PONGS® materials and CMYUK’s unique Consumable Supported Asset Finance (CSAF) are proving to be a dynamic duo for this Leeds-based wide-format print specialist

When you have a superior product, the facts speak for themselves. So asking Nathan Swinson-Bullough, MD at Imageco why his company has been championing PONGS® materials for the past year or so, he simply says, “It prints very well with excellent colour reproduction, and has all the required ratings. It looks really good and has a nice white point to it. The product is competitively priced too.

Enough said.

But if words aren’t sufficient, then the actions of a global blue chip client identifying the PONGS® Mambo material printed through Imageco’s EFI VUTEK GS3250LX Pro printer as the best example of print quality for its international rollout, when compared with alternative materials, should settle the matter.

The CMYUK factor
Imageco started working with CMYUK, the UK’s largest, independent supplier of wide format printers, cutters and materials, and exclusive distributor of PONGS® materials in the UK and Ireland, over a year ago, and has now switched to PONGS® materials for the vast majority of its retail and expo graphics for stretch frame systems and lightboxes.

Top of the list here is PONGS® PrintTex Artist Mambo high quality, polyester backlit. This is followed by PONGS® DIRECT-TEX SOFTIMAGE CONTRAST, a high white textile with a coated black reverse that gives excellent print quality and total blackout. Used for expo backdrops, retail graphics, and event branding.

“We have a very good relationship with Joel Willcock, CMYUK’s Textile Business Development specialist. He is very proactive and knowledgeable, and always gives us exactly what we need.” says Swinson-Bullough who adds, “We’ve met the powers that be at PONGS® and through CMYUK we know the products and can reflect this expertise back to our clients.”

One of Imageco’s largest clients – a global retailer – uses all PONGS® materials for on-going UK and European rollouts. The PONGS® PrintTex Artist Mambo used for lightboxes is predominant here. “We’ve printed around 2,000 of these in the last week alone,” says Swinson-Bullough.

Consumable Supported Asset Finance
Another benefit of buying its materials with CMYUK is its unique Consumable Supported Asset Finance or CSAF option, which Imageco has taken full advantage of.

(CSAF) is a very simple purchasing solution that CMYUK has developed in conjunction with Sheppex Limited, offering highly competitive lending rates.

By customers switching some, or all of their roll-to-roll consumable spend to CMYUK, the latter contributes a monthly amount directly into a customer’s finance agreement, thereby reducing the monthly repayment.

For Imageco, the money accrued on its materials spend goes into a CMYUK account that can subsequently be used against a capital purchase from £50,000 to £500,000. To date Imageco’s ‘pot’ stands at £5K, and it’s growing, as under this scheme, the more a customer spends with CMYUK, the more it saves.

“It’s a good system, and we’re looking at buying another EFI VUTEk printer as we’ve got so much work going through, so we need another workhorse. Imageco is growing and we need to expand. The CSAF system will help with this as the more we spend on consumables, the more we save on our monthly printer repayments, and we buy a lot of materials, we predict this to increase,” says Swinson-Bullough.

CSAF offers uncapped savings to customers for as long as they spend with CMYUK. It reduces monthly equipment repayments, and supplies exactly the same products or the same-quality equivalent. The scheme guarantees to match or improve on purchase rates from current suppliers.

“The CSAF offers huge benefits to our customers offering a win/win situation,” says Joel Willcock, CMYUK’s Textile Business Development specialist. “There’s no tie in either – you can stop buying your consumables from CMYUK at any time, but the question has to be, why would you?”