Turning out vinyl graphics is a mainstay for Graphiczoo, whose wide-format digital printers can handle a range of graphic applications and media.
What role does wide-format digital printing play in your shop’s success?
WT: We use our wide-format printers every day. We run posters, window and wall graphics, decals, foam core and cut vinyl signage, backdrops, banners, and other types of graphics.
Throughout COVID, we helped retailers in our area by providing them with free floor graphics and safety stickers. Some of the shop owners would look at us funny and offer up pizza or other products in return, but I would tell them it wasn’t necessary—it was our way of helping out during an extremely challenging time.
What benefits have you seen from upgrading your wide-format printing technology?
WT: One major benefit is the expanded colour gamut. Our new printer’s gamut is so wide, we can hit almost any colour. We service other print shops that don’t have wide-format capability and we can run anything they need. Colour consistency between our digital printer’s production and their output from other devices is just not an issue. The new printer is also faster, which helps us to meet the tight deadlines we’re often working under.
We’ve benefited from having two printers on-site. Having the extra printing capacity really helps us when the shop gets busy.
Why is it important to have an expanded colour gamut?
WT: It’s great to be able to hit the greens and oranges easily. In fact, we actually had a customer tell us the new prints we gave him were too “orangey.” He liked the colour, but it was so vivid and realistic, it didn’t match his older collateral. We had to rerun it with a different colour profile. However, most of our customers are extremely pleased with the range we can provide and the ink’s overall vibrancy.
We’re currently running cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK), as well as orange, green, light black, and white ink, but we might change to magenta instead of white, as we’re not getting a lot of customers who need white ink. Having the option to make these changes is nice, too.
As your business has grown, which wide-format applications have you added?
WT: I’m trained by Avery to do wrapping. The most we do on vehicles right now is door panels, because we’d really need a clean indoor space to take on full or even partial wraps. However, we do provide door graphics, and of course, window, wall, and floor graphics for our clients.
What industries do you serve and what do you provide?
WT: We’ve always been focused on short-run, quick-turnaround projects. We’re a retail and wholesale full-service provider, so we work with a lot of other print shops, as well as local industries. We have a separate pricing scale for wholesale jobs, and we’ve enjoyed a good relationship with these clients.
On the retail side, we work with restaurants to print menus, posters, and QR codes they can stick on their tables. We serve local mining companies with investor relations posters, and we do work for conferences in the medical industry. Software companies ask us to print wall graphics, and we work with department stores and fashion boutiques that need window display backdrops, cut vinyl signage, stanchion post-and-panel signs, foam core signs, and directional signage. Vancouver also has a large film production industry, and we provide backdrops and signage for their sets. We even do a fair amount of PowerPoint posters for corporate clients and students.
Additionally, we serve walk-in customers. We have people who ask us for just one print, or up to 1,000. We have a stated minimum print requirement, but we don’t turn any customers away if they just need a few prints.
