The Right UV Printer for Signs and POP Displays
A small-format UV printer is ideal for making many types of POP displays. You can print temporary, semi-permanent, or permanent point-of-purchase (POP) displays on papers, labels, foam boards, rigid PVC boards, card stocks. Also, you can UV print on polyvinyl bar mat and floor-graphics materials, clear acrylic, polystyrene, honeycomb cardboard, corrugated plastic, aluminum, wood, and more.
Printers equipped with height-adjustable printheads and white and clear inks can print colors, images, designs, embossed effects, and surface textures on three-dimensional objects and materials more than 5 inches thick. The creative possibilities are limitless.
The extreme versatility of a small-format UV printer empowers your sign shop to produce many types of free-standing, self-adhesive, or hanging POP graphics.
While the large-format UV printer in your shop creates bigger signs and intricate free-standing displays, a small format UV printer can print thousands of smaller signs. You can even print boxes that display and promote small products on shelves or countertops.
In addition to creating POP displays, the right small-format UV printer can help you make some of the one-of-a-kind props. Not only that, but also branding graphics that retailers will need.
POP Advertising Today
Traditional point-of-purchase advertising includes in-store graphics that reinforce brand awareness and/or stimulate impulse buying decisions. The graphics can appear on windows, display cases, walls, floors, shopping carts, tables, and countertops.
Innovations in POP displays appear every week. POP advertising must be persuasive enough to prompt a purchase decision.
Digital printing enables multi-site retailers to have POP graphics customized for each store layout and the distinctive demographics of shoppers in each store.
Newer forms of printed POP advertising use printed AR (augmented-reality) codes to access more information or videos, music, and games.
Different codes printed on graphics for stores in different cities can lead to customized content that better matches the interests of local shoppers.
In-Store Marketing Tomorrow
Printed POP graphics are extremely popular and can be enormously effective. But over time, some installations for printed graphics may be replaced by interactive digital signage that uses information from your smartphone to present information most relevant to your individual interests.
The role of printed POP graphics in in-store marketing will also evolve as the “point of purchase” continues to shift away from brick-and-mortar stores. Many consumers now use their mobile phones or laptops to place orders from wherever they happen to be. In-home personal assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home will make it even easier for people to buy products without ever entering a store.
As a result, big-box stores that stock vast assortments of products may be scaled down. Many stores may become smaller, multi-functional showrooms in which customers can engage with the physical space and products on display. Stores of the future may be less about transactions and more about product discovery, entertainment, and community experience.
In an article “Rethinking the Role of the Retail Store,” Laura Davis-Taylor of MaxMedia says, “None of us truly know what’s next for retail stores, but we can all agree that they will have to serve a very different purpose in consumers’ lives” MaxMedia is helping stores develop “Unique Experience Signatures” that will motivate shoppers to visit a store because they want to, not because they have to.
In a JWT Intelligence report entitled “Frontier(less) Retail,” experts note that the best retailers don’t really differentiate physical from digital shopping anymore. As retailing becomes increasingly anticipatory, cognitive, and personalized, digital must be infused throughout the buying process.
In any case, “A seamless commerce experience is paramount; the minimal gap between inspiration and purchase is the key to success,” writes Lucie Greene of the Innovation Group of JWT Intelligence.
Points to Consider
The transformation of brick-and-mortar retail stores won’t happen overnight. Nor will it occur in all types of stores in every part of the U.S. Stores will still continue to need printed POP, branding, and information graphics. But keep these points in mind:
Smaller stores will mean less floor space will be available for large, free-standing POP displays.
If stores become more like showrooms, they may need smaller forms of explanatory graphics that can hang from a shelf or stand near the products. These printed graphics may include augmented reality codes that help store visitors connect with interactive experiences.
Micro-brands for niche markets need POP graphics too.
Big brands and retailers aren’t the only users of POP graphics. Many creative entrepreneurs have developed micro brands that can be sold both online and in regional boutiques and maker fairs. With a small-format UV printer, your shop can provide both the custom POP advertising and packaging that these small brands need.
Store planners and graphic designers are already experimenting with new concepts.
In addition to advertising your ability to produce all types of POP graphics, show designers how your UV printers can help them produce custom props, prototypes, and experiential graphics that set the stage for in-store customer experiences. Become a source of technical support for all the creative ideas they might like to test.
Choose the Right Printers
Versatile, industrial UV printers from Compressuvprinter.com can be used to print thousands of customized POP displays or unique decorative elements for in-store events and experiences.
The Compress® iUV-600 BRD series is built for fast, short-run production of coated and uncoated board stocks, including plastic sheets and all common sign and corrugated media. An auto sheet feeder delivers media 23.1 x 47.2 inches (600 mm x 2000 mm) for printing without operator intervention. Thousands of signs can be continuously printed with variable data, barcodes, or copy changes on each sign. The iUV-600 can be equipped with either a conveyor of manual unloading or an automatic unloaded.
The Compress® iUV 600s/1200s printers offer fast, on-demand printing on a huge assortment of substrates. Use these printers to decorate sheets of flexible films, label and decal stocks, textiles, and leathers; boards for signs and displays; and three-dimensional prototypes, boxes, props, and decorative objects.
The Compress® iUV 1200s features a 44.7-inch x 29.5-inch print bed and printheads that can be adjusted to decorate items up to 11.8 inches high.
