Primary Color: Master of Its Own Destiny

According to Mike Hirt, vice president of operations, the large-format press helps Primary Color respond to the needs of its national retail clients and restaurant chain accounts that are eclipsing the 600 to 700 store mark and that can no longer justify printing jobs on wide-format digital printers due to equipment speeds. Additionally, the press allows Primary Color to focus on supporting movie studios and existing agency accounts seeking larger sizes and higher quantities for the out-of-home space.

Passion for an Expanded Color Gamut

Primary Color has also developed an expanded color gamut for the press, Mike Hirt notes. "It has been a passion of ours for many years," he says. "We've developed our own iteration of expanded gamut during the past six months—with extensive R&D with proofing, ink sets and screening on different presses—to come up with an expanded gamut color set that makes the printed piece explode with color. We're able to use the expanded gamut across all offset and wide-format digital products, as well. We can also make hard and soft proofs of all our expanded gamut work, so there's no surprises on-press."

Rounding out some of the major equipment acquisitions are a 29˝ HP Indigo 10000 color digital press, an Agfa M-Press Tiger flatbed printer equipped with an in-line silkscreen unit and an EFI VUTEk TX3250r dye sublimation printer. In all, Primary Color recently added five EFI VUTEk wide-format digital printer models.

"We want to be the leader in our industry when we see products that are game changers, and we want to be an early adopter," Dan Hirt states. "The HP Indigo certainly was that, allowing us to produce variable data pieces that are high quality, but at a larger size. The agency clients liked the (Indigo) quality, but always felt constricted by the size limitations. This allows us to offer high-quality, variable data printing in whatever format they need.