It’s All About the Verticals: Discount Labels

Discount Labels (Booth 3857) is a trade-only label printer serving a broad mix of commercial printers, dealers, and resellers. A growing customer category is ad specialties producers, as companies in that area look to expand their reach and their own product offerings.

 “Our message to the commercial printers is, basically, we already have the substantial amount of equipment to take care of the digital production [of labels],” says Richard Beile, National Sales Manager for Discount Labels. “So rather than spend one or two million dollars on the equipment, they can build up that business and use us as an outsourcing partner.”

Discount Labels has a full rage of digital label printing gear, including multiple HP engines, Domino label printers, EFI Jetrions, and short-run flexo capabilities. In addition to traditional digital labels, Discount Labels also offers a wide variety of related products such as scratch’n’sniff applications, scratch-off prize and coupon work, printed tape, magnetic substrates, and other unique products. The company also does a substantial business producing self-inking stamps. Discount Labels also offers variable-data label printing, consecutive numbering, and durable/weatherproof label printing.

“We’re seeing a lot of growth in durable and weatherproof,” said Beile. The difference between the two is the product life expectation—durable materials last about four to five years, weatherproof about two to three years.

A big part of Discount Labels’ commitment to being an outsourcing partner is helping customers navigate the wide range of vertical markets that can potentially be served. To that end, Discount Labels is giving out a “Vertical Market Selling Guide” which, said Beile, “shows different market segments where a lot of our customers are already selling into, but gives them some new ideas to capture additional customer share, and get their foot in door with new customers or market segments.”

Some of the hot vertical markets today, said Beile, are so-called “nutraceuticals” (dietary supplements and herbal products), food and beverage, in particular wine and craft brewing, and educational products— “that can be as basic as parking passes of the plain vinyl type but requiring consecutive numbering and a bar code.”

“People [in vertical markets] are looking for opportunities to extend their brand and labels present them with that opportunity,” said Beile. “The nice thing selling labels is that basically it’s an annuity type of sale. People tend to reorder from their same source.”

Discount Labels’ booth offers a full range of examples of the kinds of label work the company can do.