Two Key Introductions

After more than 90 posts on the colorlabelsondemand.com blog, I am pleased to make two major announcements.

First, I am pleased to introduce Color Label Solutions, LLC (www.colorlabelsolutions.com).  Color Label Solutions is the premier provider of print on-demand color label and tag components and solutions.  With experience selling and installing print on-demand color in more than 150 companies, no other reseller has more experience deploying these low-cost labeling solutions.

When you purchase your color label and tag printers from Color Label Solutions, you’ll get installation support and training to make sure you start printing quickly and easily.  If you need maintenance, Color Label Solutions will work with you to get the maintenance support from the manufacturer you require.  In addition, we offer a large variety of labels for the color printers we sell.  Other resellers may sell labels; but we make sure the labels work well with the printers we sell. 

I decided to start Color Label Solutions as I see a tremendous opportunity in the use of color in producing labels just in time.  From history, we know color now accounts for more than 50% of the desktop printer and copier revenues.  I see no reason why on-demand label printers will not follow the same trend.  Lower cost, durable ink combined with more available media will enable this market to grow significantly.

With this blog post, you may notice a slight change in the topics I cover.  In the future, my blog posts will help end users see possible new applications and trends; and how to best use this technology.  I hope to be your trusted source of information on this topic.

Check out

Website:  www.colorlabelsolutions.com 

Linked In:    http://www.linkedin.com/company/3266502?trk=tyah

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/colorlabelsolutions

Second, I am pleased to announce the Epson TM-C3500 Color Label printer.  From my testing, I see 3 reasons why this printer is a MAJOR step forward for producing print on-demand color labels.  Reason 1: print quality is significantly improved.  Now with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks, colors are much richer and vibrant.  In addition, Epson has more than doubled the number of inkjet nozzles (1,440) making each droplet smaller which provides better detail.  Finally, Epson has added the capability for banding reduction, which improves printing labels and tags with significant coverage of ink.  Overall, the TM-C3500 produces much better image quality, especially at the lower resolution.

Reason 2: the TM-C3500 is much faster; up to more than 4” per second.  Given the improvement in print quality, I believe most users will see up to a 5X improvement in speed (when compared to the TM-C3400 at the highest resolution versus the TM-C3500 at the lowest).  With the improved print quality, you will find the lowest resolution works perfect for most labels.  In comparison, the Primera LX 900 prints at 1.8” per second at the normal mode; a 2.2X advantage for the TM-C3500.

Reason 3: ink costs are reduced significantly for the TM-C3500.  In fact, the ink costs match the recently released GP-C831.  Lower ink costs combined with 4 separate cartridges make the TM-C3500 a much less expensive printer.  For most TM-C3400 users, you will see an ink cost reduction of 50% or more.  For color laser or Primera users, you could see up to a 70% reduction in ink costs.  In my earlier post, you will see the ink costs are lower than other types of label printers, including thermal transfer with resin, wax/resin or even some wax only ribbons.  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2013/02/thermal-transfer-vs-color-inkjet.html

Overall, improved print quality, increased speed and lower ink costs make the TM-C3500 a major improvement in print on-demand color labels.  Contact me if you want to learn more; or just visit the Color Label Solutions store (http://stores.colorlabelsolutions.com/StoreFront.bok)  

Guy Mikel

guy_mikel@colorlabelsolutions.com

855-962-7670
www.colorlabelsolutions.com

Cover Up!

Stafford Press (http://www.staffordpress.com/) has been serving retailers since 1990, manufacturing custom labels and tags, for use with hundreds of different applications. Over the years, they have earned an excellent reputation as one of the top suppliers on the West Coast.

Stafford Press has a technical support team that can solve many types of problems with face stocks, adhesives or difficult applications. They have a complete design team to assist in product development from concept to the final production.

Recently, I had a customer who needed to cover up an existing label with a print on-demand color label.  They tried to remove the label; but adhesive and label material remained.  Using traditional paper labels, the label underneath showed through, making the appearance poor.

To find a solution, I contacted Dave Long of Stafford Press.  You may remember my earlier post covering Stafford Press’s durable poly tags:  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/09/durability-on-demand-color.html.  

For this prospect, Dave prepared an opaque label.  According to Dave, “for this opportunity, we applied an opaque adhesive to inkjet coated facestock.  In this case, it was a matte paper."

Overall, the label printed great:

With the opaque label available, I went out to the prospect to print labels using first the TM-C3400.  The label completely covered the existing label; you could not see through the opaque label at all.  I then printed a label using Epson’s GP-C831 printer to show the look of a larger label.  It seems exactly what the customer wanted.

According to Dave, “we also provide inkjet coated labels with other adhesives as well.  We sell standard movable labels for inkjet coated paper and poly labels.  These labels work well for work-in-process (WIP) tracking or warehousing.  In addition, we sell a “Postit” or a microsphere (encapsulated) adhesive with inkjet facestocks for applications such as Identification.  Customers want to make sure no adhesive remains on clothing after using a visitor badge.”

At this stage, we know the market for print on-demand color is not large.  But media providers like Stafford Press are providing new label components to help build a variety of solutions for you and your customers.  If you or your customers need opaque, movable or other types of labels for your solution, contact me to discuss.

Guy Mikel

info@colorlabelsolutions.com
855-962-7670
www.colorlabelsolutions.com