Circle Graphics is the world’s largest producer of large-format digital graphics. Its 400,000 square foot manufacturing facilities house 88 grand format printers, custom automated finishing equipment and coating capabilities to produce printed recyclable materials up to 16 feet wide. The prepress department processes more than 30,000 files per day with the aid of proprietary software automation tools. The company operates around-the-clock, 7 days a week to deliver extraordinary customer service and prints over 350 million square feet of material annually. Rob Styacich is the company’s EVP of Sales. He is a veteran of the printing business and is experienced in both sales and operations. Insider talked with Styacich about the printing business.
What trends are you seeing regarding the usage of vinyl by billboard companies?
We are seeing many of our customers placing greater emphasis on going “green” and using environmental friendly substrates. All of our Eco Posters are printed on an environmentally friendly substrate and we just introduced our new Eco-Flexx 3.0 recyclable bulletin product. This new material has a superior print surface to the previous version and hangs much like vinyl. Billboard installers also prefer the new material because it is so much lighter thus promoting safety since it is easier to install.
Is the recyclable product durable?
The product is definitely durable. We guarantee it for a year and up to 6 rotations. We definitely did a lot of field testing before we put it in the market to make sure it meet our expectations. The product has a tighter weave, greater tensile strength and is a seamless 5 meter product. Due to the attributes of this new product we have experienced a 25% increase in its use through the first quarter of 2016.
What questions should a billboard company be asking when it evaluates a printer?
Our customers require that we provide price, quality, turnaround and world class customer service. We are able to deliver all of this on an ongoing basis. From a pricing standpoint we offer industry leading pricing. Quality is a given in today’s highly competitive market place. Customers demand it and we deliver it. Lastly, from a capacity standpoint we have 88 large format digital printers at our manufacturing locations which allow us to meet or beat our customer’s turnaround requirements. Our main manufacturing location and corporate office is in Longmont, CO but we also have production facilities in Boston, Los Angeles and Baton Rouge. On the front end our IT team has built and maintains our industry leading “MYCircle” online ordering system. Lastly our production floor includes proprietary manufacturing / finishing processes for many of our products.
What is Circle Graphics focus for the future?
Our plan is to continue our growth. We now have 3 divisions in our company. The Out of Home division drove much of our growth over the past 15 years. In 2009 we started our Business Products Division and in 2011 we started our Consumer Digital Printing division. Since the inception of these other 2 divisions the majority of our growth has come from the Out of Home and Consumer Digital Printing divisions. There is great opportunity for all 3 and we are poised to drive additional growth. Specific to our Out of Home division we have grown through acquisition in the last 2 years. The focus now is to grow our transit advertising production by taking advantage of these acquisitions. Our east and west coast production facilities have a strong transit focus and are in close proximity to the largest transit markets in the US. We will take advantage of this to fuel our transit growth.
