Package Design - January/February 2013 - 26

The end of Black-and-WhiTe
Jaclo’s high-end bathroom accessories
can be found in bathroom suites of some
of the country’s most renowned hotels,
including the MGM SkyLofts in Las Vegas,
the Essex House and The Plaza in New
York City, as well as numerous Best Western properties. Although the company
ships approximately 1,000 products a day
to decorative plumbing showrooms and
plumbing supply houses and wholesalers,
it didn’t see package appearance as a
pressing concern because products
would be removed from boxes and put on
display in showrooms.
“We used to package our products in
plain white boxes with black-and-white
thermal labels, assuming that consumers
would never see the package,” says Chris

Pike, chief operating officer at Jaclo.
“That’s no longer true these days, and we
realized we needed to step up our packaging and include an attractive, informative label.”
As home design outlets and decorative showrooms have expanded, it is now
more common for consumers to see
unopened product boxes on display.
Jaclo was also looking to solve a vexing
problem that was costing time and
money: SKU chaos. With more than
40,000 product SKUs in stock, Jaclo
required a huge variety of pre-printed label
stock to meet their graphic requirements.
This was creating serious challenges with
their labeling operations. When orders
came in, packaging personnel would need

“Peace” in a labeled bag
A do-it-yourself (DIY) package printing setup
doesn’t have to be elaborate or complicated to use.
A case in point is the solution employed by Peace
Coffee, a roaster, grinder and distributor of coffees
that it sources from fair-trade certified growers.
These are mostly small farmers who are assured of
getting an equitable market price when they deal
with Peace Coffee and other socially aware firms
that have pledged to observe fair-trade practices.
Because these varietal batches are tiny compared
with the output of national-brand coffee producers,
mass-produced packaging and labeling methods are
of limited use to Peace Coffee. The company has
found a helpful alternative in the LX900 label
printer from Primera Technology, a tabletop inkjet
device designed for very-short-run applications.

For more inFormation, visit
A B Graphic International, www.abgint.com
Epson America Inc., pos.epson.com
HP, www.hp.com
Kaleidoscope, www.thinkkaleidoscope.com
Primera Technology Inc., www.primera.com

26

january/february 2013

to spend time finding labels for each
package. Not only did this require additional inventory space, but finding the
right label was causing delays and shipping mistakes.
What Jaclo needed was an ondemand printing solution that would eliminate the label mess and produce a more
decorative retail label. Pike set out on a
mission: “Our goal was to reduce errors,
increase speed reduce inventory and
enhance the Jaclo brand.” When the
company procured in-house color label
printing capabilities, it transformed its
labeling operations change from a timeconsuming headache to an “on-the-fly
process.” Initially, the company used
Epson ColorWorks C3400-printed color

With its LX900, Peace Coffee can tailor package presentation to package contents in ways that
would be well-nigh impossible on a conventional
scale. “Coffees are a seasonal crop that changes
from year to year, so the description of what a coffee tastes like might change dramatically over
time,” says Katzung. “We have the flexibility now to
change that information on a label so customers
can be better informed on what to expect when
they brew at home.”
Specialty labels can be created for cafés, coffee
bars and other customers that want something
more distinctive than a generic-looking package.
“It is very easy to take the artwork files they provide
and create high-quality custom labels for their
needs,” Katzung says.
Short-run digital printing lets Peace Coffee
extend the utility of its labels and enrich the stories
they tell. “Some retailers require UPCs on their
packaging while others don’t,” Katzung explains.
“Now if we want to print a dozen labels with UPCs
for one customer we can do that easily, whereas
before, this would have to be worked into the
design well before it hit the presses.” Adding QR
codes to the labels links purchasers to information
about the provenance of the coffees and the back
stories of their growers.
To create a distinct packaging design for its new
Package Design - January/February 2013

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