Cooking Up Business

This past spring, more than 50 backyard barbecuers-complete with spatulas, grilling tools, and chefs’ hats-were shipped out to Bloom grocery stores, and not for any sort of cook-off competition, but as advertisements. The grill masters in question, however, were actually digitally printed double-sided Gatorboard cut-outs promoting Bloom’s “Breeze” frequent shopper card and its usefulness during those summer barbecue months. Designed by an advertising agency working with Bloom, the graphics were output by TPM Color Lab in Greenville, South Carolina.

After receiving the graphics as PDF and EPS files, TPM made a few image adjustments in Photoshop. “We choked the clipping path on the Bloom standee to get a tighter registration from print to cut,” explains Andrew Long with TPM. PDF proofs were sent to the client for approval.

The final output was printed on 3/16-inch white Gatorboard using TPM’s Durst Rho 600 with Durst UV inks. Approximately 120 78 x 30-inch prints were output, half as regular images and the other half as mirror images, for a total of 60 “standees.” In total, TPM output about 2000 square feet, producing the prints in 2 days. Each image was then routed out using the shop’s Kongsberg i-XL table. Half of the images were laminated with adhesive and placed back to back with the reverse-printed graphics, creating a double-sided standee. Finishing took approximately 2 days. The graphics were shipped to the Bloom stores as kits, complete with install instructions and a custom-made 1/4 -inch acrylic T-stand enabling the cut-outs to stand upright.

In business for 34 years, TPM has 60 employees between its Greenville headquarters and an additional location in Columbia, South Carolina. The company offers an extensive variety of services between the two locations, including reprographic printing, 3-D printing, and digital-printing solutions such as vehicle graphics, indoor and outdoor signage, and of course, point-of-purchase. “P-O-P and digital imaging are an excellent pairing of process and product to market brands by varying the graphics for different locations,” says Long. The customization of displays and graphics for different markets, he explains, is effective for businesses such as convenience stores, banks, and various retail environments. Long estimates that P-O-P jobs make up 35-40% of the company’s income, proving that businesses are using powerful point-of-purchase displays to help smoke the competition.

TPM
www.tpm.com