Trade Imaging Featured in Sign World June 2011

June 2011: Polishing The Niche

The perfect sign trade service provider enhances the work of its clients without competing with them, or so Paul Moore of Trade Imaging tells The Sign Spy...

Even though the Boston, Lincolnshire premises of Paul Moore’s company, Trade Imaging, are still in the process of development, his team of talented graphics specialists are so busy that he is already looking to invest in another wide format, flat bed printer to work alongside his Fujifilm Acuity HD. The Acuity delivers both rigid and flexible point-of-purchase sign and display graphics that hold up visually, even at extremely close viewing. Its flatbed design employs a zoned vacuum table to hold all types of media, including irregularly shaped materials. The vacuum table holds the media stationary while printing, which ensures accurate registration, even on multiple passes. Additionally, the Acuity automatically skips large unprinted areas, increasing printer speed and it prints edge-to-edge, saving time and labour in finishing. The specific benefit of the machine for Trade Imaging is that, thanks to Paul’s long experience in matching colours very precisely he can use it to provide other signmakers with colour printing that will please even the most particular clients – and do it consistently. His speciality is colour management (he once devised a system that could calibrate 28,000 colours with complete accuracy) so he is able to offer a service to his customers that they can’t provide themselves, thus developing his valuable niche as a graphics sub-contractor with the kind of colour expertise that simply can’t be found in most marketplaces.He has had one bad experience with his Acuity printer, one day all eight of its printing heads failed at once. However, this was not the fault of the machine nor of Fujifilm Sericol his supplier, but of a “wet” print head cleaning regime that had been recommended by one of the other principal “household name” manufacturers. This wet cleaning method saw cleaning fluid wicking up the jets and affecting them internally, not a good result. He now uses a “dry” vacuum cleaning system that takes eight seconds per head, and has had not a single problem since.

Paul chooses not to look for the most obvious solution for a printing project but prefers to research how to provide an optimum result, which is one reason he is not a believer in just using the software that comes in the box with a machine (though he is a great fan of the FineCut software that came with his Mimaki CG-160 FX cutter/ plotter). He prefers to source the very best software to do each job, which he describes as: “Making colour exceptional rather than average.” He continues: “To produce ‘aqua’ colours for instance you need to use a very specific set of software, but why buy it if you only need to use it for one particular job. I’ve got it here ready to use and I can print the job for you, and still make the project financially viable for all of us.”

A lot more guts
Paul also has a pet soapbox subject that he had to share with the Spy. “Why is it,” he asks, “that a signmaker is prepared to spend thousands on their printers and cutters but will then try to push all their work through a little domestic PC that only cost them a few hundred pounds? I find it completely
puzzling. In the modern sign world you need to be able to optimally print at 1400dpi and manipulate file sizes in the region 16GB and you won’t be able to do any of that properly on a little machine with a 32bit processor and 3GB of RAM, you’ll need something with a lot more guts.”

Entering the sign trade at the age of 16 and now in his 43rd year, Paul is still enjoying every day he spends at work, though he has calmed down a little since those stressinducing early days when he first started running his own company. His regime of 80 plus hour weeks left little time for his home
life, and though the bottom line was healthy the lifestyle was not. These days he takes time to enjoy his day, relishing both the work and his own time.
The two major elements that keep the sign trade in Paul’s blood and his feet behind the work bench are his customers and the fascinating range of projects he has been involved with, he explains:
“I would say that 99% of the signmakers I have dealt with are honest people who are creative yet well grounded, good to talk to and great to work with. They appreciate good work when they see it and are happy to discuss the possibilities in their projects and even take advice on how to improve the results.
“We have enjoyed some real fun projects, signs of course, and vehicle wraps, but we’ve also created wallpaper, bedspreads and on one occasion we printed up a blimp. It feels wonderful to see something you’ve printed hundreds of feet up in the air, makes a change.”
Paul never knows what the day will bring, and that’s the way he likes it; this is not a man who could settle into a mundane 9-to-5 office job but he appreciates the value of proper organisation. For instance he carefully controls production levels so that he doesn’t find he is dealing with so much work that quality control might slip. Paul explains: “The buzz word is simplicity, but that doesn’t mean taking the simplest route to a solution if the result is just average work, it means simplifying workshop
procedures and rigorous stock control. It means putting the right systems in place from the word go, and evolving production to always keep quality at its peak. After all, my value as a sub-contractor is established purely by the quality of my work meeting or exceeding the needs of my customers, and
producing it on time and consistently.”

Discretion Guaranteed
Quality control underpins the reputation of Trade Imaging, and Paul’s team has never lost a customer who has remained in business, a proud claim. All the printing, cutting and finishing machines in his 4,400ft2 of workshops are carefully maintained and he doesn’t want see another production failure
in the middle of a busy print run, especially not thanks to the wrong cleaning techniques.“I have been doing this long enough now that I might be in danger of falling into the trap of believing that I have seen everything and have the solution to every problem,” he continues, “but I am addicted to learning,
and I don’t know where I’ve left my laurels so I won’t be sitting on them any time soon.“Being a trade only, discretion-guaranteed print provider is what I am and what I want to do, so I am always looking at how we do things to see ways we can improve on the results. Anyone who loves what they do wants to do it well; it is not enough to just be as good as the next guy. You have to be the best you can personally be, and if that means pushing yourself to do more, then that is the challenge, and that is what makes getting out of bed every day worthwhile.” Thanks to his insights into colour management and the entire printing process Paul has been able to devise some costeffective products that are designed to help his signmaker customers survive the current bleak economic trends, but before
suggesting any of his printing processes he needs to know what the application will be. After all, he points out, Correx won’t last five minutes if it gets used as a building hoarding. The price might be right but the substrate and finishing have to match the environment they are destined to inhabit; Paul would rather turn a job away than do it wrong for a customer who just wants to cut corners. He concluded: “We are happy to discuss any job with customers, and we can often find a solution that will improve on the original brief, perhaps even find ways to save money in the process. And I see what we do as a two-way process; if an end-user comes to me to undertake a project I will point them in the direction of one of my customers who I know can do the work, or who I know will subcontract it back to me. It’s a win-win scenario with a happy end user, what could be better?
“We price our jobs competitively yet sensibly. Those heavily discounting sign firms that just got business by undercutting everyone else are falling by the wayside, the survivors will be those of us who reliably offer great product at a good price.”

Trade Imaging offers a complete print service from vehicle wrapping in its specially appointed bay to printing and finishing.