While the fine art printer would no doubt delicately hold aloft a wood plane and your no thrills commercial printer a hammer, the wide-format retail printer would be struggling at the back of the room breathing heavily under the weight of a whole tool box.

Wide-format printers are the boy scouts of the industry; those who pledge to ‘Be prepared’. Faced with ever-more knowledgeable clients, demanding more flexibility and better quality alongside lower costs and faster turnarounds, these plucky companies are attempting to cover every possible print base with as many technology options as possible.

Not only does this approach require massive capital investment, it also creates problems with ensuring colour consistency and by extension brand integrity. While there really is no way around the former problem, there is some light at the end of the tunnel as regards the latter.

This issue of a demanding retail client base is not a new one – it’s always been the case that the scope of jobs coming in has been varied. However, what has happened over the past few years is that the people buying the print are more aware of the true range of substrate options available and even of the best print kit for the work to be produced on.

"It used to be the case that we’d get a job in and we would recommend the best way it should be produced," explains Nick Bishop, sales director at Service Graphics. "However, the retailers are a lot more knowledgeable about what they are ordering now, they are occasionally specifying what machine we use and they realise the true scope of substrates available."

Pros and cons
This is perhaps no bad thing – it should mean the print products in the marketplace are as fit-for-purpose and as high-quality as possible, reflecting well on the use of print for retail applications. The downside is that, with the buyers understanding the true breadth of the print possibilities available –the list of substrate options alone is extensive and growing – the printer has an almost impossible task to cover all the print solutions requested of them.

"You have to have the flexibility in your arsenal now," reveals Karen Beadle-Rich, operations director at SPS Group. "Retail is a reactive sector and so you have to have the flexibility of different print technologies so you can cater for different substrates, volumes required, lead times – if you don’t have all the different processes, you are causing yourself difficulties, which in turn affects the client."

Flexibility invariably means capital investment in different technologies. At SPS, Beadle-Rich reveals that the press room contains wide-format flatbed digital, large-format litho, screen and some small roll-fed kit. At Service Graphics, Bishop says the technologies on offer are just as varied. For larger companies with a full order book, this capital investment, though a stretch, is probably just about manageable, but for smaller operations, it would be a real struggle.

An option for the latter may be that certain presses do offer flexibility that could get you a few extra pieces of work outside their targeted areas. For example, Marc Verbiest, public relations manager at EFI Europe, highlights the flexibility of the company’s GS3200 and GS5000r presses, while Service Graphics’ Bishop says the Inca Onset S20 can handle an impressive chunk of his company’s work.

However, retailers are increasingly looking to place work at a single source to increase efficiencies and these single-press options do not cover the breadth of work retailers are looking to produce. As Bishop explains, while his Onset can do a lot of work, there is still so much it can’t do, and so additional technology options are required to truly serve the client.

"Although the Onset does cater for a lot of our work, we still need alternative machines for certain jobs," explains Bishop. "For certain things you need a roll printer, for others you need a larger size capability, each technology has its own benefits and solutions and the retailers will expect you to offer these."

According to the manufacturers, the likelihood of this situation changing – of a one-size-fits-all press emerging into the market – is very slim. Gareth Parker, product manager at Ricoh UK, which last year formed a partnership with Epson Europe, believes there will always be a requirement for specialist machines as no single piece of kit will ever be able to meet the full range of solutions. Heather Kendle, director of marketing at Inca Digital, agrees, adding that to get optimised performance you need kit designed for specific markets and applications.

SPS Group’s Beadle-Rich is a little more optimistic. "Having a one-size-fits-all single machine would be wonderful, but I think that is a long way off," she explains. "But look at digital, it has come a long way: the quality wasn’t there – and we haven’t got to litho quality yet – but in the next five years, it will improve again and who knows where it will go next."

For now, though, having a range of technologies at your disposal appears to be the only way of truly fulfilling the demands of the retail sector. And that throws up quite a large issue. Be it Asda green, Virgin red, or the Top Shop black, brands are recognised and are legitimised by their colour. If that colour changes between products, in-store display and signage then it can be massively damaging.

Grades and shades
The trouble when you have numerous print technologies and numerous substrates is that the difficult art of colour consistency can get even trickier. Tones can change depending on the substrate type and thickness, while different print technologies lay down different amounts of ink and therefore grades of colour differ. Not keeping an eye on things would create havoc for a brand’s identity. The printer that wins a big contract with, say, Sainsbury’s and then fails to maintain the right shade of orange across the range of the retailer’s print jobs, will quickly find itself looking for a new client.

"We have always been as careful as we can about hitting colours, we will ask for a colour reference or a pantone," reveals Service Graphics’ Bishop. "The client may say ‘It’s CMYK, it will be fine’, but we have 10 different output devices and that CMYK breakdown will be different on each one. Getting a standardised product across the machines, or across the substrates, can be very difficult. For example, the whites on the different substrates are different and textures can have an effect on colour."

It is perhaps too easy for the manufacturers to hand over these colour quibbles to the printers, stating that the colour output on a different technology is hardly their concern. However, colour consistency begins on a single press, with work produced on different substrates needing to achieve the same colour result, and surely that is something the manufacturer should be helping with?

"That’s a complex question," responds Ricoh’s Parker. "I think there is a responsibility on both the manufacturer and the printer. The manufacturer really has to be aware of its role in ensuring its machine gives accurate performance, especially with the way ink is used and how consistent the equipment is capable of being throughout its lifetime. But the printer also has to ensure its skill sets are up to date so they know how to manage and make the most of that equipment."

SPS’s Beadle-Rich believes that most printers in the retail sector should be doing exactly what Parker suggests, using Fogra and ISO standards to ensure colour consistency across the range of print kit. She explains that the manufacturer’s responsibility is to ensure that any press they bring out is able to work with these standards.

However, Fujifilm believes that the manufacturer has a responsibility to go further than this. Tudor Morgan, European group marketing manager, explains that the manufacturer’s position as builder of the press and creator of the inks means it is in the perfect position to use its colour chemistry knowledge to help printers hit standards, or to create their own colour profiles, as some printers have done (see Business Inspection, page 24).

"We have people in the UK who have offset, screen, UV and inkjet, be that super-wide, or roll-to-roll, and we have been able to help them to control the output of all those devices to a consistent colour standard, be that ISO or their own," he explains. "We can also ensure colour matches across different print sites. We are able to offer this help because we start with the ink – the jetting, the way it is laid down, how it is set up."

Whichever way you chose to ensure colour consistency, be it with the help of your manufacturer or without it, the crucial thing is that you get there. Retailers are demanding high-quality at low cost and maximum efficiency and, to truly provide that service, you need to be able to use the best machine for the job, not the machine you know reproduces a client’s brand colour work most accurately.

"I need to look at a job and know that I can produce it in the most cost-effective and quickest way, one that is appropriate for the work specified, I do not want to have to worry about colour concerns," concludes Beadle-Rich.

And that is the key in the retail sector at the moment. Retailers want everything quicker, more consistent and for less cost, preferably from a single supplier to increase efficiencies. It’s a tall order to fill, but with a range of print technologies at their disposal and with everyone working towards a colour solution together, printers are increasingly up to the challenge.