Round-Up Profits With Roll Products
Laser printers and the demand for time-saving convenience are helping these products shape the future.
Tired of hearing about extinct or declining traditional forms markets? Well Lowell Lumpkin, general manager of Dayton, Ohio-based Crabar, is pleased to report that roll products constitute a genuine growth area for the industry.
"The laser printer people were the ones who identified the need for rolls to enhance production proficiency, not the forms industry," said Lumpkin. "The biggest advantage is what rolls do to save time and energy in getting medium- to long-runs out."
Consider that in a four hour time period, you would have to stop, load and attend to about 36 different boxes of continuous product as opposed to loading a single jumbo roll and letting it go.
"The equipment people selling laser printers and roll-handling equipment have already sold customers on the advantages of rolls," Lumpkin continued, stating that the key for distributors is to sell service and knowledge, as well as the fact that they're partnering with an experienced, competent supplier. Because, as Lumpkin put it, if the rolls are not manufactured and handled correctly, "You can have a world of trouble."
Defining Roll Products
Mark Clabaugh, vice president of sales and marketing for PRINTSouth in Atlanta, considers roll products, "Any printed product which is produced, shipped and consumed in that form, including ATM rolls, rolls of printed tags and labels and—the mother of them all—the jumbo roll."
Typically, customers take pre-printed jumbo rolls with the perfs, pinfeeds and static information in place and load them into their own machines to do the variable laser imaging.
Paper Systems Incorporated (PSI), Springboro, Ohio, manufacturers small rolls from 1⁄2˝ to 15˝, particularly for registers and point-of-purchase use. Lee Wagoner, PSI's executive vice president, tells distributors, "The world is your marketplace."
