Opportunities can come in a variety of different flavors. It could be in the form of new customers. Perhaps it is the prospect of winning more work due to product offerings. You could also be looking at new markets and expanding your business to meet your business goals. On a different note, you could have the opportunity to save money and reduce complexity. As The Foil Experts, it won’t surprise you that cold foil, in our view, plays a crucial role in opening the doors to many of these type of opportunities. Let us explain…
In a recent interview recorded with PMCpodcasts from the Printerverse, Ellen Manning, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Eagle Systems, sheds some light on how a print embellishment like cold foil can truly change the business outlook of an offset print shop (full podcast here).
“The interesting thing is that there are a lot of commercial printers out there that are looking to expand their markets,” explains Ellen. “And this particular application is allowing them to enter the packaging industry and not giving up the commercial…to add to what they are doing.”
To back up a little, cold foil may not be familiar to everyone; to explain it is best to quote directly from our Cold Foil Info Guide:
“Lithographic Cold foiling is an inline printing process performed on sheet fed offset press that allows a metallic foil to be positioned anywhere on a printed sheet with litho precision.”
Embellishments like adding foil aren’t new to the industry, but what is innovative is the ability to bring it in-house, simple to implement and easy for operators to use. In most shops the process for adding foil to their offset print would require printing the piece and then sending it to a secondary process within the shop or, in many cases, to an outsourcer. It adds cost, complexity and time.
The impact of foil though is pretty remarkable. It makes print standout to the eye and apart from the competition. Which is one of the ways you can create opportunities for moving into new markets like the aforementioned packaging space. In the podcast, Ellen expands on this thought with some stats that will make you take notice.
“We have several companies that have bought our equipment that went from zero packaging, zero in-house foiling to 80% packaging,” Ellen shares. “A huge amount of new business, a huge amount of increased business from their existing customers; it really makes us feel good to see what this can do for the industry.”
The key is the “easy button” for cold foil—if you will. The Eagle Systems Cold Foil solution can be installed on almost any press, be up and running in a matter of day and basically foolproof to run. Many customers that have selected an Eagle, won’t even speak about it. It is their competitive advantage.
And the excitement that is generated from the embellished print and packaging excites business owners, operators, designers and customers alike. During her interview on the PMCpodcast, Ellen shares a story from PRINT 18 in Chicago. As one of the largest trade shows in North America, Eagle Systems had a booth with several cold foil units on display. Ellen tells the story the best, but we will share the highlights here.
A customer they hadn’t seen in a while came into the booth with a bag full of samples. He announced with excitement that he had presents and proceeded to unload the bag. This gathered quite a crowd and other prospective buyers took notice. The magic was the excitement of their customer. You could compare it to a kid in a candy store. The result…well, not to ruin Ellen’s story; a prospect in the booth left and then called the President of Eagle Systems, Mike King, and bought one of the machines right off the floor. They wanted that kind of excitement to be a possibility in their shop and marketplace.
As you can see, you can save money by bringing foil in-house, creating less time to market and less downtime between runs. You can drive more opportunities by opening the door to offering standout print and beating a path to the packaging marketplace. With the added advantage of the expertise and help of our team. Contact us today and start your journey!
