Calumet caters to professional and semi-professional photographers and saw a market for on-demand prints photographic printing, building a print station at its shop on Drummond Street, London. The print station also operates as a demonstration area for machine sales.
It has installed an Epson 7900 A1 printer, two SureColor SC-P600 A3-plus printers and a SureLab D700 printer from Epson’s Pro Graphics range, more usually found in companies printing signage, labels or POS. It plans to add the just-launched SC-P800 wide-format printer when it is available.
Calumet can now print wide-format prints from A2 through to A1 on a choice of media including Epson Traditional Photo Paper, or scan original images for printing using a Epson Perfection V850 Pro high-quality scanner.
Calumet product manager Andy Johnson said the print station project was a trial, which could be repeated in other stores if successful.
“We were getting a lot of people coming in and asking us if we offered a print service, we had to point them in the direction of other labs. We’re not out there to compete against the photo labs but what we are able to offer is short runs. So far the interest is there.
“The SureLab D700 is an excellent thing to show. It prints in formats from 100x150mm up to 297x1,000mm from rolls. It’s a very economic printer and is two and half times the speed of a conventional inkjet. The Epson V850 is a fantastic bit of kit. People can see the whole workflow process.
“It was a bit of a dead area before; this has really brightened it up. We think it looks great and the staff are excited about it.”
The walls of the transport-themed Print Station were covered with wallpaper printed using an Epson SureColor SC-S70600 a 1.6m-wide high-quality indoor and outdoor signage printer which can produce everything from posters, signs, banners, backlit panels and POS materials to vehicle wraps, interior decorations and exhibition displays. Epson took inspiration from nearby Euston train and Tube station to produce the wallpaper.
Calumet opens its print station tomorrow (Friday, 15 May) with an open day, repeated on Saturday.
