For half a decade Creative Labels, Inc. has been taking color matching to the next level with SpotOn! Flexo
The Company
Founded in 1980, Creative Labels, Inc. started with one press, three people, and 700 square feet. Today the company operates out of an 18,000 square foot manufacturing facility with six presses featuring both flexo and high-definition digital capabilities. The company has also invested in leading-edge digital plate-making and prepress capabilities. Creative Labels serves the prime label market specializing in the highest quality beverage, food, health & beauty labels and decals. Given the company’s location in Northern California’s Santa Clara County, Creative Labels is strategically positioned to serve California’s bustling wine, spirits, and craft beer industries.
The Challenge
In the label printing industry, color matching can be a challenge given brands’ rising demands for job-to-job repeatability. In sectors like wine, craft beer, and health & beauty, with some of the industry’s most sophisticated and challenging labeling applications, Creative Labels wanted to ensure their in-house color-matching capabilities were among some of the best in the industry. However, bringing new technology onto the production floor can be daunting for any label converter. Ease-of-use is critical, often determining whether or not production personnel will actually use it.
The APR Solution – SpotOn! Flexo
Creative Labels was an early adopter of APR’s SpotOn! Flexo software, using the technology as a fast, precise, and convenient tool to measure color.
The company’s Vice President, Chris Martin, states, “We’ve been running SpotOn! Flexo for five years. As every label converter knows, matching color, and keeping color consistent, can be a challenge. SpotOn! Flexo enables us to make sure we’re being consistent from run to run. It also allows us to have a database of custom colors for customers and a specific color can be pulled at any time.
For example, if I want to do a job and use the same mango orange I’ve used in the past for another customer, all I have to do is type ‘mango’ into the system and all the colors that have mango in it come up. If I want to run a job with 185 red, all the jobs with 185 red come up and you can choose the one you want.
SpotOn! Flexo is really user friendly. I think if it suddenly disappeared, we’d have a mutiny. We don't have any other option that is as easy to use or that is as practical for what we’re doing.”