Alex Liggett is the owner at The Vinyl Guys a Staffordshire based specialist in all things sign, print and graphics, with a particular slant on using their Roland DG printers to produce print and cut stickers by the tens of thousands.
Alex recently had the opportunity to try out a new low-cost monomeric self-adhesive vinyl, SoStick from Soyang Europe. Here in his own words, are his findings…
Having used the same materials for many years, despite trying lots of new offerings, we have rarely been turned from what we know works well and gives great value for our customers.
However, a couple of weeks ago we were asked to give something new from Soyang Europe a try; their new monomeric SOStick MGWP.
“It’s just a basic mono vinyl” you may say BUT the backbone of our business is stickers and labels; tens of thousands of them every single week, so having a high quality feel, easily printable monomeric of 100microns is really important to us, and more importantly, to our customers.
We’ve certainly put hundreds of metres of it through its paces already, on both the eco solvent and UV machines and the results are genuinely fantastic.
To be clear at this point, this isn’t a paid promotion, it’s a genuine summary of what I found using this material and furthermore, as proof of these findings, it’s a material we have moved to purchasing more of in place of what we were using.
The end user feedback about the feel of the material and the look of the print was also positive; the finish is more of a satin than high gloss sheen and when printing on the UV, this gave a very different finish and feel to other materials.
The finish coating of the material meant that UV ink felt less raised and even on high speed settings, the vibrancy of colour and depth of blacks and dark blues especially was more like a medium quality setting and very consistent.
For our customers, the backing feels slightly thicker and to them this immediately feels like a higher quality material, the feel of the sticker once peeled is similar; it doesn’t “droop” like some other 80/100 micron material can once peeled.
This “droop” is something that was actually highlighted to us a few years ago when one brand we used at the time moved their basic material from a 100 to an 80micron material; which was actually a higher quality product BUT the thinner feel immediately made some of our customers think that we’d gone to something cheaper.
Yes, some will say it’s just a sticker and it’s hidden away in a cupboard on a distribution board or on a box or packaging or on a boiler or no one really looks at it, but to us and to our customers it’s a touch point of their business, their brand is represented by this seemingly insignificant piece of sticky backed plastic and the design, the print, the feel, the look and the finish need to be right for them and we care about every material we use, from the monomeric sticker vinyl to the cast wrap vinyl and everything in between.
We’ve put a few pics on our Instagram page but I’d be happy to answer any end user questions or if you want to give it a try or know more of the technical specs; Dave Newbery is your man.
There’s lots more in the range that we are yet to try, but if the rest are as good as the monomeric, I can see some more purchasing decisions being changed in the very near future.
