POP Goes the Market

When designers are looking to spice up a room, they want something that “pops!” When retailers are looking to spice up sales, they turn to POPs. Point-of-purchase (POP) and point-of-sale (POS) signage have proven to be effective sales tools. They help draw in customers and influence them into spending more money once inside. Wide-Format Imaging recently contacted a variety of printers from around North America to find out what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s happening in the world of POPs and POS’.

Big Mountain

Big Mountain has seen a shift in the use of POS signage. “Efficiency and cost consciousness have become much more of a factor,” said Jason Cardonick, president, Big Mountain, Philadelphia, PA. He says advertiser have come up with more creative methods of getting their brand to the consumer and have had to rely on more non-traditional methods of advertising. When the economy was flourishing, Cardonick said advertisers were relying on more traditional brands of reaching consumers. Today, they have to look for more cost-efficient products, more environmentally friendly, and faster-to-market substrates.

“At Big Mountain, we are constantly trying to find products that reach more people for less money,” he said. “We have utilized our trade-show segment product mix to appeal to a diversity of end users and advertising agencies.” Cardonick credits his company’s PES240 fabric material and the ability to print white directly to acrylic as examples of huge wins for Big Mountain. “We have seen the demand for our capabilities on the POP/retail category more than double in past three years,” he reported.

Cardonick said hot trends in POS signage include pressure-sensitive adhesives, stand-up displays, fabric banners and window signage. Big Mountain is currently running a QS3200 Vutek printer. “It is a six-color printer with a white-ink option and has been a tremendous machine for us,” he said.

The company recently completed a job for Glaceau Smartwater. It was printed on 3M 36-20 and took approximately six hours to run. It was printed in 24 different size panels and each panel had to be color managed. “Utilizing our G7 technology, we were able to hit the color match immediately and it allowed us to produce this job with tremendous quickness.”

Coyle Reproductions

Jerry Jacobs, president, Coyle Reproductions, La Mirada, CA, said wide-format POS has enabled the retailer to promote their store, or the products within the store, with greater clarity and impact. “Be it in the window or hanging from the ceilings as aisle banners, these large graphics give life and visibility to the promotion and sales event that is taking place,” said Jacobs. He says POS creates awareness and has been proven to incrementally increase sales dollars and create a shopping experience in the store that customers can enjoy. “Customers will actually stay in the store longer, because POS gives them the feeling that there is a sense of activity going on, and the longer they are in the store, the more they will typically spend,” observed Jacobs.

The biggest challenge, according to Jacobs, is the actual space within the store. “There are many product manufacturers fighting for that space and that, of course, becomes a negotiating point for the retailer as to which specific products they choose to promote.”

Jacobs says that environmentally friendly materials have been getting more attention as of late. He added, however, that there is always a struggle between using these alternatives, which tend to be more expensive, versus using materials that are potentially more cost effective and within the budgets that are allocated for specific projects. “We have seen some products that have been manufactured from sustainable forests and, in fact, Coyle has already been FSC certified,” reported Jacobs. “No question that these types of materials are the hot topic of today.”