How Fujifilm’s J Press 720S Transforms Business Strategy at Color Ink

Unbelievable. Productive. Faster. These are some of the words Todd Meissner, President of Sussex, WI-based Color Ink, uses to describe things around his shop these days. Meissner’s prose comes on the heels of Color Ink’s decision to add Fujifilm’s (Booth 2013) J Press 720S into its portfolio.

Todd Meissner, left, President, Color Ink, proudly stands next to his J Press 720S along with his son Austin, Sales and Sourcing Manager, at their Sussex, WI facility.

“We’re taking jobs off of the 40" litho press, as well as jobs from our wide-format press,” says Meissner. “We are moving more jobs over to the J Press 720S because it makes good economic sense. The inkjet technology is unbelievable; it produces tremendous quality, and it’s a faster way to produce many of our jobs.”

With a 29.6x20.9" sheet, and an output of 2,700 sheets per hour, Fujifilm’s second generation sheetfed J Press 720S is an ideal solution for printers like Color Ink. The configuration at Color Ink is capable of printing 100-lb. text weight to 18-pt board stocks.

“When we looked at other offerings before committing to the J Press 720S, we felt there wasn’t anything that was even close, in our opinion, to the cost of ownership, quality level, and uptime,” Meissner says. “With the quality we are seeing on Fujifilm’s J Press 720S, it’s better than litho; it’s a better way to print.”

Rooted in success

Jim Meissner, Todd’s father, started Color Ink in 1984 as a commercial printer. Today, along with Todd’s son, Austin, the third-generation, family-owned and operated business runs things from a 100,000-sq. ft. facility within two buildings, on land that was once a family farm.

The operation includes 75 full-time employees and 50 temporary employees that work up to three shifts a day, five days a week.

“My grandfather started the company with very humble roots,” says Austin, the Sales and Sourcing Manager. “It certainly means a lot to me being third generation at Color Ink.”

Color Ink looked to expand its operations by taking advantage of some ripe opportunities. One of those areas was the folding carton market. The J Press 720S helps hit that mark.

“We understand that in the folding carton market, especially for the consumer market and brand awareness, hitting brand colors to their full integrity is so vital,” Austin says. “A portion of our business, I’d say maybe 15%, caters to the consumer packaging group.”

With the J Press 720S, Color Ink is able to more closely match PMS colors. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to expand into that market in a way we’ve never been able to successfully do before,” Austin says. “And we think there’s a really strong opportunity to do that with the configuration of the J Press we purchased.”

Because color consistency and tight project turnarounds always are on the minds of print service providers, the J Press 720S helps make it a non-issue. “The color consistency is phenomenal,” says Mark Linski, Color Ink’s J Press 720S Operator. “From sheet one to the last sheet, there is no variance in color. And the ease of use goes from maintenance all the way through the ease of the interface. It just keeps running and running and running.”

Printing on-demand

With shorter runs and versioning becoming more relevant for print buyers, printing on-demand is key at Color Ink.

For a lot of the retailers, their store accounts across the country may be 1,000 stores or maybe a couple hundred stores. “When we are producing graphics for each store, we’re talking about run lengths of maybe 200 to 1,000 units, short runs,” Todd says. “That’s why the J Press 720S is such a great fit for us. We’re going from one job to another without stopping. It’s the same paper, it’s the same sheet size, but we’re literally printing 10 of this, 20 of this, 500 of that, nonstop, on the fly.”

Today, Color Ink is eliminating the need for customers to warehouse finished product and print on-demand for not that much more of a higher price per unit, compared to ordering 10,000 or 20,000 units at a time.

“Fujifilm always seems to come forward with very relevant solutions for our business,” Todd says. “Our experience with their equipment, consumables, and people have been instrumental in transforming our business.”