Saw a great little product at Total Print! Expo last week. It put me in mind of something one might see being pitched on Dragons' Den, and I like to think that Theo, Peter, Duncan, Deborah and James would give it the thumbs-up.
The product is the Creazy range of sheets, which allows any digital printer to produce "die-cut" products such as folders, CD wallets, pillow packs, and mug boxes but without the need to do any die-cutting. It's the brainchild of Lyndon Powell, sales director at Creative Packaging in Bridgend, who was getting requests for very short runs from customers - 50 of this, 100 of that - and realised there was a gap in the market.
The Creazy sheets are cleverly micro-perfed with the various product designs, so all that's needed to complete the job after printing is a straightforward bit of guillotining, the rest of the excess board is simply torn off. The register marks are also micro-cut into the sheet, another clever touch considering the registration vagaries of some digital printing processes.
Standard pricing is £60 a box, and that's typically for 100 SRA3 sheets of any one design. Some designs, such as tent cards and pillow packs, are two-up.
The Creazy team demonstrated one potential use for their products by printing A5 folders customised with the Total Print! Expo details for their own press kits at the show. Thinking about it the promo uses alone really are enormous, surely making it a "must have" option for any high street print shop.
At the show Creazy launched the HP Indigo approved version, and that means the sheets are now officially approved for all the mainstream digital presses. Next month a one-piece folder designed specifically on a B3 sheet for the Xerox iGen will be launched too. More products, such as door handle hangers (can see these being a wow with hotels that host lots of conferences), golf ball boxes, desk tidies, and a business card box are in the pipeline. Further info can be found at http://www.creazy.co.uk/
Great stuff. And the Welsh wizards have got it off the ground without the need for a dragon.
