Discount Labels Continues to Evolve with Domino Digital Printing Equipment
Discount Labels, located in New Albany, Indiana continues to grow its business with an evolution of digital printing equipment from Domino. Going back to 2012, Discount Labels invested in the Domino K600i digital UV inkjet for printing variable data. As time progressed, Discount Labels continued to add capacity by investing in additional K600i units and recently installed the Domino N610i seven-color digital UV inkjet label press for printing brilliant labels with amazing effects, providing more value to its customers and brand owners.
Domino sat down with the team at Discount Labels to understand the benefits they’ve realized using monochrome and full-color digital printing solutions from Domino, and it’s documented in here: VIDEO: Discount Labels – Domino K600i and N610i digital UV inkjet as well as in the interview below:
Variable Data Printing and Domino K600i
“For variable data printing, Discount Labels trusts Domino,” says Mike Gore, General Manager at Discount Labels.
“As a technical prepress person at Discount Labels, life is much better with the K600i and I’m not sure how we functioned without it,” says Kelly Cart, Director of Prepress and Digital Fleet Manager at Discount Labels.
“We were originally known as America’s largest short-run label printer. Now we’re known as America’s largest custom label printer. We currently have about 25,000 active dealers, we are a Trade Only. We have over 500 employees, 200,000 square feet, and over 70 printing presses – a lot of them are proprietary that we built in-house. Our biggest challenge with our customers growing their consecutive number work was capacity. We knew we had to invest in new technology, so we went to Labelexpo. The Domino K600i just came out on top. We’ve been running it 24-hours a day, and it’s been bullet proof. With the K600i, we can go right into it, run a big bar code, don’t worry about stitching and just roll. It’s been a great partnership having the Domino K600i on the floor. We want to continue to increase our capacity, which will increase our business,” says Gore.
Evolution and Growth With Digital and Domino N610i
Phil Stromsoe, Digital Production Manager at Discount Labels is excited by the multifaceted capabilities, yet the simplistic functionality of the Domino N610i. “Today we are running a vodka label on silver foil, with simulated embossing. The reason why we can do this is because the press is so easy to run, heck even my 33-year flexo operator can do it.”
“Years ago we bought the K600i. We ran it 24/7. We bought another K600i, ran it 24/7. We added a third K600i, we run it 24/7. And now we have the N610i, so about 40% of our revenue now is on some type of digital asset,” says Gore.
From left, Kelly Cart and Phil Stromsoe of Discount Labels.
“Our migration started about two years ago from flexo into the digital format. We’ve seen an uptick in our on-time delivery. We’ve seen a downturn in the amount of overtime we’re spending. The time it takes internally in our facility to route an order to a flexo press versus a digital press is night and day,” says Stromsoe.
“We’re mentioning the bottom line because that’s what you’re shooting for with a new press installation,” says Cart.
“Our business has transitioned a lot over the past 15 to 20 years. People don’t want a one-color sticker anymore. They want full color. They also don’t want to sit on two-to-three million labels, because inventory is cash. And what we have learned is that the Domino N610i is a big help for us because it is able to take some jobs that we were running six or seven hours on one piece of equipment, and now I cut that in half on the new N610i. So it has been a big help for us,” says Gore.
“We also encounter a lot of times, since we are a distributor, a customer will order a thousand labels and we’ll run it on the Domino N610i, and it was just a test order. And then they re-order and they want a million. We can’t match the Domino quality on flexo, so we end up running the million labels on the Domino,” says Gore.
“The more and more that we have utilized the press, for things like this label right here, we are printing and simulating all of the embossing, the raised ink, the foiling...printing on silver foil and getting that debossed and embossed effect, just by manipulating layers of artwork,” says Stromsoe.
“If you’re a customer looking for consistency, if you’re looking for that high-end quality, it’s a no-brainer to go with Domino and we’re looking very forward to expanding our digital line even further, adds Cart.
“The best thing is that we’ve been partners for many years now, and it’s worked well for us on our bottom line and the partnership, ” adds Gore. “And for the second time... Thanks, Domino."
The preceding press release was provided by a company unaffiliated with Packaging Impressions. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Packaging Impressions.
