Lightning Labels Blog

A Big Quarter at Lightning Labels

Today is the last day of the quarter, and it has been our best quarter ever here at Lightning Labels. Yesterday, we reached another milestone - over $1,000,000 in sales for a quarter.

When I first started this business back in 2002 my first goal was to reach $500,000 in sales for a year. Starting from nothing and shouldering a lot of debt, I thought that we would make it if we could hit that number. I knew there was an untapped market for high quality, short run labels, but I had no idea how big a market it was. We blew past that first goal in 2004 and I realized that we had far more potential than I had expected.

Today, my goals do not concern any specific sales number; my main goal now is being simply the best digital label printer. We want to use the latest technology to provide the highest quality labels in the most efficient manner possible, while at the same time giving you friendly old-fashioned customer service.  If we do this well I know we will continue to grow.

So on behalf of all of us here at Lightning Labels I would like to thank you for your continued business - we will certainly do everything we can to earn your future loyalty.

The World's Biggest Label Printing Show

Today the world's largest label printing show kicked off in Brussels. LabelExpo Europe is expected to draw more than 24,000 label industry professional to its five exposition halls over the next four days. LabelExpo alternates every September between Chicago and Brussels, last year Steve Smith and I were in Chicago - you can read my report here.

We did not make the trip to Brussels, but luckily we can find out everything that is going on through the people at Label & Narrow Web magazine. They have a "Live from Brussels" report every day detailing the highlights of the day. Today, they reported on several items including an interview with the CEO of Avery Dennison who talks about the changing global demand for label material and the sustainability efforts at Avery Dennison.

We are Getting a Second HP-Indigo WS4500

This week we signed on the dotted line again with HP and agreed to purchase a second WS4500 digital label printing press. This comes just nine months after we purchased our first one. This will make Lightning Labels the first label printer in the country to own two HP-Indigo WS4500 presses.

The WS4500 is simply the fastest, highest quality and most productive digital label press available in the world today. Since December when we purchased our first WS4500 our monthly sales are up over 80% and so we decided we needed the extra capacity that this new press will provide. This will effectively double our capacity which will allow us to continue to grow while keeping our turnaround times one of the fastest in the industry.

The new press will be installed here next month. We are excited to have two of these state of the art presses in our facility.

Beautiful Bath & Body Labels

Marlese Sears started her bath and body products business, Bobe, just a year ago. She came to us recently when she decided to redo her line of products so that they looked more professional. I think you will agree that she achieved her goal - she has a line of products now that could compete on the retail shelf with anyone. You would never guess she is a one person operation in Saskatoon, Canada.

Every product at Bobe is made by hand - that in itself is not unusual. What is different is that each product is made to order, there is no inventory sitting on the shelves. Marlese wants her products to be fresh so she doesn't actually make the product until after she receives an order. She makes the product, bottles it, applies the label and ships the product all within 24 hours of receiving an order. Now that is a lean manufacturing operation.

Her revamped product line has just been launched this week - you can check it out by visiting her website here.
   

Starting a Food Business

Here at Lightning Labels we print a lot of food labels. Hot sauce, coffee, honey, salsa, chocolate, ice cream, jelly, olive oil, soup - these are just some of the food products where we supply the labels. The food business is very competitive and it is not easy to break through into the national retail chains.

Today in the Small Business section of BusinessWeek.com, there is an interesting article on how a couple of young entrepreneurs with little business experience went from making their product for friends in their kitchen to the shelves of Whole Foods. The article provides insight into how they were able to make the leap from part-time hobby to professional food business. For anyone trying to get their business off the ground it is interesting reading.

Printing Without Ink

One of my favorite blogs is The Next Net by Erick Schonfeld, the editor of Business 2.0 magazine. He also produces a short video series for CNN titled the New Disruptors, that features new companies who are really disrupting their industry. The latest video I found particularly fascinating.

The company is called Zink, they are a new company spun off from Polaroid, the venerable old photography company. The engineers at Zink (short for Zero Ink) have invented this incredible new way of printing photos - without using ink. How can you possibly print without ink? That was my first question. Well the secret is in the paper. Zink use a special paper with millions of embedded crystals that when heated by the Zink "printer" melt to form one of the primary colors - Cyan, Magenta and Yellow.

The beauty of the technology is that the printers can be impossibly small - the photo here shows a device about the size of a cell phone. And another really cool thing about it is that the device will be able to wirelessly communicate with your cell phone so you can snap a picture with your phone and then print it out moments later. No word on pricing but they say the Zink printer (and paper) will be available by Christmas of this year. Check out the New Disruptors video here. Very Cool.