Beeline and Blue of Des Moines, IA, Creates a Niche in Wide-Format Wrapping

When a newer or less mainstream printed product proves to be too difficult for your team to sell, perhaps the best tactic is to try giving it away first.

That proved to be the case for Beeline and Blue, a wide-format printing and graphics specialist based in Des Moines, IA. Known for its banners, outdoor and indoor graphics, as well as retail displays, the concept of an outdoor wrap that could cover up an unsightly construction site had never quite taken hold with Beeline and Blue customers. It was an idea in need of a jump-start.

"For years, we tried to sell it and we were never able to," notes Beeline and Blue President Steven Strooh. "You had to see it to believe it."

When the local amateur theater group's building was undergoing a facelift at its entrance, Beeline and Blue was happy to donate a 600-foot graphic to wrap around the construction site fencing. The printer had donated work to the nonprofit theater previously, in the form of window wraps for upcoming productions.

The theater's fence wrap quickly garnered the attention of the City of Des Moines. Its performing arts council was renovating a downtown plaza and, when it saw Beeline and Blue's handiwork, the printer soon got a call to do the downtown plaza. The council loved the amateur theater job so much, it insisted that Weitz Construction budget in a wrap.

The project, Cowles Commons, began last December for Beeline and Blue. The wrap was 812 linear feet and between four and six feet in height. Three workers spent four days attaching the Ultraflex mesh vinyl wrap in 10-degree temperatures.

As for the graphic itself, a local designer used Adobe Illustrator to create a folk art theme that included images of trees, leaves and branches, allowing it to blend in with its surroundings.

"We've had numerous requests to do lesser projects along the same line, but they were relatively small," Strooh says. "There was no interest in buying the fence wraps until we actually gave it away and showed them the attractiveness of a construction site that would otherwise be ugly."

Digital Wide-Format Firepower

Beeline and Blue is fortified with enough digital wide-format capacity to handle growth in this area, with a heavy concentration on Canon Solutions America gear, including two ColorWaves (600 and 900), an Océ ES 9160, the Océ LightJet 430 and an Arizona flatbed.

An HP Scitex XL 1500 adds to that depth and provides interchangeability to do projects such as the 70x30-foot building wrap on mesh graphic that it does four times a year for the Meredith Publishing headquarters. Another grand-scale project Beeline and Blue handles is the banners for the World Food Prize, which are placed at the state capitol building. Three banners, which are hung between the pillars, are 50 feet tall and 10 feet wide, or 500 square feet each.

"With the capabilities of the ColorWave 900—the quality it's able to produce and its speed, we can compete far more successfully with commercial litho printers, who always had us beat hands down on speed and quality for bigger runs," Strooh says. "We can't compete in tens of thousands, but now we can compete very favorably in the hundreds and low thousands."

Earlier this year, Beeline and Blue entertained a news crew from KCCI-TV Channel 8, which did a feature on the ColorWave, touting it as one the first shops to have the landmark machine, which prints at a speed of one foot per second. A poster that previously took an hour or more to produce can now be churned out in minutes.

Beeline and Blue debuted in 1952 as a producer of blue prints. The firm has grown to 27 employees with $3.5 million in sales last year and is on pace to top that figure in 2014. The company evolved from blue prints to plain paper construction drawings. Although it still faithfully serves the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector, its customer base has expanded significantly.

It's no secret that wide-format digital printing offers some of the most exciting, imaginative and limitless possibilities in the industry today, and Beeline and Blue is leveraging the latest concepts, particularly with the Digital Décor software offered in its HP WallArt solution. The software allows clients in commercial retail spaces to take a concept and turn it into an explosion of images and color that captures the imagination.

The Digital Décor solution is cloud-based technology that ties all of the involved parties, from the designer to the production staff and the sales representative, into a simplified, streamlined process, from concept to final product. The prints are produced on the HP Latex 260 with HP latex inks, which are odorless and especially safe for use in sensitive health care and hospitality settings.

"The whole digital décor market is exploding right now," Strooh notes. "In the past, you had to have a huge photogravure press and some kind of web press, and print gazillions of meters of this stuff. Now we can do it on a one-off basis because of the technology. It started out a bit slow, but it's a huge growth area right now."

Still, when it comes to fun value, it's difficult to top automobile and building wraps. One jaw-dropping project saw Beeline and Blue wrap a 2009 Ford F-150 Raptor with images taken from the Star Wars franchise. There are images of Darth Vader on the hood and passenger door (which is actually truck owner and Des Moines resident, Trey Laymon, in costume). A friend of Laymon's posed in a Stormtrooper outfit, and a mural that adorns the back of the vehicle—created by SimonZ. Graphics—was painstakingly printed and installed by Beeline and Blue.

While Strooh admits that vehicle wraps have become a highly commoditized niche, there is still demand for specialized wraps that call for a high degree of craft and competence, which side jobbers simply cannot deliver. "A lot of wraps peel and start to look tatty because (the installers) don't use premium materials," he says.

Beeline and Blue's reach is not limited to Iowa by any stretch of the imagination. President Dwight D. Eisenhower—despite having passed away in 1969—is perched upon a jeep on the steps of the New York Historical Museum in New York looking ready for action, courtesy of the printer. The 10x5-foot piece, printed on 10mm thick layered Alupanel, took 45 minutes to print and another two hours to cut.

Another growth area for Beeline and Blue is fabric printing, most commonly used for banner stands and pop-up displays for trade shows. Previously, photographic and vinyl printing were the popular trade show displays, but have always proven to be bulky and time-consuming. The fabric can be permanently attached to the frame that can be collapsed into a tube, which makes trade show stand construction light and easy.

Outsourcing is another aspect that has enjoyed sound growth for Beeline and Blue in recent years. Strooh believes that customers are increasingly seeking single-source solution providers, and the printer takes great care in ensuring its third-party vendors provide the necessary turn times and quality standards.

Historically, Strooh points out that Beeline and Blue has thrived due to its willingness to broaden its product and service offering, and has been "light on its feet and very flexible" in following the evolving needs of customers. And since the company has a diverse customer base, Beeline and Blue can venture into a new product or service and not be overly concerned if the ROI schedule is somewhat extended.

"We have the ability to cross-pollinate resources in order to step into an area where we may not make money for a few years, but then the opportunity expands and grows," he says. "If you're in an industry that's become severely commoditized, it can be very hard to get the resources together to expand into a new industry where the ROI is going to take an extended period of time. That has caused competitors trouble as they tried to expand into the wide-format color business because they didn't have a steady revenue and profit stream. That has helped us tremendously."

Wide-format digital printing in general and the Digital Décor solution in particular are definitely the main talking points in Beeline and Blue's future (not to mention flatbed scanning for the cultural heritage market, i.e., museums and libraries). For a small printing company in a small state and operating in a small market, the firm has a penchant for thinking big. PI