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

Repeatable Education Solution

Western Suffolk BOCES (http://www.wsboces.org/), a regional educational service agency, provides quality, efficient, shared programs and services to school districts, their students, parents and communities.  Today 37 BOCES in New York serve 721 school districts.  As one of three BOCES on Long Island, Western Suffolk BOCES provides 70 services to school districts more economically and efficiently than one district alone can provide. Western Suffolk BOCES helps school-age children and adults gain the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the workplace.

The school districts serviced by Western Suffolk BOCES needed a system to track and verify the student’s medicines.  As a policy, the district requires that no student shall be permitted to bring onto the grounds of the school or carry on his/her person any prescription or non-prescription medication.  The parent must deliver the medicine directly to the Health Office in a properly labeled original container.

According to Helen Welcome, technology support for Western Suffolk BOCES, “we wanted a system to print pictures as well as verifying information on labels to insure the correct medicine was given to each student.  To meet this goal, we use ID Flow from Jolly Technology and the TM-C3400."    ID Flow (http://www.jollytech.com/photo-id-card/) offers design tools typically found only in professional graphic design suites and unmatched by any other ID card software.  “The ID label solution is working well at nine of schools”, says Helen. 

After using the solution for some time, Western Suffolk started having issues with the printers consuming too much ink.  According to Tom Strata, Technology Support for Western Suffolk BOCES, “we had a printer at one of our schools that printed only approximately 20 labels before the ink light started flashing.  With printing only 20 labels, we assumed something was wrong with the printer.”

When I first spoke with Tom, I assumed as well that something was wrong with the printer.  However, only the ink light was flashing.  Based on this warning light, I had Tom update the firmware and driver for the printer.  Once updated, Tom found a new cartridge which allowed us to confirm the printer was still working.

According to Tom, this printer was used sparingly, printing only a few labels per week. At another school, the printer was working well, producing a significant number of labels.  In low print volume situations, the TM-C3400 can consume more ink conducting periodic cleaning than actually printing.  For these situations, the TM-C3400 has an economy mode driver setting.

To set up the printer for economy mode, go the Maintenance & Utility tab in the TM-C3400 driver and select Post Printing Verification on the top left of the page:

Select “Next” in the Post Printing Verification dialog box:

And then select Economy Mode for low print volume:

In low print situations, this setting will increase yields and save lots of ink.  If you or your customers are printing more than approximately 50 labels per day, then keep the setting at the default, Anti-Missing Read Mode.  The yield advantage is eliminated at approximately 50 labels.

Western Suffock BOCES developed a great solution to insure their students received the correct medicine.  In the USA, we have 13,809 public school districts and 28,220 private schools.  If you have one of these schools as customers, talk to them about using this type of verification solution for their student’s medicines.   

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

New Solutions For Datalogic Partners

With products used in over a third of the world’s checkouts, airports and mail sorting offices, Datalogic (http://www.datalogic.com/)  is in a unique position to deliver solutions that makes life easier and more efficient for people.  Their core specialties are Automatic Data Capture and Industrial Automation for the manufacturing, retail, logistics and healthcare industries.  As a total solutions provider, Datalogic has a long history of creating innovative bar code readers, data collection mobile computers and vision systems that meet the ever-changing demands of industry. 

From May 13 to 15, 2013, I was invited to attend and present at the Datalogic Partner Conference in San Antonio Texas by Rodney Shaffer, the Epson Product Manager for BlueStar and Jean Secrist, Channel Manager for Datalogic.  According to Jean, “we wanted to invite companies with complementary products to present at our partner conference.  At our previous partner conferences, we had presentations covering only Datalogic products.  By listening, we found that showcasing entire solutions is more valuable for our partners at these meetings.  It is important to us that our partners sell more valuable and better solutions to their customers; and to make them a success. ”

During the conference, Datalogic presented several new and interesting solutions, including Joya (http://www.joya.datalogic.com/shopevolution.html) and Lanehawk (http://www.evoretail.com/).  As an impatient shopper, personally I love these types of new checkout options.

Prior to the conference, I asked Rodney, why did you want to attend the Datalogic meeting?  Rodney responded, “I felt this conference would give us access to new potential partners for print on-demand color labels.”  And it seems that is exactly what we found as I met several new potential resellers of this technology; especially during the product showcase:

Not only did I meet new partners, I met several people from companies already selling print on-demand color label solutions.

Not only fortunate to attend, I had the opportunity to present 4 times; twice in ADIC sessions and twice in retail sessions.  To review my two presentations, go to my Linked In profile and look in the summary section: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=3035206&trk=hb_tab_pro_top .  Even if you have seen my presentations before, check to see if you can find a couple of new applications that I presented during the Datalogic conference!

When the meetings were finished, I had the opportunity to explore the Riverwalk in San Antonio with several of the Datalogic partners:

After attending this event, I’m very grateful for the opportunity to attend and present to Datalogic’s partners; and to be a part of their desire to help their partners grow and prosper. 

Guy Mikel

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

GHS Made Easy

3E Company (www.3ecompany.com), a member of the Verisk Analytics Family of Companies,  offers a comprehensive suite of data products and information services that enables improved compliance with global Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) requirements related to the safe manufacturing, distribution, transportation, usage and disposal of chemicals.  3E Company's core competence is researching, sourcing, aggregating, enriching and maintaining EH&S compliance related data and making it available to their customers in a format that is easy and practical to use.

Recently, Lauren Smith, Manufacturing Account Manager for 3E, contacted me to discuss a customer wanting information on printing GHS labels.  During the conversation, I asked Lauren, how does your customer want to print the labels?  Lauren responded, “This customer uses our SDS Authoring Service to create their GHS labels.  With this service, 3E will send up-to-date PDF’s of their GHS labels to print and apply on their products”. 

After our call, Lauren connected me with Jenny Bingham in Marketing for 3E Company.  According to Jenny, “3E offers a broad suite of outsourced services, including SDS and Label Authoring (http://3ecompany.com/products-services/msds-authoring/msds-authoring-services/).  These services can be tailored to an individual company’s needs. We provide GHS classification of substances and mixtures as a separate service or as a part of SDS's and label authoring for companies that need GHS classifications. 3E Company can also author SDSs in compliance with GHS requirements for the specific country or region that has adopted GHS.”

Jenny continues, “If a chemical manufacturer wants to create their own GHS compliant labels, 3E offers Ariel WebInsght™.   Ariel WebInsight™ online chemical regulatory compliance reference tool provides quick access to official GHS classifications, including substance classifications published by the Japanese, European, Korean, Taiwanese, and New Zealand authorities. This online tool features an innovative GHS mixture classification module, multilingual GHS labels, overviews and the full text of national GHS implementations, and a robust phrase library with GHS hazard and precautionary statements in more than 30 languages.”

“In addition,” says Jenny, “we offer GHS training for companies needing additional assistance learning about and conforming to GHS. Available training courses include general training on the implementation of GHS in specific countries around the globe, actual classification training, exploring the impact on MSDS's, and examining how new hazard communication and classification requirements impact a company’s business processes.”

After my discussions with Lauren and Jenny, I believe the service offered by 3E makes GHS compliance easy.  All a chemical manufacturer needs to build a complete GHS solution is the 3E’s Label Authoring Service, Epson printers and Epson BS5609 approved poly labels.

If you want to learn more about GHS, you may find my earlier posts of interest:

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-h-is-ghs-opportunity.html (Basic GHS review)

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/bs5609-is-no-bs.html (BS5609 Certification)

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/02/chemistry-opportunity.html (Octochem)

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/02/un-drives-print-on-demand-color-label.html (Oakwood Products)

If you or your customers want to create and use GHS labels easily, contact me to discuss how 3E and I can work together to build you an easy-to-use solution.

Guy Mikel

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

#GHSLABELS

1 Prospect, 5 Reasons = Great Target

Weber Packaging Solutions, Inc. (www.webermarking.com) is an innovator in the design, manufacture, and supply of high-performance labels and labeling products. They provide the latest in systems, software, and media; then back them with a nationwide network of service, and technical support.

Since the founding in 1932, Weber Packaging Solutions has grown into an international labeling leader. From the world headquarters and manufacturing facility in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and other plants worldwide, they provide products and solutions to over 50,000 companies. 

Recently, Carson Blackwell, Account Manager for Weber Packaging, (Twitter: @labelsales, Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/carson-blackwell/20/825/506/, About Me: http://about.me/CarsonB) and I visited a chemical manufacturing prospect who was interested in changing the way they print labels.  It was great to attend this sales call with Carson as he obviously had a great relationship with this company.

Based on this call, I wanted to share with you the characteristics that make these companies great targets for print on-demand color labels. 

First, this company uses a color laser printer already to produce labels.  According to the Vice President of the prospect, color labels provide a positive brand and company image, especially when compared to black only labels.  But color doesn’t mean it must cost a lot.

If you or your customers use color laser printers to produce labels, you’ll save significantly money by switching to inkjet label printers.  You may remember my post detailing the cost difference between color laser and inkjet label printers:  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2013/02/laser-versus-inkjet.html. 

Or my work with FX Luminaire: http://pos.epson.com/colorworks/assets/ColorWorks_FX_Luminaire_SS.pdf.  In both of these posts, you’ll see that inkjet printers save about 70+% versus color laser printers.  This specific prospect pays over $1,500 to fill the printer once with the 4 color laser toner cartridges, versus only $106 for 4 ink cartridges in the GP-C831.

In addition to the cost savings, the inkjet printers have a much more durable media handling, causing less problems.  With this laser printer, the chemical company has issues with paper jams and static electricity buildup.  It is not uncommon for sheet fed printers with drums, rollers, etc. to have problems with labels.  Just look at the wasted labels.

Also, the company discussed issues with applying the sheet-fed, “loose” labels outside in the wind.  The labels can “fly” away easily.

According to Carson, “It would obvious that the GP-C831 would be a better fit for this company.  With the fanfold, pin-fed media, this company would have a much easier time handling and applying labels, post print.  They just need to see the printer running in their facilities using their application.”  Again, manufacturers using color lasers printers in production are excellent targets.

Second, this company is a chemical manufacturer.  As such, they will need to comply to the Global Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals or “GHS” for short.  With this initiative, companies like this chemical manufacturer will need to add color pictograms and icons to their labels.  You may have seen my post summarizing this initiative.  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-h-is-ghs-opportunity.html.

Although knowing about GHS, this company had not as yet finalized their plans to comply.  But the prospect agrees; they must comply sometime before 2015.  Overall, chemical manufacturers are excellent targets for on-demand color labels. 

Third, this company is an OEM manufacturer.  As an OEM, they may be required to purchase or produce labels with logo’s, etc. in color for their customers.  In addition, minimum label purchase quantities may require large inventories of pre-print labels; increasing the probability of obsolete inventory and waste costs.  You may find these other posts on OEM manufacturers of interest:

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/oem-brands-with-service.html

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/07/oem-device-labels.html

Manufacturers of OEM products are great targets for on-demand color labels.

Fourth, the prospect produces over 1,200 separate products.  With so many SKU’s, it’s impractical for them to purchase, inventory and print with variable data, preprinted label inventory.  When companies like this prospect try to use preprinted labels, they increase their label costs.  Take a look at these earlier posts on companies moving from preprint to print on-demand color labels.

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/67.html

http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/09/continuous-improvement-with-on-demand.html

Lots of SKU’s make you or your customers good targets for print on-demand color labels.

Fifth, this company produces labels from one of the most common Microsoft Windows application:  Word.  Integrated with their ERP, variable data is sent to a Word template to produce the label.  Although currently using Word, they plan to move to a Crystal Reports-based label printing application shortly.  Printing labels from common applications insures the Windows driver for the color label printer based solutions are easy to install, configure and run. 

If you or your customers have any one of these 5 traits, you could be a great prospect for print on-demand color labels.  Contact me to discuss the trait that makes you a good target.

Guy Mikel

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

Really Low Hanging Fruit!

ABA Moriah Corporation (http://www.abamoriah.com/) has been selling and servicing printers since 1984. With sales offices in Virginia, Texas and California service nationwide ABA Moriah is positioned to service the largest corporations and Federal agencies. This company sells and service line printers, continuous form laser printers, desktop, mobile bar code printers, RFID printers, ID Card Systems, printer supplies, and software.

At a recent party, I spoke with David Carrillo, Vice President of Sales for ABA Moriah about this work; and about my blog.  During this conversation, he mentioned to me that he had a customer looking for a replacement for a L1524 continuous form laser printer.

According to Dave, “The customer was facing an end of life situation.  The OEM had advised the customer that they would not be renewing the service agreement, due to lack of spare parts and supplies. As he has to switch, he is looking for a replacement that would allow him to continue using his existing paper card stock and plug into the existing application.  Plus he would like to have a means to add color as they use lots of secondary labels in their application.”

After our conversation, Dave sent me an example file to print using Internet Explorer.  After setting up the correct page size in IE, the page printed perfectly.  In addition, I copied content into another application that enabled me to add color circles.  These colors printed perfectly also.

According to Andy Scherz, Product Manager for Epson, “Since 2008, these continuous form printers are no longer available; and now, supplies are not available.  The printers were sold under a large number of brand names by several different companies; Printronix L1024 and L1524; Microplex Solid F24 and 24E; ATC 8024; Boss 2400; OTC Print Center 24; CF 1000; PSI PP2024; and the ARCetiq.  In addition, users will save a significant amount of money as the L1524 printer costs approximately 260% more per page assuming 4% coverage.”

With the GP-C831, you should be able to replace these out-of-date printers; saving significant money on consumables, adding color, using your existing paper media and plugging into your existing application (if they print from a Windows application).  It’s an “easy-to-use” option for those companies looking for an alternative to these continuous form printers.”

Based on the print samples I produced, Dave sold two GP-C831 printers to his customer, Charles River Laboratories (www.crl.com).  According to Jon Garrett, Senior IT Analysis, the GP-C831 is "Working like a dream.  Hopefully we will have our color designed and implemented into our software system within the month so we can get rid of the stickers.  The lab RA’s waste as much as 30 or more minutes applying the colored stickers to the printed labels."

I
If you or your customers are using one of these continuous form laser printers, switch to the GP-C831 before you run out of other options.  It’s really low hanging fruit!

Guy Mikel

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