Happy New Year

A Happy New Year to Everyone!

A new year has begun. What will it bring.  More pressures to control prices and costs.  Certainly more inflation as well.  The pound has lost value against the euro over the past few years and seeing as a good deal of label stock and machinery comes from eurozone countries so increased prices are inevitably beginning to work their way through.  We shall to what we can to keep our prices down; finding ways to cut costs while maintaining service standards.

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The Christmas just passed was a busy one.  In fact Christmas is always a busy time here.  Or rather, just before Christmas. There’s a perception that the Christmas holiday lasts for couple a weeks with no possibilities of supply during that period. That causes everyone to stock up madly, ordering things before the festive season begins. Because everyone is ordering at the same time there is a terrible problem with bunching.  We do our best to rush to get orders out, despatched and delivered before the cut-off date.

And yet I wonder how much of this is strictly necessary. The bunching of orders creates problems for everyone. Many firms - ourselves included - are open for business between Christmas and the New Year. In any case those two festivals are only a week apart, not a fortnight as sometimes perceived. Life does go on in early January.

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Sometimes we are expected to be mind readers.  When making an enquiry it is surprising how difficult some customers find it sometimes to give answers to straightforward questions about the size of a label or the quantities that are needed.  It is true we can make recommendations based on our experience but we need some idea of what is in the customer’s mind around which we can work.   It is hard to make bricks without straw. We can always recommend alternative solutions and give quotes for multiple sizes and quantities.  As always the bulk of the cost with a label is usually in the setting up rather than in the running of the label.  This is especially true for the more complex labels.

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BESPOKE LABELS

What happens if you want a label that isn’t displayed on the pages of this website?  VIP Labels produces a wide variety of labels for customers with specific requirements.  Here are some of the things I tell people when they are ordering bespoke labels.

 We are sometimes asked whether there is a minimum order.  The answer is ‘no’ there isn’t - but there is a minimum cost!  When we are producing any sort of label the cost is all in the setting up of the job - there’s the artwork and there may be films and plates and there's the general administration of the job; there’s machine time to allocate also.  There’s material to order (which can’t always be ordered in very small quantities).  Then even when the job has commenced there’s the ‘make-ready,’ the preliminary production that has to be discarded because at that point you are changing the machine settings to make sure everything is printing smoothly.  So by the time you get to print one finished label a good deal of expense has already been incurred.  And then, after a run, the printing machine has to be cleaned down and prepared for the next job which will probably be using different inks.

 What this means is that that there is a heavy fixed cost element.  Once everything is set up then the ‘run-on’ cost is fairly small - we are just talking about paper and ink and a little machine and operator time.  The more labels you have the cheaper each individual label becomes.

 While labels do not take that long to print when everything is to hand, printing cannot start until the right material has been ordered and delivered, the artwork has been prepared and approved and if necessary films and plates made.  All this has to be fitted in to a production sequence.  We usually say therefore that bespoke labels will take about a fortnight to produce from the time that a proof is approved but sometimes timescales are not always in our hands.  People fall sick, a machine breaks down, a supplier doesn’t deliver.  If we say we try to deliver in two weeks it doesn’t mean that always, come rain or shine, we can deliver in this timescale.

Therefore what is important is not to leave matters until the last minute to order more labels or to request a new label with a changed address or telephone number.  We frequently see occasions when a process is strung out with no urgency at all on the part of the customer - quoting, acceptance of order, signing off a proof - all are conducted in a leisurely fashion and then the customer suddenly wants to have the labels printed in just a few days.  We always try to meet customer deadlines where at all possible, but customers can sometimes do more to help themselves.  If we rush through a job it means that other jobs, other customers, have to wait.




The golden rule is to order in good time.

TAMPER EVIDENT LABELS

We sell a lot of Tamper Evident labels which were designed to make it apparent if someone has tried to remove a label.  They can thus be used to seal a box or be stuck on a DVD.

Video Hire shops used to complain that some disreputable customers would rent a DVD and then switch it for a personal disc that had become damaged, keeping the hire disc.

Tamper Evident labels protect against this.  If you try to take the label off the hire disc and put it on the old disc then the label will appear to be full of holes that spell out the word VOID.

This is because the label is constructed in a double layer with printing both above and below the plastic polypropylene film that forms the basis of the label. Tear off the film and you are still left with printing (showing the word VOID) adhering to what the label was previously affixed.

VIP Labels sell circular Tamper Evident labels for fixing to the centre of DVDs.  These have a white rectangle, useful if you want to write in a number or date for the disc.  We also sell rectangular labels made to the same specification. These smaller rectangular labels are useful for sealing cases, though as they are very light they can also be used on a DVD as well.

These small (38mm x 15mm) labels can also be used in many other commercial and industrial situations where it is important to ensure that objects are not tampered with.

We sell Tamper Evident labels in reels of 200, 500 or 1,000 labels.  You’ll find the prices on the website.  For further information please call us on 01446 -773874.

SOME FACTS ABOUT LABELS

Self-adhesive labels are such everyday objects that we take them for granted. People sometimes think of a label as a label as a label without realising the possible variations.  Quite apart from what you might put on the label - one or more colours and possibly text or a design - the first thing to consider is what the label should be made of.  Most labels are paper - for paper is a strong, effective and inexpensive medium. But even a paper label may be of lighter or heavier material, may be glossy, semi-glossy or matt or it may be protected from spillages or marking by a laminating coat.  This latter is a plastic film that makes a paper label tougher and more durable as well as giving it a gloss, varnished finish.

The other medium in common use is plastic, polyester, vinyl or polypropylene.  Labels printed on plastic are tougher than those printed on paper and thus last longer.  It is not always easy to tell just from looking whether a label is made from a plastic material or from paper that has been over-laminated.  But if you try to tear the label you will find it is virtually impossible to tear the plastic while the over-laminated paper label tears much more easily.

Then there’s the question of adhesive.  Does the label have to stick permanently or do you want to be able to pull it off again, like a post-it note?  We mainly use labels with two kinds of adhesive - permanent and removeable (sometimes called peelable).

Removeable is a better word because as self-adhesive labels are designed to ‘peel’ easily off a waxed backing called a web produced slightly wider than the label itself.

For specialist applications - for instance labels that have to operate eg in cold stores or in hot places there are specialist adhesives designed to cope with such adverse conditions.

Most labels are usually rectangular, square or circular. Square and circular labels can only be manufactured in one way, but rectangular labels can come off the press either Narrow Edge Leading - like a string of sausages - or Wide Edge Leading - which is where the labels are oriented in a landscape fashion.   Wide Edge Leading is the commonest presentation because it makes for rolls that are wider but not so fat.  There is also less label to have to pass through a printer.