Faster, more creative customised printing for retail with HP Inc.

Martin discusses print trends in retail. 

Retail customers are demanding shorter turnaround times for print jobs, as well as more customisation, says Tomas Martin, Director and GM, HP Large Format Production, Graphics Solutions Business, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP.

"Brands and retailers have challenges on how to engage customers in the store. They have to save costs, they need to speed up the time to market," said Martin of today's professional printing landscape. Brands are also being challenged to remain cyber-secure, environmentally sustainable, and offer customised campaigns in every language as part of their marketing, he said.

At the same time, consumers are faced with a barrage of visuals everywhere they go, making individual brands much harder to notice, a phenomenon called visual contamination.

HP is addressing these challenges with new printing solutions. HP's printers still handle 2D prints on paper but can do much more, printing on all kinds of other materials, for all kinds of purposes. Packaging, for example, offers a relatively neglected surface that can be used to connect to customers, and also as real estate for advertising, Martin said. "Packaging is becoming a brand marketing label," he noted. "You can explain what the product is, explain what you are about (instead of printing) just the logo."

HP can also customise the packaging right down to one-of-a-kind items. In a HP campaign carried out with Coca Cola, every bottle is different, he said.

Coca Cola bottles with custom packaging - no two are alike. These bottles were part of the Extraordinary Campaign for Diet Coca-Cola which put 2 million different bottles, each with a unique design, on supermarket shelves and restaurants in the US. 

When branding across multiple materials, speed and customisation are not enough. Reproducing corporate colours accurately becomes important, Martin said. "We provide...brand consistency, the same colour and quality across multiple devices and multiple products," he said.

Examples of what HP can do are on show at three Graphics Solutions Centres of Excellence around the world. The centres showcase how customers are pushing the envelope on printing. Highlights of a tour through the Singapore GSB Centre of Excellence, hosted by Puneet Chadha, Director, Marketing, Graphics Solutions Business, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP, included:

Chadha at the beginning of the tour. The floor graphics were printed with a HP printer.

Colourful wrapping paper is easily printed with HP printers.

Polyethylene textile fabric as a printing substrate. It is environmentally-friendly and has no smell.

Latex has been used as a print substrate for many years. It now comes in a magnetic form for added versatility.

A living room setup provides inspiration on what can be printed. The fabric for the chair, lampshade and window panes have all been printed with HP technology. Each pane of the window is of a different substrate, allowing visitors to see how the inks interact with individual substrates.

This leather jacket, made of a synthetic leather, was provided by a potential customer who wanted to know if HP could print on the material, Chadha explained. 

HP's SmartStream Mosaic feature enables many designs to be created from a limited number of 'seed' designs. Here, the original design or seed picture - in the centre column, third from the top - is used to create different, one-of-a-kind designs for custom prints.

These pictures come to life with the Arilyn augmented reality mobile app. They can be viewed in 3D with a viewing accessory that fits over the a smartphone.

One company printed poems from illiterate Korean grandmothers onto tissue boxes, preserving spoken heritage, which are displayed on the table to the left of Chadna.

One of the latest innovations at HP Inc. are phosphorescent (glow-in-the-dark) and fluorescent (glows in ultraviolet light) inks. These are the printed materials in normal lighting. 

Materials printed in phosphorescent and fluorescent inks change colour under the right lighting.

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