The company's presence at the show is a signal of how serious the general commercial printing industry has become about bringing envelope production in-house.

"If you would have talked to me five years ago, I would have said that we don’t go to this show, because our clientele are strictly envelope manufacturers and that we go to the Envelope Manufacturers Association conference," Andrew Schipke, sales and marketing vice president for W+D North America, explained to PrintWeek.

"But because now our clientele is shifting to include commercial printers and mail houses, since our acquisition of the Buhrs ITM product line three years ago, Graph Expo is much more important to us that it’s ever been in the past."

W+D will be using GraphExpo to show videos of the company’s Totally Integrated Mail Output Solution (TIMOS) as well as live demonstrations of its 234 d digital envelope overprinter, its BB700 envelope inserting system and the W+D 320 envelope production system.

"Our focus right now is not with the traditional envelope market, it’s with the variable data market," Schipke said. "We’ve worked on some developments in new printheads as well as high definition inks and we will be printing on standard white wove envelopes, which will be our show highlight.

"This will knock the socks of people because they will be looking at quality that’s unbelievable on traditional envelope stock."

Because paper accounts for about 60% of the cost of envelope production, Schipke said the case for inkjet envelope printing becomes very strong, not only for variable data but also for static printing.

"We can tell you the cost of every impression that you put down on that envelope," he added.

"And if you can control the paper costs, which is what we’re doing, we can have printers print a very high level using the same paper they use for flexo and offset. The economics are great because there’s not going to be any plates and the speed is phenomenal."

Schipke said this should entice commercial printers of all sizes to start bringing more envelope production in-house.

"Commercial printers are now entering the envelope market," Schipke said. "We are providing machines that help them convert their flat litho, so they can both control their waste levels and reduce their time to market."

And compared to the millions needed for new presses, especially in the digital side, W+D recommends 320 system for printers looking to get into envelopes. The system can produce 20 to 25 million envelopes annually and has a cost of around $750,000-$800,000.

"This can provide new revenue streams as they look to satisfy an evolving direct mail market that’s seen all kinds of new requirements: QR codes personal data, higher quality and the need to be faster to market," Schipke said.