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Allison, a Cal Poly alumnus, saw the potential of digital printing and started his business 11 years ago. “There weren’t many large-format shops back then,” he recalled. “It was an emerging market that wasn’t saturated, and it was inexpensive to get into it,” said the former account developer at IKON Business Document Services. “Think Big had one employee—me—and now we have 25.” It also has annual sales approaching $5 million and 15,000 square feet of space housing three HP Designjet printers—two 60-inch models: a 5000 (UV and dye) and a Z6100 as well as a super-wide, 104-inch 10000 that’s about a year and a half old.

Allison estimates that 25 to 30 percent of his business is large-format retail signage. Some 30 percent of his total volume comes in via two web-to-print (W2P) platforms, which allow multi-location retailers to be more effective. “Local stores and area managers can customize graphics, creating specials and promotions appropriate to their markets,” he said, “while maintaining corporate standards and streamlining production.” These days, everybody is trying to reduce the cost of procurement, Allison noted, and W2P can help do that. Think Big started with a Printable W2P application seven years ago and added XMPie in 2007.

In addition to paper and vinyl, Allison said fabrics and canvas are “really hot in retail now.” Until recently, he had stayed away from flatbed printers because his firm focuses on high-resolution output. “It wasn’t so much the print quality as the substrates,” he explained, many of which contain blemishes from the factory. But recent improvements made him a believer. The supply chain is key, he noted. Think Big obtains some 90 percent of its media from Sihl Digital Imaging.

Digital Doesn’t Rust

In Ohio, Vista Color Imaging is a digital business thriving near Cleveland’s former rustbelt. Like Pictura Graphics and Think Big Solutions, it has trade show roots, but Vista is no start-up operation. The firm is celebrating its 80th business anniversary in 2009. Founded in 1929 by Cuban immigrant Paul Gallo, the company began as a small, black-and-white darkroom servicing the internal production needs of Gallo Display, a custom trade show display designer and producer. Vista Color Lab (VCL) incorporated in 1970 as an independent entity and formally began business as a custom commercial photographic lab servicing the imaging needs of national exhibit/display producers, ad agencies and corporate clients. Pete Gallo joined his father in 1984, assuming control of VCL operations and today is the company’s owner and CEO.

The film processing and optical enlargement darkrooms are long gone, replaced by the latest technology. In 1991, Vista began its quest to become a digital imaging resource. Today the firm is a graphics display and digital photo company—one of the few, family-owned former photo labs able to fly with the digital times. And, it required business acumen to propel it into the modern large-graphic display markets.

Today, some 50 percent of Vista Color’s business still is trade show related, while another 25 percent of the work printed in the 40,000-sq-ft facility falls in the large-format retail category. Longer-term museum work fills in the gaps, according to Kevin Vesely, Vista’s president since 1994. The firm now has 27 employees and annual sales of around $4 million.

“We do a lot of flatbed [printing],” said Vesely, who says the firm’s trio of devices from Durst Phototechnik includes two Rho 205 large-format flatbed UV inkjet models added three years ago. They can output on media up to 1.55 inches thick and 80 inches wide. They offer production speeds up to 150 square feet per hour at 363 dots per inch (dpi) in four-color process plus white. For even larger signage, it uses a Rho roll-to-roll printer that can image at 11.5 feet wide.

Vista also uses its Rho UV flatbeds to print ice cream cart graphics on the backside 1/16th inch, uncoated Lexan polycarbonite sheets flooded with white ink. Manufactured by Piedmont, the transparent plastic substrate becomes the protective surface for the image, Vesely explained. It has an older Durst Lambda HS, used for backlit menu boards and other retail signage applications, and has developed a regional market niche for over-sized applications greater than 50 inches wide: Its older Océ Lightjet photo laser printers output at up to 72 inches for graphic displays.