Meat-dresses, super-yachts and back gardens-come-theme parks – celebrities seem to enjoy splashing the cash on whatever new fad takes their fancy. And yet, one trend seems to be enduring – covering their astronomically expensive cars with gaudy patterns.

Just last month, a picture of a camouflage-patterned Bentley Continental GT appeared on Twitter, courtesy of footballer Mario Balotelli, who was pictured standing next to it looking menacing (or as menacing as you can look in a onesie that matches your car). And the likes of Elton John and Jenson Button have also dabbled – with chrome-effect and matt black wrappings respectively.

But car wrapping is now fast becoming something us normals want to do, too. Be it wrapping a work vehicle or personalising your own car, the opportunity for wide-format printers to produce wrap work is expanding fast. Combined with the fact that there are relatively few specialist wrap printers out there, this should be making those wide-format printers not currently in the market sit up and pay attention. The problem is, wrapping is more difficult than just printing on some vinyl and it is potentially not as lucrative as it looks. 

On-the-road appeal
That the opportunity is there for wide-format printers is widely acknowledged.  James Sahota, managing director at Group 101 printer and vehicle wrapping sub-business Wraps 101, says customers are now really starting to see how effective a marketing tool printed vehicle graphics are.

"People are realising that an advert on a vehicle will be out on the road all day long; it’s a fantastic selling tool because your vehicle is constantly moving around where people are going to see it," he says.

Meanwhile, colour changes are also becoming ever-more popular, with businesses and consumers alike.

"The bit of the market that is growing most rapidly is the colour change market," says Phil McMullin, business manager at supplier of vehicle wrapping materials and training provider Spandex. He explains that this is perhaps the most accessible end of the market for businesses new to vehicle wrapping, as it doesn’t even require them to own the right spec printer, just to buy in some coloured self-adhesive vinyl.

"The charge for colour changes varies a lot, but typically it’s a lot cheaper than a paint job," he explains of why there is such customer demand for this application.

"Colour changes are popular because if you cover a vehicle as opposed to spraying it, the paintwork under there is going to stay the same as it was the day it was wrapped," adds Joe Bartnicki, technical director at large format material and machine vendors Grafityp. "Five years down the line when you take that wrap off, it’s going to be in pristine condition."

Well equipped
The other good news for wide-format wrapping wannabes is that many signage and display printers already have the right kind of printing kit to produce vehicle graphics, according to McMullin.

"If they have a wide-format printer capable of printing onto a high-quality cast film, and it’s printing durable outdoor inks, then they’re pretty much ready to go as far as the equipment’s concerned," he says. "Most signmakers of a reasonable size in the market today will have one of those pieces of equipment."

But for many, the fact that there’s plenty of appetite out there for wrapping and that those wanting to offer it probably won’t have to buy lots of new kit, is beside the point. What people often underestimate is the degree of skill needed.

"I’ve seen lots of companies recently come into wrapping and then go again," reports Sean Davies, managing director at Creative FX, the printer behind transforming the cars of both Elton John and Jenson Button.

"They do about three cars, muck them up, and then end up with heavy bills," he says. "Because if you damage a car you’re in big trouble, especially with some of the cars we do – we’ve worked on million-pound cars. We use scalpels when we work so there’s definitely a danger with that if you don’t know what you’re doing."

The simple solution to ensuring costly mistakes aren’t made, would seem to be rigorous training. And there are many two- and three-day courses, run by the likes of Spandex, Grafityp and machine manufacturers Roland, out there.

But Grafityp’s Bartnicki warns that the training course should be just the start. What is needed for a vehicle wrapper to become truly proficient at such a fiddly process, is practice, practice and more practice. "We always liken it to playing an instrument," he says. "We can teach you to play the instrument, but to become Jimi Hendrix, you’ve got to practice like hell."

For staff to get this practice in, they will of course have to be written-off for a fair amount of time, have enough vinyl to experiment with and a company car to practise on. When these costs and inconveniences are factored in, suddenly vehicle wrapping starts to look a less appealing strand to add to a business.

And it’s not just a case of practising until you are accomplished, says Creative FX’s Davies. As with an instrument, you’ve got to carry on practising regularly if you want to stay good. This is why just doing the occasional job is a bad idea, says Davies, as people quickly forget, or never discover in the first place, all the little tricks that make the difference between a professional job and bodge. "It needs to be done every day – we’re learning new techniques all of the time," he says.

Time is money
And the real danger in leaving staff to go rusty is that they probably then won’t be able to turn a vehicle wrap around quickly enough to make a decent profit. Even more so than in other areas of business – as vehicle wrapping, unlike other print processes, requires at least two people on the job at all times and usually takes a couple of days – time is money.

If the printer isn’t speedy, warns Group 101’s Sahota, they may soon see their wrap margins dwindle, due to the fact that the going rate for this kind of work isn’t actually that high anymore.

"It’s not like the good old days when you could charge £2,500-£3,000 for one vehicle. With the price of materials coming down there are so many more people doing it and so prices have been driven down," says Sahota. "That’s why we wouldn’t touch anything worth less than £500, because once you’ve factored the materials and staff time for even just a couple days, you might see yourself only making £50. So we stick to the higher-end work – if someone’s spent hundreds of thousands on a car, they’re not going to quibble a price of £1,800 or £1,900." 

"Even then the profit margin isn’t as high as on other sorts of work," adds Sahota. "For example, if you compare it to 60% for business cards, it’s not going to be the most lucrative job you’ll do."

Sebastian Stanley, managing director at The Bigger Printing Company, agrees that the labour-intensive nature of vehicle wrapping can mean lower profit margins than on other sorts of work. This is why his company has resisted going down this route, he explains.

"We often get enquiries about vehicle wrapping, but it just doesn’t make sense for the scale of our business," he says. "Smaller outfits can do it profitably because they haven’t the same machine and building overheads to make back. To get £1,000 for a wrap isn’t that attractive when you’ve invested £400,000-£500,000 on Océ Arizonas and sizable premises. We’d rather do work like floor graphics and display boards where we can leave our machines working on them all night. That’s a job we can scale up because the machine’s doing the sweating.

Room to move
Vehicle wrapping might, then, be best-suited to smaller outfits in some ways. But these companies will need to ensure they have the right kind of space, warns Spandex’s McMullin.

"All the equipment needed is quite straightforward, but the main thing is the environment for actually applying the vinyl," he says. "You need somewhere big enough to pull a vehicle in and move around it, but also somewhere that’s a constant temperature, that’s not going to drop below 10°C or go above 26 or 27°C. Otherwise the vinyl won’t adhere properly."

And the one thing sign printers may not already have and will need to invest in, if they’re to offer not just colour changes but personalised signage as well, will be a laminating machine, he adds.

"With a solvent printer, which is what the majority of printers have, the solvent applies the pigment by eating into the face of the vinyl, and that makes the surface very soft and easy to abrade," he explains. "So you do need to put a laminate film, not a liquid laminate, over the top. So the printer will have to spend £2,000-£3,000 on a decent laminator."

Of course, this is a relatively low level of kit spend, so the barrier to entry for most won’t actually be the cost of the machinery and materials needed. More of an obstacle will be acquiring the skills, which can be difficult to recruit and hard to learn.

And printers will need to examine the business case for wrapping. With plenty of footballers and other moneyed folk keen to follow in the footsteps of Balotelli, vehicle wrapping could indeed prove a lucrative addition to a sign and display business. But even those with the right skillset in-house will have to be wary of an ever-more saturated market pushing prices dangerously low on more run-of-the-mill wraps. Otherwise Balotelli’s belligerent Twitter pic, could take on a whole new, even more menacing, feel.

MASTERING THE ART OF THE MAKE-OVER

Do you remember laminating exercise books at secondary school? I do. "A nice easy task," my 13-year-old self would think. "I’ll just do it 10 minutes before bed, leaving me more time to pore over the multi-layered and incredibly poignant plot developments of Dawson’s Creek."

Several hours later, around the 1am mark, say, and my stress levels would be soaring. On my millionth attempt at painstakingly pulling up the sticky-back plastic to reposition and re-smooth it, and unsightly air bubbles would still be popping up. The emotional turmoil faced by Dawson was beginning to look small-fry.

So when it was announced by the PrintWeek powers-that-be that my next ‘Challenge Jenny’ type piece should explore the skill of vehicle wrapping, I was concerned. Wrap a gigantic, £10,000 exercise book that also happens to have doors, a bonnet, door handles, windows and headlights? This sounded nightmarish.

Fortunately my very worst nightmares – those where I accidently rip whole swathes of paintwork, perhaps even doors, off an Audi R8 – didn’t seem likely to come true. I arrived at Bromley-based Creative FX, to find I was under the highly expert tutelage of vehicle wrapper of 10 years, Tony Cook.

Accurate though, was my sense that covering a vehicle with self-adhesive vinyl would be a bit like covering a book. And accurate, was my sense that this, if not gone about the right way, could be fiendishly difficult.

The first step, of making sure the vehicle is pristinely clean, has already been done. And considering we’re emblazoning a van with ‘The Art of Drainage,’ I can’t say I’m too upset about this.

The step of removing all of the door handles, badging and bits of rubber trim has also been done. This is crucial to do prior to cleaning, says Cook. "The areas where you’re stretching the material into a gap, like where rubber trim has been removed, are the most important to ensure are clean, and around the locks too," he explains. "Any contamination under the vinyl and it won’t stick so within a couple of days it will be coming away."

So there’s nothing for it but for me to don an oh-so-stylish Creative FX fleece and get stuck into the dreaded wrapping stage. The part of the job that I will be helping with – or perhaps hindering – is turning the white van a rather shocking shade of green, ready for the Art of Drainage artwork to be applied on top.

I help Cook and fellow vehicle wrapping specialist Steve Bolger measure out how much self-adhesive vinyl will be needed for the bonnet, leaving plenty of leeway at each end so the material can be neatly tucked around the edges once trimmed. Then it’s the moment of truth, and thankfully I’m not involved.

Cook and Bolger, for all the world the Chuckle Brothers’ more competent younger siblings, hold the vinyl over the bonnet and slowly lower it. They use a heat gun set to 40°C to make the material malleable enough to follow the bonnet’s curves, and pull the material up and down until the vinyl is perfectly smooth and bubble-free.

Until I get involved again that is. Getting the squeegee at just the right angle when smoothing the vinyl onto the paintwork proves surprisingly tricky, meaning I actually manage to introduce air bubbles. Remarkable.

"The fitting part is actually the quickest bit, it’s the trimming which takes the time and can be tricky," says Cook, bringing up short my sigh of relief at thinking the hardest part is over.

Amazingly, I manage not to take a chunk out of the van as I cut along the wheel arch. But it’s only Cook’s detailed instructions about keeping the scalpel blade at exactly the right angle, flat along the curve, that stop me from messing up.

Other tricks of the trade – such as ensuring both wrappers cut at the same angle on symmetrical parts of the van, and hiding any joins in vinyl sheets in the vehicle contour’s grooves – would be similarly obscure to someone just branching out into this area on a whim. And so the importance of training, and lots of practice, becomes clear.

"It’s a couple of years before you feel confident, a couple of years of going out with the boss, learning the tricks," says Cook. "It takes a long time to learn."

And it takes a long time, presumably, before you’re fast enough to turn a van like this around in a day, as Creative FX does. I watch in awe as Cook and Bolger, despite my best efforts to slow them down with my inept squeegee-ing, whip through the complicated front grill, more straightforward side panels, and back door areas.

The van will be finished in the morning when it’s heated to 90°C with the heat gun, Cook says as we finish for the day. "That takes the memory out of the vinyl so that it stays to the shape of the van and won’t go back to its original non-curved state and pull away from the vehicle," he explains.

If only I’d known these tricks of the trade, and been armed with a heat gun, all those years ago when wrapping my books. Imagine the killing I could have made down the school canteen.