Editor's Note

This issue of the WhatTheyThink Quarterly is all about labels, which are seen as a high-growth part of commercial printing, driven by e-commerce, food/beverage demand, and regulations. The market has surpassed 1.2 trillion square meters of label production volume per year, and is moving toward high-mix, low-waste production rather than only high-volume throughput. While flexo is still used for high-volume label production, digital label printing often complements it—or in some cases replaces it. But labels are about more than printing technology.  

David Zwang sets the scene with a look at the current lay of the land and how “Technology and Markets Keep Opportunities Coming.”

An up-and-coming (or up-and-came, depending whom you ask) technology is direct-to-object (DTO) printing, and while it is not new, it’s starting to appear in the industry zeitgeist. But is DTO a threat to label printing—or does it present its own new and unique set of opportunities? As David Zwang points out in “Direct-to-Object: Challenging Labels and Tags or Offering New Opportunities?” it could be a little of both. (Also be sure to register for the accompanying webinar on June 2.)

We often hear the phrase “supply chain.” But what does that mean, and what is the “connected supply chain” in the context of label converters? David Zwang finishes his trifecta of features this quarter with “Labels and the Connected Supply Chain.” Essentially, the connected supply chain has changed from moving things hand-to-hand or through email to more full-featured automated systems, tying together label design, purchasing, procurement, production and shipping systems. David walks through the various options.

There are of course different kinds of labels that serve different purposes. And for many print providers, labels are not thought of as a print job, but, rather, as an enterprise data problem. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee take a look at “Labels as Data: The Software Stack Behind Automated Label Production.”

In this quarter’s installment of “Cool Tools,” Mary Schilling looks at the SnapPress LP-1, a high-quality, nimble, portable, and shop-friendly label solution.

This quarter’s installment of The Start-Up Chronicles reprints a profile of dappas, a company whose goal is to help facilitate design and eliminate the entire prepress production, so all the converters who are working with them get a stream of work that is ready to go to press and converting.

In his quarterly column, swissQprint USA President Erik Norman explains how every leader has a default “lens” they naturally use to lead, decide, and create value. When growth stalls, initiatives drift, or leadership teams talk past each other, it is often because those lenses are competing instead of collaborating. Organizations led by people who recognize their own lens and intentionally make room for the others generally perform better.

Finally, we wrap up with a special labels and packaging-themed edition of our Around the Web miscellany of items that caught our attention.

Without further ado, welcome to “The Total Label” Issue!