According to Fespa’s Print Evolution 2011 research study, three quarters of the printers surveyed said they were looking to convert, or have already converted, their screen/offset business to a digital operation. While a few years ago, that level of uptake would have surprised many, today, with wide-format digital firmly established, it’s more surprising that there are printers who have yet to embrace digital – and indeed that 25% don’t intend to.

Breaking into wide-format digital is not just a case of buying some new kit; such a move needs to be properly thought through and driven by a strategic decision if it’s to succeed. The FespaDaily team spoke to two European printers to share the lessons of their wide-format evolution.

Screen printer
The journey from screen print to digital wide-format is not always the easiest to make – tried and tested technologies are not easily given up. However, adding new processes doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the old. Dutch outfit Graphic World is a good example of a company that has a foot in both camps.

The Gendt-based firm began life in 1978 as a screen printer serving the ice-cream market. However, the past 13 years have seen much expansion, and it now prints a wide range of indoor and outdoor POS signs and displays for blue-chip customers across Europe, including Unilever and C&A. As part of that expansion, it moved into digital in 2006.

"The decision to adopt digital with the Inca Turbo flatbed device from Fujifilm allowed us to establish a digital offering to complement, not replace, our screen department," explains director Wilfred Witjes. "We followed it up with a second installation a few months later."

This symbiotic relationship was put to the test when Graphic World became Europe’s first print service provider to install an Inca Onset digital flatbed device. The machine, an S70, could have replaced two of Graphic World’s screen presses. As a result, turnaround time fell from two weeks to two days and ink and labour costs also dropped.

The digital investment has meant the firm has been able to take advantage of the growing demand for shorter run lengths and the amount of work it is producing digitally has grown, over the past five years, to 40% of all jobs. Witjes stresses this doesn’t mean the end for his screen services.

"We continually look at the options – both screen and digital – to keep our competitive advantage," he says. 

It seems that, for now at least, digital and screen can be amiable bedfellows.

Start-up
In 2007, the world was in the first stages of what would become a long-term economic depression. Banks stopped lending and businesses suffered, with print hit particularly hard as advertising budgets plummeted. The conditions were not exactly fertile, then, to plant the seed of a new business. Dario Schmidt did so anyway.

After six months searching for a suitable business, a colleague suggested wide-format digital printing and, having been in advertising in the 1990s, the idea struck a chord with Schmidt. He put together a team under operations manager Uwe Ehrcke and bought a used EFI Vutek 5300, and by November 2008 Phönix Großbild-Druck was ready to start trading.

The first contract win was a big one: providing print material for the Berlin Green Week food fair, just two months after opening for business, but Ehrcke says the secondhand machine was up to the task. "The Vutek 5300 worked so reliably, we had no problems with it," he recalls.

Over the next three years the company grew its market share and added capacity as needed, including a Vutek 5330 in 2009, a new Mimaki JV33 in 2010 and then, on the cusp of 2011, a UV investment.

"We can use the two EFI Vutek GS5000r presses to print directly onto polyester fabric and produce the highest level of luminosity, which I could only previously achieve with sublimation," adds Ehrcke.

Schmidt puts his success partly down to his sales strategy of focusing on advertising agencies, exhibition companies, stand builders, graphic designers, printers and event organisers. It paid off, with rapid expansion, plans to up staffing levels from 13 to 18 and move into new markets across the rest of Germany and into Switzerland.

It just goes to show that even in the hardest times for print, setting up a successful business is not impossible, and if you pick an emerging area as wide-format digital was, growth at a time of contraction is a proven possibility.