In-house or outsourced?

According to Justin Kieseker, national sales manager at Oki, the trend for small to medium sized retailers is towards in-house design and printing of professional quality point of purchase (POP) materials.

Formerly, he says, retailers would have these marketing materials produced centrally at head office or they were outsourced locally by each store.
“Outsourcing POP printing to outside companies is not only time consuming, but can also be grossly expensive unless done in bulk quantities, “says Kieseker.

“The trend towards in-house on-demand printing of POP signage in the retail sector is eliminating wastage, removing the need for couriers and ensures timely and relevant messaging for the retailer. It also allows the smaller retailer to be more competitive – they now have the ability to produce professional POP signage, something that was well out of their reach previously.”

Oki Printing Solutions is ideal for retailers looking to produce POP materials in-store, as it has a wide range of colour printers and claims to be the only vendor to offer a banner print feature.

“Banner printing is big business now – where blackboards and hand written signage was previously used extensively in bars, pubs and shops to publicise special events and promotions, it’s now becoming a thing of the past as retailers shift to printing their own professional-looking banners at minimal cost,” says Kieseker.

Oki has a broad range of printers, ranging from desktop colour printers that include A4 and A3 capabilities, through to multifunction printers that offer A4, A3 and graphic arts capabilities. The latest Oki model for use in the retail environment is the C9800 which includes powerful colour matching capabilities usually only featured in more expensive printers.

The Oki C9800 is a high end graphic arts printer with 36 pages per minute (ppm), A4 and 19ppm colour A3 print speeds for super fast results. It handles a wide variety of paper sizes and weights and retails at $27,900.

Oki also provides a range of media specifically aimed at the retail sector which includes special papers, stickers, plastic labels and other materials used in a store. Some of the media retailers can now print on includes synthetic weatherproof media, cling labels (for refrigerated displays), table tents and a variety of banner sizes up to 1.2 metres in length.