Multigraphics Ltd. isn’t the largest printing shop in town, but most Vancouverites are likely familiar with its large-scale work.
The North Vancouver company created the huge Canadian flag that was wrapped around downtown Vancouver’s Hotel Georgia earlier this year during the hotel’s renovation. It also created much of the flowing Olympic ad work that covered the inside and outside of Olympic venues and many other parts of Vancouver during the 2010 Games.
The large-scale advertising that adorned the city during the Games reflected advertising’s move to bigger and brighter; and Multigraphics sees its niche as being the print shop that can deliver any print job – no matter how big and bright.
With the investments it has made in new technology, Multigraphics is among the companies that are turning Lower Mainland’s small commercial printing industry – in which mechanical offset presses and screen printing were once the standards – into an innovative and digitally driven cluster.
Matthew Clarke, Multigraphics’ CEO, founded the print shop five years ago shortly after arriving in Vancouver from the United Kingdom.
He came here less than a year after selling the original incarnation of Multigraphics – which had grown to become one of the U.K.’s leading large-format printing firms for 10 million pounds – about $24 million at the time.
Printing runs in the Clarke family: Matthew’s father started Multigraphics U.K. in 1979, and both Clarke brothers owned and operated the company by the time it was sold.
With the capital that he earned from that sale, Clarke opened Multigraphics with a $1 million investment in printing technology and another $1 million investment in the employees and operations.
Among the company’s early investments was a flatbed digital printer that allowed the firm to print high-resolution imagery on any flat object up to 80 inches by 32 feet.
“When I look at how the printing industry has evolved from the old days … it used to be sort of sleepy and there wasn’t a massive range of products,” said Clarke. “We’re printing such a wide range of products now, creating so many different visual effects – the whole world has transformed.”
During the 2010 Olympics, Multigraphics created signage for many VANOC venues, Russia’s Sochi House, Quebec House and a handful of smaller facilities.
To create the 125-foot-tall Canadian flag wrap for the Hotel Georgia, the company used a 126-inch reel-to-reel printer to produce 26 individual 125-foot-by-126-inch panels.
The panels were then stitched together into a single image.
Multigraphics is private, so it doesn’t disclose sales figures, but Clarke said it took the company four years to reach profitability.
Its revenue, which is in the multimillions, grew about 66% this year. Much of that growth came from Olympics-related work.
Multigraphics was one of a number of B.C.-based commercial printers that returned last week from the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association’s annual expo in Las Vegas, where printing vendors show off their latest and greatest. This year’s expo, which was held between October 13 and 15, had a record 22,000 attendees.
While there, Clarke saw what will likely be Multigraphics’ next $500,000 investment: a fabric printer that uses “di-sublimation” to bake gaseous dyes into fabric to create soft signage.
“The end-users are tapping into all kinds of different ways of grabbing your attention to get you into their shops,” said Clarke. “It starts from right outside on the street, with big banners and building wraps, and it pulls you inside.”
Jonathon Colley, president and CEO of Vancouver-based commercial printer PacBlue Printing, was also scouting new printing materials and technologies at the expo.
“Two years have gone by [and] everybody’s felt the hit,” Colley said of the recession. “And we’re still under pressure, but now we need to be aggressive and move forward.”
In the last four years, PacBlue has spent roughly $1 million to buy two large flatbed printers and a large reel-to-reel printer.
Those purchases have helped expand the company’s large-format signage business, which is growing faster than its small-format business thanks to demand from, among other businesses, real estate firms who use large-format signage for their display suites and hoarding walls.
Colley noted that when he acquired PacBlue in 1993, it printed only black-and-white plans and specs for the construction industry.
In addition to printers so large that they fill an entire room, the company now has a four-foot-by-six-foot flatbed light scanner, which is essentially an oversized 150 megapixel digital camera.
The most interesting item placed on and reproduced by the scanner: a snake.
Colley noted that, while many companies are going to the Internet to promote themselves, the web can’t replace large-format signage.
What can replace it?
“Large-screen TVs – and that’s coming as well,” said Colley.
Indeed, both Clarke and Colley envision a future where traditional print signage is blended with digital and interactive technologies.
Said Colley: “It’s the evolution of the print industry.”