Warwick Printing installed a liquor store wall mural in a single day using Drytac ReTac wall media, despite having to work around shelves full of fragile stock.

Brampton, ON – Warwick Printing has completed a challenging wall mural project, relying on Drytac ReTac to get the job done in a single day.

The client, South Country Co-op Liquor in Redcliff, Alberta, Canada, required Warwick Printing to design, print and install 48 individual wall panels making up a mural spanning the store. As well as promoting the spirits, beer and wine on sale, the mural had a personal touch with a 'Cheers Redcliff' message. The installation took around eleven hours, including the set-up and tear-down of scaffolding, and having to negotiate some fragile obstacles - the bottles themselves.

Lee Weighill, Owner of Warwick Printing, explains: "The main challenge was figuring out how to reach the 17' (5.2m) install height with racks up against every wall without having to empty the whole store out.

"There was not enough space for even the smallest scissor lift or boom lift and regular A-frame ladders would not get us close enough to the walls in the right position. We ended up using painters' scaffolding and had to stack two units to get high enough, but it was still a 26" (66cm) reach to the wall which made it a little more difficult."

However, the team overcame these problems. "It was a good day's work and not one bottle was knocked to the floor!" says Lee.

The choice of vinyl was key to completing the job on time and in total Warwick Printing ran over 260' (80m) of Drytac ReTac Smooth 150 through its HP Latex 360 printer. This 150μ (6 mil) white polymeric printable PVC film is coated with ReTac ultra-removable adhesive technology on one side, making it simple to install, reposition and remove printed graphics from surfaces such as walls.

Lee says ReTac is his 'favourite go-to' wall mural vinyl. "We've worked with Drytac ReTac many times previously and are very familiar with it," he says.

Based in Lethbridge, AB, Warwick Printing has evolved from mainly offset press commercial printing to more digital wide format work in the last two years. Diversifying has helped the business reach new customers and survive the difficult trading conditions of this year's pandemic.

"We have fared pretty well so far during COVID-19," says Lee. "Overall business was down significantly, as much as 65% in the beginning, but we have seen some major gains in our wide format and signage division during the same period. I estimate we have done more volume during the pandemic than we did in the previous year and a half.

"We saw an opportunity very early in the pandemic for signage and floor graphics and quickly created marketing materials so we were ready when business started opening up again. We've used dozens of rolls of Drytac FloorTac in the last six months, at one point running our HP Latex printer day and night to print COVID-related floor graphics.

"Because of this we also picked up a lot of other vinyl business unrelated to COVID. This has for sure helped fill the void left in our other areas of our commercial printing."