From Niche to Mainstream: Embellishment Everywhere
Walking the show floor at PRINTING United Expo 2025 in Orlando felt like stepping into a dream that had finally come to life. Everywhere I looked, there were printers, designers, and technology partners talking about metallics, textures, and specialty effects. For years, we in the embellishment space have been saying that the key to fighting commoditization is differentiation. This year, it was clear that message has landed.
Gone are the days when special effects were treated as gimmicks or luxury add-ons. They are now a strategic tool for business growth. Printers of every size were discussing how to incorporate digital foil, spot UV, raised coatings, and tactile finishes into their daily production. Booths across the show were covered in shimmering samples that pulled attendees in from across the aisles. You could literally see the energy shift as people began to understand that print has the power to do more than communicate. It can connect.
For me, it was emotional. I’ve spent nearly two decades advocating for digital embellishment. I’ve seen the puzzled looks, the skepticism, and the slow crawl of adoption. To finally walk into a show where everyone was talking about it like it was the hottest thing in print made me proud of how far we’ve come. This was the Taktiful dream from the start: to make print tactile, beautiful, profitable, and impossible to ignore.
Kevin Abergel brings two decades of successfully selling and marketing luxury print with digital embellishments and universal design to companies all over the world.
He dedicates his time to solving his customers business problems through innovative printing technologies, all with a keen eye on increasing brand engagement, increasing brand recognition, and increasing brand awareness for their products.
He believes the key to selling more product is by bringing its value proposition directly to the packaging.
He devotes a considerable amount of time thinking strategically about how this can be done using embellishments and other finishes.
He continues to study the effects of how luxury print leaves a deeper footprint in the brain, and why brands are remembered long after the box has been opened.
He embodies the idea that consumers buy packaging first and products second and empowers his team to innovate and disrupt the status quo.
Prior to founding taktiful, Kevin worked his way up the ranks at MGI Digital Technology where he worked with his father and his uncles and played an instrumental role in driving the sales and marketing of digital embellishments and luxury print.
His roles at MGI include Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing, Americas and APAC, North American Marketing Manager, EMEA Sales & Marketing Manager, Director of EMEA Marketing, among others.
