By Cassandra Balentine
Producing high-quality graphics consistently across a range of substrates takes the right mix of skill, equipment, and media. Building a strong and loyal customer base requires commitment to quality as well as excellent customer support.
Royal Printing Solutions understands and practices these concepts. Established in 2006, the company is a family-owned wholesale printer based in Aurora, CO. With 45 employees and 35,00 total square feet of operating space, it produces everything from banners; rigid signage; graphics—including wall, window, floor, and vehicles; to fabric-based soft signage.
The print provider offers large format wholesale printing to the trade. It ships to all 50 states in the U.S. and international markets including Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Target customers are promotional firms, marketing agencies, independent sign and banner companies, and franchise-related sign companies.
Above: Royal Printing Solutions’ investment in equipment, staff, processes, and operational discipline enables it to run its textile presses 24 hours a day.
Breaking it Down
Most of Royal Printing Solutions’ business—approximately 90 percent—is in some form wide format related. The remaining ten percent is made up of smaller print graphics to round out its product portfolio.
Its wide format offerings include a range of banner products, flags, and decals, as well as rigid output. With its flatbed printing capabilities, the company prints on a diverse portfolio of surfaces including aluminum composite material, acrylic, and styrene.
Its business model also includes an expanding fabric/textile sign and banner division, which utilizes transfer dye-sublimation (dye-sub) printing. Currently Corey Billups, president, Royal Printing Solutions, estimates that textile printing makes up about ten percent of its overall business. This is an area that it is strategically investing in and expects strong growth in the coming years.
To produce its textile work Royal Printing Solutions employs an EFI VUTEk FabriVU 340 and recently added an EFI VUTEk FabriVU 340i+ last year. The addition of the second FabriVU significantly bumped up its capacity for textile printing.
Royal Printing Solutions prefers the transfer dye-sub process over direct printing to fabric for a few reasons, the top being the ability to achieve a better quality product, shares Billups.
Transfer dye-sub also benefits its media range. Royal Printing Solutions stocks 11 different fabric materials at any given time. “It’s easier for us to print on paper and transfer as needed,” he shares.
Many of its preferred fabrics come from Aberdeen Fabrics, Inc. Aberdeen is a U.S. manufacturer and distributor of 100 percent polyester, custom engineered, technical textile materials that are well suited for many fabric printing and graphics applications.
The company has been doing business with Aberdeen for many years. In fact, Billups says the relationship predates his time with Royal Printing Solutions. “We love Aberdeen for three reasons. One is they take care of us from a relationship standpoint like gold. Prices are also competitive and the selection is world class. And the third reason is fabrics are manufactured in the U.S. in an environmentally sustainability way.”
The print provider also credits its ability to produce high-quality fabric output in part to its investment in a Monti Antonio heat press, which can handle rolls up to 126 inches wide.
Additionally, the shop has a custom cutting and sewing finishing department. It runs three shifts a day, operating 24 hours Sunday through Friday. As the company grows, it anticipates adding capacity on Saturdays too. “We have the capability to do it all—flags, table throws, custom throws, silicone edge graphics, backdrops, etc.,” says Billups.
The company continues to invest in the textile printing space. “We’ve been doing dye-sub transfer for more than a decade. We’ve gotten very good at it from a printing perspective as well as finishing, including cutting and sewing,” shares Billups.
Custom Flags
At press time, Royal Printing Solutions was wrapping up a job for a repeat customer—a large marketing agency with national accounts. The job was a series of custom flags, which were printed back to back with flag mesh from Aberdeen along with blockout liner.
This particular job followed a similar path to all of its orders. A customer communicates with its sales representative to take the order. The representative collects the digital assets, which are preferably print-ready files. Jobs are preflighted and in all cases a production-related proof is sent and approved by the customer.
Once proof approvals are complete, the job is put into production. Final products are shipped via UPS for normal orders and FedEx Freight for large jobs shipped on pallets. Royal Printing Solutions’ standard production timeline for textile-based work is two days from approvals and it has the ability to accept rush jobs. Billups says it has an on-time hit rate of 99.8 percent of jobs going out on time.
Royal Printing Solutions also boasts a spoilage rate of two percent. “We spend a small fortune on quality control,” admits Billups, noting that this applies for all jobs—whether it is one flag or 10,000 banners.
Looking Ahead
Royal Printing Solutions’ technical and operational confidence is born from over a decade of dedicated experience. “The textile market is expanding and we’re a growing company. We want to be a bigger player in this growing space,” concludes Billups.
Its investment in equipment, staff, processes, and operational discipline enables it to run its textile presses 24 hours a day. The company is currently revamping its website with enhanced ecommerce capabilities and implementing a new MIS. Its commitment to customer service and quality control mean it is poised to serve the trade with high-quality textile printing in large quantities.
Jan2024, Digital Output
