," Daly says. "We look at where we want to go before we build, and we make sure everyone is on board."

The 75-employee company, with two plants, one in Ontario, Canada and another in Winston-Salem, N.C., holds strategy sessions and quarterly town hall meetings with all its employees. In the town halls everyone is encouraged to speak about any concerns and to also voice their opinion on where ASL should be headed in the future. "We want to make sure everyone is on the same page," Daly explains. "We really like to keep a family attitude and keep communication open. It's a great place to work."

Sustaining the environment

Committed to sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint in North America, the company focuses on waste reduction throughout the printing process and uses a full-line of sustainable substrates from companies such as Avery Dennison and Raflatac. "We lean towards sustainability, where possible," says Daly. It also has its waste incinerated to create energy instead of transporting it to a landfill and having it decomposing for decades.

"We like to be ahead of the curve," Daly says.

Another area of focus for ASL Print FX is envelope manufacturing, which it likens to an artform in today's marketplace. But ASL's thinking on how to use envelopes doesn't end with cool effects for designs; it also uses its excess ink from its label operations to print the black and white security liners. "The liners don't have to be pretty," Daly says. "We take the ink and turn it black so we don't throw anything out."

ASL has a diversified past, sound present, and bright future. It weathered the 2007-2009 recession quite well, and it's now doing more than merely surviving. "We're growing," Daly says.