Scottish vinyl graphic design business Art & Sea has praised the impact of its new Mimaki CJV330-160 solvent printer/cutter from Soyang Hardware, hailing the machine as a “game-changer” for the company despite having only been in place for just a few weeks.
Established in 2011, Art & Sea began its life in a spare room at the house of owner Leonie Woolf, initially running as a marine specialised business producing graphics for boats and kayaks. Over the years, the company has evolved to become a much more diversified business, providing everything from vehicle graphics, wraps and rally car livery to signage and shop front graphics – all from two dedicated office units.
This evolution has been driven by investment in new technology, growing its initial inventory from a single Summa cutter to adding in-house printing last year by investing in a Roland VG3-540 printer. After the early success of its venture into print, Art & Sea recently took the decision to bolster this further and went in search of a second printer.
“We’ve had our VG3 running for a year now and when we bought it, I had no idea how it was going to go, how quickly it would pay for itself or how much work we’d even have for it,” Art & Sea Owner Leonie Woolf said. “I just knew it was the next step for our business growth.
“A year later and we’d been struggling with a constant backlog of printing; it’s not something I ever thought I’d say but a second printer was needed. As all our work is destined for something outside, we laminate pretty much everything, and the custom nature of our business means that most things also need to be cut to shape; it’s not your standard print for anything. It wasn’t necessarily a case of wanting to increase our intake of work, but better manage our time and get through the work we have more efficiently.”
Leonie said Art & Sea considered taking on a second Roland machine but after speaking with Damien Martin, Hardware Development Manager at Soyang Hardware, it was soon clear that the CJV330-160 was a better fit for the company’s evolving requirements.
“The 60% speed increase with matched quality to the VG3 was just what we needed,” Leonie said. “At the same time, we were gaining a wider printing width with the 1,610mm. It seemed the perfect solution to our backlog while at the same time offering further benefits with a wider print such as vehicle wraps.”
Art & Sea took delivery of the machine in mid-July and was already printing within just a few days of it being installed. Despite the printer having only been running a matter of weeks, Leonie said there has been a marked improvement in production.
“It’s been a game changer,” said Leonie. “It’s already saving us time and we’ve been super impressed with its speed and colour quality. It was definitely the right decision for us.
“We actually had a pretty big last-minute job come in the week the printer was being installed so we had the VG3 running non-stop to cope with that. The minute the Mimaki was up and running we switched the printing over to that and it got our print time down from 25 minutes to 10 minutes per sheet. Given that we had around 15 prints to do, this saved us working into the night.”
Looking ahead, Leonie said the new Mimaki machine will play a major part in the company’s growth plan, which includes moving into additional markets and taking on more staff to support this expansion.
“Given the additional speed, it will certainly increase our productivity, offering a quicker turnaround for our customers and allowing us to look at opportunities for new markets and take on additional staff,” Leonie said. “We’re also looking at other printing technology that will complement our current set up, so we’re super excited to see where this takes us.”
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