Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year has given Orangebox owners and co-founders Stephen Bennett and Thomas Subritzky a chance to appreciate how they have grown the enterprise over the past two decades.
Now employing 30 staff across two branches in Wellington, where it was founded, and Auckland, the company’s capabilities range from data programming and variable data personalisation to award winning digital printing and mailhouse processing as well as fulfilment, warehousing, logistics, and distribution.
Thomas says, “The majority of our print is personalised and uses variable data, as it always has. However, we have also grown the generic print side of our business as digital colour has closed the gap with traditional offset.”
Recently, Orangebox installed a Revoria Press PC1120, supplied through Fujifilm Business Innovation New Zealand (FBNZ). Thomas says, “It is an upgrade from our two iGen 5 and C1000 digital presses, as well as various black and white equipment. We chose the Revoria Press PC1120 for its ease of use for operators, which is a key feature. Along with that, we were looking for colour quality and consistency. “After the installation, our operators needed just a few hours of training and they were ready to go. The Revoria Press PC1120 operating system is not that different to the ones we were using.”
Revoria innovations
The Revoria Press PC1120 offers a range of innovations, starting with its air suction feeder and static removal. These features provide highly stable paper feeding for a wide variety of paper including paper containing concentrated amounts of paper dust, cohesive coated paper, and film.
Its feeder system handles paper of different thicknesses ranging from thin paper at 52gsm to 400gsm.
The paper trays offer compatibility with various paper sizes for printing, from small sized paper of 98mm x 148mm to long paper of 330mm x 1200mm in simplex mode and up to 330mm x 729mm for duplex printing. In addition, a static eliminator enables printing on a variety of substrates such as films, metallic, and transparent media without them sticking together.
Outputting prints at a high speed of 120 pages per minute, the Revoria Press PC1120 achieves high definition, high resolution prints of 2400 dpi. It uses Super EA-Eco toner, which boasts the smallest toner particle size in the industry. At the front end, the Revoria Flow PC11high performance print server performs RIP processing at 1200 × 1200 dpi and 10 bits per colour (1024 gradations), generating high quality image data.
As one of New Zealand’s largest Direct Marketing companies, Orangebox uses the Revoria Press PC1120 to create personalised packaging, Direct Mail and booklets. Thomas says, “We also opted for the bookletmaker, which is simple and completely automated.”
Long-term partnerships
Solid relationships with clients and suppliers are an important part of Orangebox’s success. Thomas says, “We have worked with the team at FBNZ for about 12 years.
“We have known Ryan Stevens almost as long as we have been operating, and well before we put any Fuji gear in. It’s the relationships we have with the likes of Ryan and David Jupe that are a big part of why we continue our relationship with them.”
Among the big challenges Orangebox faces currently are the increasing cost of postage for Direct Mail and in the digital communications age, predicting the future. Thomas and Stephen share a pragmatic approach to dealing with these challenges. Thomas says, “You need to see change as an opportunity. You don’t necessarily need to be the pioneer, but you need to be a fast follower.”
He agrees that the future looks good for print. He says, “Yes, of course print has a bright future and from a comms perspective, it offers an even better return on investment when combined with digital channels. At Orangebox, we ensure that we are able to deliver data driven communications across a variety of physical and digital channels.
He concludes, “After 20 years, it is still satisfying when we see our clients and our staff succeed.”
