Best Practices: Digital Strategies

The creative team from a customer of Steinhauser Inc., a Newport, KY-based printer of labels and flexible packaging, was shown several bottles decorated with the same label. They were asked to determine which were printed flexo and which were digital.

The results? Only about half of the team members guessed correctly.

When adding digital capabilities to a package printing operation, side by side comparisons are often the best strategy to convince a potential customer of the quality of digital presses.

At Steinhauser, this strategy helps market digital capabilities to customers who may be concerned that digital print will not uphold the brand standards they expect.

“Showing them [the side-by-side] comparison made them realize that if we uphold our quality standards, nobody will know the difference,” says Erin Dickman, business development manager at Steinhauser.

The Digital Decision

While the benefits of digital, including speed, lower costs, and variable data capabilities are well known in the industry, printers and converters have different reasons for adding the technology.

For Steinhauser, the initial decision to add digital stemmed from an increase in demand for short runs from a major customer. As the number of short runs increased, so did questions about samples and comp runs. Chris Wermes, prepress supervisor, explains that flexography just no longer made sense for this customer.

“We involved our customer up front and told them this is what we’re looking at and asked how they would feel if we were to take some of the work they were currently running flexo and ran it on whichever press made the most sense to us,” Wermes says.

Since adding the new press four years ago, Steinhauser still prints digital jobs for this customer. And, the digital press has also become a tool for adding new customers and providing the initial labels for smaller companies.

“We always felt that it was going to go there, but having a balance of work sitting there that we knew we could put on it, made it a little easier of an investment for us,” Wermes explains.

At Hammer Packaging, located just outside of Rochester, NY, shifting to digital was part of a trend in how consumer product companies are trying to connect with their consumers.

Louis Iovoli, Hammer Packaging vice president, explains that Hammer believes packaging is becoming more of an interactive experience between the brand and the consumer with increasing variable elements.

“You don’t just grab an item off the shelf and throw it in your shopping cart. You take it off the shelf, look at it, and read it,” he says. “There’s something there that’s interesting to you—it’s something that grabs your attention and maybe it’s different slightly from the last time you bought it.”

Hammer Packaging added its first digital press this past August. Iovoli explains that adding the digital press to its fleet of offset, web offset and flexo options gives the company the opportunity to add alternating elements to a standard label, similar to the well-known Share-a-Coke marketing campaign.

This same concept, explains Iovoli, allows Hammer Packaging to take digital printing for packaging beyond short runs and promotional items.

“We run web offset presses for higher volume work and narrow-web flexo presses,” Iovoli says. “Webs coming off of any of those presses can be registered onto the digital press to give us the ability to put variable data on a mainstream item.”

Spreading the Word

For companies like Steinhauser and Hammer Packaging that were already well established in conventional package printing, informing current and potential customers about the newly added digital capabilities is an essential part of the process.

Steinhauser used its HP IndigoWS 6000 press to produce this label, which was a winner in the 2014 packagePrinting Excellence Awards.

Iovoli says that at Hammer, the marketing efforts were made easier thanks to a contact list that has been built over the 103 years the company has been in business. And because of this massive outreach, Iovoli says it did not take long to drum up customer interest in digital jobs.

“Between our own internal newsletters, e-news, mailing out samples, direct mail, and the sales force talking with our primary clients, just within our own portfolio or family of clients, we generated interest almost immediately,” he says.

At Steinhauser, explaining some of the various benefits that digital printing provides leads to much of the digital work that comes in. For example, Wermes says that if a customer is doing a product redesign or has something specific in mind, digital is an easy sell.

Because the press does not require plates and requires minimal makeready, changes can be made quickly and proofs can be provided almost instantaneously.

“It’s a lot cheaper for customers to play around with changing a label than it would be to do a full-blown flexo run,” Wermes says. “Digital lets you make changes on the fly. It’s not a plate change and it’s not four hours. You go to the file and 15 minutes later you can see the redesigned label off the press.”

Support your Investment

Because buying a brand new digital press is a major capital investment, proper maintenance and support of the machine is essential.

Wermes explains that when Steinhauser added its digital press, the company didn’t bring in new operators to simply keep an eye on the press as it ran. Instead, he says experienced operators were tasked with manning the digital press, because they understood the importance of a well-maintained machine.

“We have pressmen who have run flexo presses for years now running our digital press,” Wermes says. “They are meticulous about maintenance and keeping it clean.”

Iovoli explains digital also opens up several windows to problem-solving opportunities. Because of the press’s versatility, an operator’s creativity can go a long way in ensuring a job is done right.

“If you have the right converter supporting your project, there’s always more than one way to accomplish a goal,” he says. “This press is only as limited as your imagination.”