Executive Q&A

Last year, the Association for PRINT Technologies (APTech) teamed up with the Tarsus Group, the organizers of Labelexpo, to launch a new show called Brand Print Americas. The inaugural event will be co-located with Labelexpo Americas, September 15–17 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, in Rosemont, Ill. We spoke with Andy Thomas-Emans, Strategic Director of Tarsus Labels, Packaging and Brand Print Group, about the new show and how it complements Labelexpo.

WhatTheyThink: Talk about the genesis of Brand Print Americas as an event. How did it come about? 

Andy Thomas-Emans: We have the global Labelexpo shows, and the Tarsus Group also runs the Sign show in Turkey. One of the goals of the group was to globalize the shows that we had along the same kind of model as the Labelexpo shows. It was decided that they would take these sign and commercial print shows global. The obvious way to do that would be to co-locate with the Labelexpo shows. The original plan was to have the co-located shows in Thailand, China and Mexico. The part of the market that was missing was Europe and North America. I don’t know if there are any plans to have an event around Labelexpo Europe, but in North America, the way that we decided to go was to co-locate Brand Print Americas with Labelexpo Americas.

WTT: How did you get involved with APTech? 

ATE: With all our events, we always try to work with the local trade associations. Tarsus and APTech have had a good relationship for many years, so when we looked to bring a Brand Print show to North America, that relationship was brought into play, and the partnership was developed. It’s not PRINT Mark 2, but effectively Brand Print Americas is a jointly run show between Labelexpo and APTech. APTech is our association partner for that show. When I talked to Thayer [Long] at APTech, we immediately had a kind of mind meld in that we agreed that, we’ve got what your guys need, and you’ve got what our guys need, and together we can create something pretty powerful.

WTT: What do you see as market or technology drivers creating demand/need for an event like Brand Print Americas? 

ATE: If you think about when the Labelexpo show started in the early 80s, it was a purely self-adhesive labels. Then it moved into new technologies like shrink sleeves and in-mold labels. Now, we’re seeing more and more packaging formats coming to the show. We haven’t seen cartons yet, but certainly flexible packaging is becoming a core part of that show. The other trend that we see is label printers are much more becoming one-stop shops, not only producing labels and now packaging, but they’ve also been supplying proofs, and doing a lot of digital asset management. They’ve become collateral experts for brands. One big trend that we’ve seen in North America and Europe is the growth of smaller, “challenger” brands. If you look at the North American beer market, one-half by volume now is going to craft beers, and that’s really been a trend over the last eight years. These smaller brands don’t have established supply chains in terms of their packaging or marketing collateral in the way that the global brands do. They go to a label printer and ask for labels, but what about other marketing collateral? So what we’re seeing now is label converters starting to install wide-format presses, and if you go to Labelexpo you see companies like Roland DG, that has been at that show for years, for exactly that reason. Companies also show their commercial printing equipment at Labelexpo. So really the label printers are moving in two directions. They’re moving to diversify within labels and packaging, and they’re also trying to reach across the aisle to what previously would have been regarded as commercial print spaces. 

WTT: Does it also work in the reverse direction—commercial printers looking to get into labels and packaging?  

ATE: We also see that commercial printers—who are under margin pressures because the market is becoming commoditized—are looking to see if there are opportunities in the label and packaging market, and in the last 10 years we’ve really been picking up on that trend. So we’re already seeing a crossover of interest between commercial and packaging print sectors. A powerful trend that we’ve also seen is brands adopting omnichannel marketing strategies, and label converters, as they now are going into flexible packaging, being asked to color manage across different packaging formats or across retail formats, such as corrugated displays. What brands are looking for is a way of integrating these campaigns and not just in the sense that everything has to color-match across different formats and substrates and materials, but also adding value back into that part of the commercial print sector.

WTT: What is the relationship between Brand Print Americas and Labelexpo? How do they complement each other? 

ATE: When we looked at how the Brand Print and Labelexpo shows could work together, the way that we envisaged it is that, on the Labelexpo side, is everything up to the primary packaging stage, whether it be a label or a package. What then happens to that package, once it’s been decorated and filled and packed and palletized to get it to the retail store and from there to the consumer—all of that is the Brand Print side. So that’s really how the two shows fit together. We weren’t really interested in having a general commercial promotional print show. I think you have to have a focus, and the focus here is on this kind of brand omnichannel marketing—and it’s really promoting print. We want to bring that sense of excitement and possibility across to the commercial sector. We have amazing things happening in the design of packaging and labels. How does that kick over into outdoor graphics and direct mail marketing campaigns or point-of-sale display type areas?

WTT: So the target attendees are printers, not really the brandowners themselves.

ATE: The focus is absolutely on printers. The label or the packaging is something that’s bought by print buyers and by brands, so they’re driving the market. What equipment am I going to have to invest in in order to meet the emerging demands of brandowners? On the Brand Print side, the focus is more on generating a sense of excitement around the possibilities of print in an omnichannel marketing mix. As a PSP, then, what equipment or software infrastructure am I going to have to invest in to make that happen for my business? The core of this show is really the focus on the emerging print needs of brands. What are brandowners going to need when they’ve got so many other choices—internet and social media marketing—and do they even see a role for print? One of the things that we have to do is keep print right in front of them and keep it relevant to them. I come from the commercial print side, and things like direct mail: where does that fit? I had to really think about this because of course it relates to a brand’s omnichannel strategy. It can’t just be a commodity. We’re talking about added value. I see a lot of this in Japan. When you get a direct mail piece from one of the big Japanese retailers, it has all sorts of clever stuff with QR codes and personalized URLs. You can buy this, go to this store now, scan this code on this product, get discount or enter a competition and that I think is what we’re trying to encourage. 

WTT: What are the points of overlap and points of divergence between the two shows?

ATE: There is a lot of commonality and a lot that can be learned. Look at what the label converters can learn from the commercial printers who have been through a terrible time over the last 25 years in terms of commoditization and competition. The label guys haven’t really had that, but they will, so they need to learn about digital front ends, online storefronts, automation and general efficiency. On the other side, what the commercial printers can learn from the label and packaging side is about adding value. It’s really about deep diving much more into a brand. If you go to a label converter and you sit down with their production guys, they understand exactly where their customers are going, so therefore they know the kind of equipment they need to get and the skills they are going to need on the prepress side. So they're constantly moving with their customers. 

If you look at the supplier side, we’ve seen all the major, commercial digital manufacturers come over to labels and packaging—HP Indigo has been at Labelexpo since the early 2000s, and there’s Xeikon, but companies like Screen, Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Epson—all these guys have diversified their offerings into the label space and now increasingly it’s the packaging space. When we talk to some of these exhibitors, they’ll ask if they can bring their sheetfed digital, or what about cartons? Although Labelexpo has moved into flexible packaging, it’s not a carton show. So generally speaking that’s more of an area for Brand Print. 

WTT: It sounds like shows just tend to evolve organically of their own accord. Exhibitors will just start bringing in different kinds of equipment and suddenly a show is transformed, and suddenly vendors are showcasing all the other stuff they can do in addition to what they originally started exhibiting in the first place. 

ATE: I think that's a great point, and Labelexpo is actually a case-in-point because when we first started showing shrink sleeves, there was a massive outcry. “Come on, guys, 95% of your exhibitors are still on the materials side. We’re self-adhesive. You’re bringing in a competitive decoration technology.” And even later when we added flexible packaging. 

WTT: What would you want attendees to come away from Brand Print Americas with? What would you love to have people walk out of the hall with and say, “Hey, that was great. This is what I learned. This is what I’m taking back to back to my plant”?

ATE: To me, it’s rebuilding, in the commercial sector, the excitement around print. Generally, I want people to come out of the show thinking, “Great, there are fantastic communities here. We need to sit down and do a five-year equipment plan. We can’t carry on the way that we’ve been doing things.” So I think that’s number one, building a sense of excitement. Number two relates to commercial and label printers meeting across the aisle and understanding more of what goes on each side of the fence and what the opportunities are for cross-fertilization of ideas, technologies, and maybe even business diversification opportunities. And number three is that suppliers have to get excited as well. Suppliers go to shows and pick up trends. “Is it hybrid, is it flexible packaging, or is it a mixture of those two?” They go away from the show with an idea, and when they come back to the next show, those ideas have borne fruit. Here’s an example of that. We all thought 10 years ago that inkjet would kill flexo, because flexo wasn’t that much better, it used plates and other things, and inkjet was going to take over the world. But what happened was, when flexo equipment manufacturers saw that happening at Labelexpo, they said, “We've got two options here. We can either let this happen to us and just basically become digital companies, or we can find a way of combining with digital guys.” But what they actually did was they went back and just reinvented flexo. 

Really, whichever part of the show that they’re in, I would personally like them to come out of that show thinking, “This is going to be amazing.”