Sunday, 24 Jan 2016 20:41 GMT

Success in Vehicle Wrapping

Vehicle wrapping is now a maturing sector with intense competition among sign-makers offering this service. Brendan Perring asks: “How do you advise they rise above the competition?”

Know your facts

As in all professional fields, in order to stand out and be head and shoulders above the rest of the competition, I believe there are two key factors to consider. The first is to have a good and expansive knowledge of the target market, and the second is to be aware of the actual audience.

Equally as important is a high quality product portfolio, supported by a well heeded pre- and post-sales service. For instance, many wrappers believe that discounting the price is the key to making the difference against the competition. However, in most cases, this is far from what is really needed to gain and keep new customers. Our advice, in addition to always utilising a high-quality film, is to provide the buyer with a full, turnkey service. You also have to give them as much help as possible in the choosing of tints, explaining the technicalities of the film, explaining the properties of the self-adhesive, and demonstrating the many different colours that are available on the market.

Our advice, in addition to always utilising a high-quality film, is to provide the buyer with a full, turnkey service”


Last, but definitely not least, investment in staff training and education is another step to always providing users with a wrap where the traits of innovation and excellence go hand-in-hand. If your business can build up a solid portfolio of customer case studies that prove the quality of your work, then this will no doubt help generate new business. Getting to a point where you can be assured of the quality of your output though comes with making sure you always have a creative approach to a commission, have staff with the right skills, and use the right materials for the job at hand.

As a specialised Italian manufacturer of adhesive films for digital print, APA is part of our country’s proud tradition of quality and creativity and our products are used in a huge variety of applications such as the decoration of glass and shop windows, fabric personalisation, wall decoration, and furniture.

Rapid development

Georgie Winston-Bray, marketing executive, 3M Commercial Graphics













The vehicle wrapping sector of the sign and graphics industry continues to develop at a rapid pace. It remains arguably the fastest growing form of out-of-home (OOH) advertising, delivering maximum brand awareness at a lower cost by comparison with alternative mediums and enabling a higher level of flexibility to accommodate continually changing market trends. For companies servicing this burgeoning industry sector, a number of key considerations have to be addressed if the desired levels of business growth and commensurate profitability are to be achieved via the creation of new revenue streams.

Among the most important of these considerations is the need to build a strong and reliable business partnership with a trusted, proven, and recognisable brand that will help ensure ultimate customer satisfaction. A pioneering force in the advancement of vehicle wrapping and livery technology, 3M is a company that currently spends 5 percent (predicted to increase to 7 percent by 2017) of its vast annual revenues on new product developments. This has led inevitably to a huge positive impact on, among others, the vehicle wrapping and livery sector.

A further consideration is the need for companies to engage fully with digital technology”


3M branded and warranted products, incorporating advanced adhesive technologies for ease of application and reliability, that have been developed for this market are comprehensively resolving many of the problems of graphics failure encountered in the past due to the use of less technically advanced materials. Typically, these have included shrinking, cracking, and tearing of the film, lifting around rivets, an inability to conform successfully to irregular surfaces and unsightly wrinkles and bubbles attributable to poor methods of application.

A further consideration is the need for companies to engage fully with digital technology. Customer objectives rely on digital sources such as the internet to glean and share information. It is important, therefore, to have a strong and accessible presence in order to promote a chosen brand, share information and endorsements with a wider audience, and react more quickly to market trends and demands.

A job well done


Ian Simister, sales director, Metamark


Vehicle wrapping is now popular to the extent that sectors within wrapping itself are emerging. Once, the motivation behind applying self-adhesive materials to vehicles was driven by the end-user customers’ need to advertise. Today, and with wrapping, that is still the case of course but a whole sub-culture has emerged.

In terms of rising above the competition where wrapping is concerned, getting it right would be a great place to start. A wrap gone bad says a lot of negative things about wrapping in general and about the business that is responsible for it in particular. Learning wrapping has been described as ‘a sign-maker’s Everest’. Well, that being the case, Metamark has been investing a lot of its energies at making the climb as easy as it is possible to make it.

When it was obvious that wrapping was taking legacy materials way beyond the application range they were designed to satisfy, we embarked on a challenging internal development process that would give us and the industry a material designed to just work, not to work, just. MetaWrap MD-X was the result. It prints like an MD-Class film, and it is ultra-compliant in expert hands and those going beyond ‘base camp’ for the first time.

Customer expectations are high when it comes to wraps”


Using a material like MD-X gets you off to a great start in elevating your product above the competition’s. I would invite anyone to try some, contact Metamark and we will send you a free sample to play with.

Another point of differentiation with the competition is design. Simply transferring legacy graphics into the wrap medium produces a result that costs more, takes more labour, and that achieves little. If your design is informed by the potential to literally use the vehicle’s surface to present an impression that is much bigger and that works with the way it will flow over the application surface, then the result will delight.
 
Customer expectations are high when it comes to wraps. You rise above the competition by supplying wraps that embody knock-out impact though design, realised in the right material. That way the customer gets value beyond expectation and you get a great advertisement for your business.

Learning the trade


Debbie Astle, marketing manager, Grafityp UK


Being able to ‘rise above’ comes down to the choice and creativity you can offer your customer versus your competition. This is an issue that Grafityp has long aimed to solve for sign-makers and specialist wrappers alike and we can boast one of the largest ranges, if not ‘the’ largest range on offer in this sector giving the customer a vast choice. The fact that the films are manufactured by ourselves also means they are stringently tested and conform to REACH standards. Our vehicle wrap training courses are also available to ensure that purchasers of our films have the best knowledge in how the films work and how to apply them to the highest standards. This is another key factor in remaining competitive in this market, as standards today are so high and there is very little tolerance for shoddy work.

At Grafityp we have increased our range of vehicle wrapping films dramatically over the course of 2015 in line with these trends and are constantly adding new and exciting products. The GrafiWrap collection of wrapping films for instance, which are not just for use on vehicles but also for wrapping all manner of objects and even for standard sign-making, offer some superb effects. These include Brushed Metal in a wide range of fashionable colours, matt and satin metallic colours, leather effects, or matt and gloss colour change vinyls, as well as our Premium Exclusive Cast—and all with air escape adhesive.

Our vehicle wrap training courses are available to ensure that purchasers of our films have the best knowledge in how the films work”


Of course, the printable films we offer are a popular choice too so that customers can create bespoke designs perfect for businesses or fleet vehicles. These are complimented by our range of matching cast laminates to protect and enhance the work. There are also a number of films in our Grafitack and Graficast range of self-adhesive vinyls that are ideal for CAD cutting lettering, and graphics for vehicle livery and signage. All of Grafityp’s films are manufactured to the highest standards and to all the latest legislation at our plant in Belgium. This last point is important, because there is a lot of choice out there when it comes to materials for vehicle wrapping and livery, it is vital you choose materials that will work both at the time of application and years after it is finished. If you want to be in business for the long-term, then you need your work to last as long as the customer needs it to.


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