Villa Maria’s marketing team introduces us to the Fujifilm ApeosPro C750 LED printer. With its seamless performance and versatile capabilities, it’s revolutionised the department, boosting efficiency, cutting costs, and enhancing creative outputs for the popular wine brand.
The busy marketing department responsible for producing promotional items for popular wine brand Villa Maria has welcomed a new team member on board, brightening things up, accelerating productivity, adding a dash of colour, and even improving office morale. The Fujifilm ApeosPro C750 LED production printer has quickly proven a reliable and popular performer, taking on a variety of tasks without hesitation or hassle. And by bringing small-run print jobs in-house, the marketing department is more efficient, saves costs and reduces time-to-market for a multitude of custom outputs including trade support material like table cards, tasting mates, beverage lists, and more.
Indevin Group Design Studio Manager Anita Niven describes the ApeosPro C750 as a game-changer: “It’s a great machine, the print quality is second to none, and it only took a few hours to learn how to drive it. We are reaping positive feedback from customers and operating at a level truly in line with Indevin Group’s industry leadership,” she says.
Founded more than 60 years ago, Villa Maria offers an extensive portfolio of geographically and stylistically diverse, highly awarded premium wines. The brand is owned by Indevin, New Zealand’s leading producer of high-quality wine with grapes from over 3,000 hectares of planted vineyards blended in wineries across Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay, and Gisborne. Since 2007, Indevin has partnered with some of the most progressive wine retailers in Australia, the USA, and the UK to support private and own brand wine programmes. Indevin’s Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Rosé, Pinot Noir and Merlot are found as exclusive and own brand wine with partners including Tesco (UK), Gallo (USA), and Waitrose (UK).
Situation
While the Dutch proverb says good wine praises itself, in a crowded market a little help from specialists goes a long way. Indevin’s marketing team supports multiple channels and activity across a broad portfolio covering global markets, with activities including design, brand, digital, communications, activation, and customer marketing. “We create efficiencies and streamline processes tailored for each market,” explains Anita. “The design team works on all Above the Line/Below the Line collateral including photoshoots, New Product Development, and activations from a full design studio. We also partner directly with our domestic New Zealand sales team, and we’re integral to Indevin’s corporate and internal functions.”
There’s a lot going on, she smiles. “It’s truly never a dull moment for the marketing team – particularly when design briefs regularly come in from across the world.”
This also means substantial print and document production requirements. “We predominately produce on-premise trade support material including table cards, tasting mats, table talkers, beverage lists and wine of the month promotions. We also create corporate stationery, including business cards, compliments slips and training manuals just to name a few.”
On top of all that, Anita says relying on industrial printers is unwieldy, particularly given that these print runs are generally low-volume and have short lead times and even shorter deadlines. “In short, it is super expensive and not cost effective. Often it takes longer to set the machine up than to do the print run, as most of our jobs are small – for example, 30 wine of the month table cards. This drives the individual print unit prices up. And that’s made the biggest part of managing the design team prioritising jobs and managing deliverables for each market. With third-party printers we were constantly juggling deadlines, chasing status updates and creating more admin on project management.”
Solution
With a move to state-of-the-art modern offices, the marketing team had its eye on bringing print in-house and eliminating the overheads, hassle, delays, and headaches associated with third-party print. “We’re all about creating efficiencies as a fast-paced and growing business, so we require innovative technology that keeps up,” says Anita. “And that made clear that a better printing management system and better experience for our staff and customers was necessary.”
The spec was clear: the team was after an easily controlled complete document management solution which would readily integrate with existing technology and design systems. “We wanted to replicate what we were outsourcing and really own the process from design to print,” Anita notes. And when it turned out that Indevin Group had a pre-existing preferred supplier agreement with Fujifilm, she was delighted. “As a previous user of these machines I was thrilled. I knew we were getting a machine suitable for the needs of our evolving business and fast-paced industry.”
The ApeosPro C750 copies, prints, and faxes with up to 75 pages per minute in 2400×2400 dpi colour, handles stock from 52 to 350 grams per square metre, and up to 330x1300mm in size and is suitable for creating a wide range of marketing outputs rapidly and efficiently with full colour management and imposition. The machine even features a finisher with a three-knife trim delivering print-ready full-bleed documents.
The only real challenge with introducing the new team member, says Anita, was associated with its physical needs. “The biggest factor was how we were going to integrate the new printer given the sheer size of the machine!” she laughs.
Results
With that issue resolved, she says it was time to get down to business. “Once the design team were confident on how to use it and the prints started rolling out, the wider team quickly worked out how this would transform our design operations. And as design collateral arrives in our key markets and retail partners, we’ve received positive feedback on fast turnaround times for printing, while enjoying lower costs, and improved efficiency. So far, it’s been glowing feedback, and we hope to increase our in-house printing capabilities.”
In-house printing doesn’t only mean fast, accurate and responsive output. It also means easier processes and reduced ‘busywork’ for the design team. “Instead of sinking time into briefing suppliers, partners and doubling up on communication, we’re designing or focusing on quality control,” Anita explains. “My team now control what and when we do from start to finish on every single job. Printing in house makes so much business sense, not just from a brand point of view, but managing our brand guidelines, by consistently sensor checking our brand colours are printing accurately, not to mention the cost savings over the year that can now be better spent throughout the entire business.”
She says the Fujifilm ApeosPro allows the team to be flexible, pragmatic and provide a real advantage for all its customers. It has stand-out features, too, which occasionally impress individual team members who find its ability to automate previously tricky tasks a revelation. “For me it’s the ability to print on pre-creased, pre-die cut, and pre-trimmed table talker stock. Gone are the days of hand creasing and applying double sided tape by hand. This alone has streamlined our internal capabilities, both financially and in production time it took to get these done and out the door!” Finally, she says a quality machine is enhanced by quality backing. “The support from the Fuji team has been amazing; we wouldn’t fully utilise the ApeosPro’s capabilities without their help and training. Watch this space, as my team learns more of the device’s capabilities, including on a new campaign in September. Keep your eyes peeled for a beautiful new creative from Villa Maria across multiple printed touchpoints, all done on our ApeosPro!”
