Print Guardian enables businesses to set up and use a bespoke portal for ordering standard and customised signage for their sites.
The platform, which offers customisable tools and proofing features, can be accessed 24/7 from most devices including mobiles, tablets, laptops and desktop machines and offers delivery of signage orders from within 24hrs up to three days.
“Our clients have a lot of standardised signage and graphics, which can traditionally be quite a clunky process to order and deliver,” explained managing director Mike Freely.
“So we started about 18 months ago to see how technology could smooth the process and make it a win-win for both sides. It’s not pure W2P I suppose, but it is a webstore solution that works brilliantly for those that have standard products and those that really what to control their corporate identity and brand.
“Having a portal like this gives businesses control over how their logos and branding appears on their signage. It also makes the whole process so much faster,” he added. The service has no upfront fees for the user, Freely said.
Print Guardian, which was soft launched last month but officially marketed this week, already has five users including Shard developers Mace, who have rolled the service out across all of its UK sites.
Based in a 1,900sqm facility in Brentford, West London, Octink’s sign and graphics division, works predominantly for clients in the residential property development and construction industries, producing anything from small office signs up to entire building wraps, as well as retail brand owners and exhibition work.
The £16m-turnover business, which won the PrintWeek Out-of-Home Printer of the Year award in 2015, also offers design and build services for pop-up sales venues and employs around 100 people: 60 across its project management, design and build and manufacturing operations and 40 delivery and install staff.
The print division runs two Durst Rho P10s: a 250 and 160, a Seiko Colour Painter H2-74s, a Kongsberg XP digital finishing table and Mimaki CG 160FX plotters.
Freely said the print division was currently running at around 80% capacity, with a day and late shift, but that with the new service he envisaged a night shift being implemented in the future.
“Print Guardian is absolutely perfect for this because we can really jump on orders that arrive late evening and have them ready to go the next morning. That sort of delivery response is something that I think is impressive and something that people will want.”
