Digital Embellishments Are Creating a New Era in Print Production

By Sean Roberts, Konica Minolta

Link to Original Article

I am incredibly enthusiastic about the future of digital print embellishment. And I’m equally excited to have joined Konica Minolta, where the technology we offer is delivering new growth opportunities for customers of all sizes. Let me explain why.

While I haven’t been with Konica Minolta long, I have had quite the journey in print production, starting in the 1990s, when print shops were still masking plates off with Rubylith. Prior to Konica Minolta, I served as a Portfolio Director at Desktop Metal / ExOne, and before that at Electronics For Imaging (EFI) as both Manager of their Worldwide Applications and Customer Experience Centers, and as Product Manager for their super high-speed inkjet segment. I’ve seen plenty of inkjet in my time and lots of big developments in the printing space.

The beautiful thing about my ten-plus years with EFI is the many new applications I saw

come to market – even before fifth color, white ink, multi-layer and other the specialty treatments that arrived in embellishments. And now, these same treatments are able to be digital embellishments. I was fortunate to be with EFI at this transitional stage, and along with Frank Mallozzi, Konica Minolta’s new President of Industrial Print Production, evangelized these new technologies across a wide array or verticals, many in the super-wide space, but also cut-sheet and smaller format. So watching multi-layer and white ink come on board, along with more tactile and impressionable digital embellishments, it has been a mind-blowing journey.

Now I’m ready to help Konica Minolta customers – and their customers – take these new enhancements mainstream, because they offer so much added differential value and profit potential.

The difference with digital: embellishments are customizable, scalable and affordable

Specialty treatments aren’t new to printing – it’s digital that’s new. Because it’s now variable, with so much more customization available via software, it’s easier to do – and with shorter lead times, especially for the smallest print runs and iterations. In the past, having a differentiator or standout component to printed pieces was cost-prohibitive. Things like foil or embossing or spot varnishing weren’t affordable, especially for a customer’s shorter runs.

But now you can iterate quickly. You can do things on a digital press that allow you to make modifications without ever having to go back upstream. No dies to make, no creating custom guides for personalization, even changing up specs on press with the job, as needed. This caught on with digital toner and inkjet first, and now it’s high-speed production that is taking over a lot of the cut-sheet area. Today, it seems every print shop I visit has digital printing technology, even those with screen or offset printing. The shops that will revolutionize their businesses also have heavy digital gear, because it differentiates and scales up their capabilities.

A true tidal wave is coming for digital embellishments

As Kevin Abergel, host of WhatTheyThink.com’s Digital Embellishment Show, said to me during my visit to the show this past October, people now have the capability to produce more with digital, and it’s gaining in adoption. When you look at adoption curves, first it’s the innovators that buy 3.5% of the market. Then you have the early adopters. And what we’re seeing now is a shift to digital embellishments, specifically inkjet-based, moving to early majority. Suddenly, instead of going after 7% or 10% of the market, you can go after 35% to 45% of the market.

What happens is that print shops are often giving their customers embellishment on a job for free, to give them a shot. It might be a customer printing 1,000 brochures, but the printing company tipped in a UV spot treatment on 100 of them. Or a little tip-in that features a call to action, which helps customers track and follow up on new sales. And once they see the results, the reorder rates are astronomical – I’m talking 75% to 80% with digital embellishments. In a recent article I wrote about a direct mail campaign which saw a more than a 30% increase in response rates, just by using an embellishment. So we’re starting to see this critical mass of momentum.

Essential: showing designers how digital embellishments can skyrocket their creativity

To grow this segment, education is key. One of the areas I think we need to focus on as a whole, on a macro level, is promoting the design aspects and benefits of digital embellishments. Back in my former life at EFI, we had an in-house designer that did amazing things running our inkjet technology for multilayer designs. But at that time, with the Illustrator technology we had, creating multilayer designs required multiple steps. You had to build the appropriate overprint type, create the shapes and the vignettes, then put that all together in way which could be read by the RIP. A designer had to have a real understanding of how the press would build those layers.

So there’s a training component that takes customers all the way back to design. Today’s technologies do some pretty nice things, and they’re much faster and easier, sometimes while the job is right on press. With more complicated jobs, such as variable campaigns, customers become more of a data house than a design house, because they need to understand how that data is managed. We need to take it full circle. That’s the evangelism I think is really important for people such as myself. We need to get out there and let people know the tips and tricks, what they can do and how easy it can be. It requires training so designers know how to set files up for the printer. The same goes for print shops. You can have very technically astute operators that know how to run a digital press really well, but they may not know the upstream design aspects, especially if a design agency or another third party has put the design files together.

This is not unique to embellishment, by the way – because as any printer will tell you, a file almost never comes in that is actually correct for the job. We’re going to work to connect those dots among the various teams. We will get out into the graphic arts associations, and the Printing Industries Association (PIA) that work more closely with the tactical teams, along with our strategic alliances with the Foil & Specialty Effects Association (FSEA) and some of the other groups with whom we are involved.

How to design for embellishment is one thing; selling it is another

On the sales end, there’s a mentality shift that requires some education, too. One of the biggest challenges we have in the industry is being so used to selling cost plus, at smaller margins, we are afraid of being more expensive than the next guy when selling something different. But enhancements attract and make people happy, and embellishments deliver an experience that’s both visual and tactile. In turn, this combination creates purchase appeal and greater sales, which makes the case for higher margins. Leveraging human psychology (and showing customers what you can produce) are the keys to selling more embellishments.

The fact is, embellishments add real value to printed pieces, value that commands higher price points and profit margins, which are reflected in how consumers view these pieces. Adding enhanced printing capabilities allows you – and your customers – to stand out. According to the FSEA, embellished printed pieces are 2.5 times more attractive to consumers, and they view packages with print enhancement as 46% higher in quality.

In addition, recent research from Keypoint Intelligence showed that 84% of consumers are more likely to open personalized direct mail, and 50% prefer it over email. Looking ahead, all trends point to more personalization and specialized printing techniques.

We have more statistics coming out, more reports and data that show that there is proven, additional profit margin in embellishments. You’re looking at 2% to 20% on your cost, but 80% and sometimes even up to 300% on your profit. At Konica Minolta, we’re working on acquiring more case studies by collaborating more closely with our user base and communities to help substantiate these kinds of profitable opportunities.

So if we can educate people on the value and show them the value of what they’re selling, we can change how perceived value and price are intertwined. I don’t think that’s examined enough when we’re selling print, especially digital embellishment and personalization.

Embellishment can help when it comes to hiring, too

Embellishment simply isn’t an environment where “if you build it, they will come.” The number-one objection I hear is, “Well, my customers don’t ask for it.” That’s why showing and sampling embellishment jobs for customers is so important. Any printer will tell you the biggest issue today is finding people to operate printing equipment. Typically, younger people are graphic designers. But we’ve found that embellishment has been one of those magnets, one of those bright spots that attracts younger workers.

In addition to helping designers understand the new print technologies that are available to them, we also have to focus on more than the technology to grow embellishment business. And while commercial printing involves industrial equipment and doesn’t offer iPhone integration yet, the ease of use with digital printing presses has really evolved. For the majority of people out there, whether or not they’re computer-savvy, once they start using digital presses and digital embellishment systems, they pick up on them very, very quickly.

To help put all of this together and demonstrate the profit potential of digital embellishments, Konica Minolta is hosting several VIP business-driver events across North America in each of our regions throughout the coming year. These are taking place at our demonstration centers in Chicago and corporate headquarters in Ramsey, New Jersey, as well as customer and partner sites across the United States. Take a look at the range of digital printing products we offer for every budget for embellishment as well as label and packaging presses. And if you’re interested in seeing systems live and in action, you can also message me via LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out, and I look forward to chatting up more embellishments soon!