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Sunday, April 20, 2014

Enterprise Wide Color

Loftware, Inc. (www.loftware.com) is the global market leader in Enterprise Labeling Solutions with more than 5,000 customers in over 100 countries. Offering the industry’s most comprehensive labeling solution, Loftware’s enterprise software integrates SAP®, Oracle® and other enterprise applications to produce mission-critical barcode labels, documents, and RFID Smart tags across the supply chain.

Color Label Market
Color Label Importance
This week, I received a survey from Loftware that showed a tremendous grown from their customers in using print on-demand color labels.  They asked their customers in 2013, “how important is color printing to their organization currently, and how important they think it would be in the future?”

As you can see in the above pie charts, Loftware’s customers expected color label printing to become much more important.  Color would grow from 7% to 13% as the most important type of label printing; a 54% increase.  In addition, Color would grow from 12% to 18% as a Neutral importance; a 50% increase.  (the definition of neutral was not included.  I assume it means no one type of labeling printing is more important than others).  Overall, this survey shows that color will become a more important aspect of their customer’s label printing mix.  As Loftware focuses on large scale enterprises running SAP and Oracle, this information seems very interesting, especially to Color Label Solutions who sole focus is print on-demand color labeling.


If you use SAP or Oracle in your operation currently, you may find these previous posts of interest:



After reading this information, I wondered, “what’s driving this interest?”.  Although Loftware did not specifically ask this question in their survey, a different question may give a clue:  “Of all of our respondents, these are the top 5 types of labels printed during their daily routine.”


Of these types, over 100 customers stated “Finish Good Labels” were being printed daily.  As finished good labels may actually be “Prime Labels” for the product, aesthetics and branding becomes an important criteria for this type of label.  If aesthetics and branding are an important aspect in your label printing, check out the recent post from our chemical company customer: 


In addition to aesthetics and branding, I believe one other factor is driving manufacturers to move to print on-demand color labeling; Eliminating pre-printed label inventory.


If a manufacturer has only a limited number of SKU’s, then using preprinted label inventory is relatively easy.  As SKU’s grow, then preprinted label inventory becomes an administration, process and expense nightmare.  By moving to print on-demand color labels, manufacturers can reduce waste and inventory, improve processes and save money.

But you may think, color is important for industrial manufacturers, but not my type of business.  According to the Loftware survey, other types of companies will move to print more on-demand color labels:


From this question, it appears all types of Manufacturers as well as Transportation/Logistic and other companies see a benefit to printing color labels on-demand.  Color conveys meaning and emphasis that can’t be achieved with black only labels. 

If you use print on-demand color labels already, you may be saying, “so what; I already understand this perspective.  What’s the big deal?”  

If this survey from Loftware accurately projects the future, users of print on-demand color will have many more options for printers, ink, labels and software as Technology Providers will meet this opportunity.  The printers you purchase will run faster, print higher quality labels and operate at lower costs; the label/tags you purchase will be more varied and will cost less.  The ink you purchase will be more durable, more colorful and cost less.  The growth of this business will mean many more options for you in the future.

With these improved options, you’ll need a provider you trust to build a solution to fit your specific set of requirements; A provider who focuses solely on this segment like Color Label Solutions.

Contact us to discuss how on-demand color labels will work for you.


Guy Mikel
855-962-7670
#colorlabels 

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