Great ideas that you need to know.

Our first application example

JAM Corporation

Mr. Masanori Yamakawa, who is representative director of JAM Corporation, established his company originally as a quick print shop. He said, "In five years from the establishment of the company we plunged into the age of a price cutting war where 100 business cards were sold at the price as low as JPY 1,000 (approx. £8). Then we thought that we would have to provide customers with added value other than low-price quick printing. We had been using Risograph machines, digital duplicators for a long time and we fully understood the ins and outs of Risographs: we were expert users of them. So, we changed gear and decided to become a quick print shop by taking full advantage of our expertise of Risograph printing and specialising in printing by Risograph. We also provided customers with raised printing. We prepared special paper so that customers could produce and enjoy their own unique prints.

At present our company is well known under the name of "Retro-flavoured Printing JAM" in Japan, and this name is widely spread among artists and designers by word of mouth. We print flyers for music related companies, art gallery postcards, café shop cards and pamphlets for artists, all in small print quantities. We were looking to add other printing to our portfolio but traditional screen-printing required some pieces of equipment and a big work area for making emulsion coated screens, it also required special experienced skills. Then we found out about the GOCCOPRO 100. All you have to do is just place the machine on the table and press the button. Screens are digitally and automatically generated. As soon as we saw how easy it was to use the GOCCOPRO 100, we thought this was the very screen maker for us. "We introduced it to our print shop at once."

We have a concept. That is "WE PLAY WITH PRINTING AND WE ENJOY WHAT WE PRINT”. Based on this concept, we have been organising various workshops six times a year where people can experience and enjoy stencil printing such as mimeograph. We wanted to include screen-printing by GOCCOPRO 100 in the program of our workshop. We just ask participants to pay material costs, so running these workshops doesn’t make huge amounts of money, but this is an investment because they come back. We are constantly sowing the seeds for the future. We want all artists and designers to know how to screen-print the easy way, the GOCCOPRO WAY. This is established technology used in a new way to expand and diversify the way artists, designers and crafty people can express themselves.

Helping and supporting them is one of our company’s missions.

So Image data is directly transferred to GOCCOPRO 100. Master making is very easy and low-cost.

We are now in the business of selling imaged screens to our customers. Our customers bring their digital image files to us, and there and then we make screens on GOCCOPRO 100. We sell them imaged screens and a frame and off they go to create some of their very own products. We request our customers buy a frame, stretch a screen onto the frame, put ink and screen-print using a squeegee. Our target customers are designers and art students studying at technical Colleges and arty Universities, these students are introduced to screen-printing in classes. Other artistic people without knowledge of screen-printing can also experience it at our workshop, they can find how interesting and rewarding screen-printing can be. We find once they have a new found interest in screen-printing at our workshop,

they come back to us and use our service again and again.

The main advantage is GOCCOPRO 100 can make screens directly from digital data. It is very common that artists and designers of today create designs on a PC or Mac therefore, unless they can use digital data for screen making, any screen maker is useless. One of the main reasons that we decided to introduce GOCCOPRO 100 into our print shop was the realisation that customers were able to create their own screens and print with ease. So from Illustrator, Photoshop, Coral Draw, PDF and JPG we can go straight to screen. We think artists and designers can develop and expand their unique way of expression by making full use of GOCCOPRO 100 through trial and error. GOCCOPRO 100 screen masters can accept water-based ink, oil-based ink and solvent ink. The cost of screen making by GOCCOPRRO 100 is lower than that of traditional emulsion screen making and it is also so very easy. We can cope with alternative types of customer orders because we are able to easily test-print all kinds of paper and inks. We always try to meet the needs of our diverse customers who have different types of print demand.

This trial and error system has made us what we are now.

What made JAM introduce GOCCOPRO 100 into its print shop?

GOCCOPRO 100 is user-friendly and ideal for use in a print workshop and can also offers a great service when providing imaged screens to our customers so they can use them themselves.
Screen making is made directly from image data no mess.........easy.
Cost of Screen making is low, so GOCCOPRO 100 can be easily used to put design ideas into actual printing and testing, and to expand screen-printing applications.

Corporate Profile

JAM Corporation - http://jam-p.com
JAM is operating as an online print shop. It provides Risograph printing services to customers. JAM does not use offset printers and ordinary ink jet printers.
JAM specialises in printing by Risograph and provides a wide range of printing services such as multicolour flyers, postcards, business cards,
and pamphlets in small quantities.
JAM’s sales point is "Retro-flavoured printing” that is made possible by Risograph. JAM is credited with extremely high quality printing by Risograph.
Commercial printing carried out by JAM is very well received by its customers, and printing done by JAM is also very well supported by artists and designers.
JAM is a unique printing company.

Our 2nd application example

Kume Textile Company

Asked what are the big advantages of using GOCCOPRO 100, Mr. Nobuyuki Kume, president of Kume Textile Company answered, “The advantages of GOCCOPRO 100 are clear and simple, compared with the traditional emulsion screen printing, you have really really quick screen making and a lower cost of screens.” Al that Kume textiles have no intention of selling their company’s T-shirts at low prices because the quality is still very high.

Mr Kume continued to say, “I foresee T-shirts market will further polarise into the two sub markets, the low-end market and the high-end market. Some T-shirts makers will choose to sell high volume low priced items at the low end of the market, and others will sell small volume of special T-shirts designed for particular design-conscious customers at the high end market where the price is not everything.”

Mr Kume stressed, “We are targeting the latter market. If the prices of T-shirts goes up or the quality of T-shirts drops because of demand is low, then there is no money to be made. The GOCCOPRO 100 helps us make small quantities of special good quality T-shirts at reasonable costs and then sell these at good prices. We can economise on screen printing cost and labour time using the GOCCOPRO 100. This makes it possible for us to use good quality organic cotton fabric blank T-shirts.”

So the strategy. “Low price strategy that is backed up by mass-production is not what we are doing. Instead, from the start we look to produce high quality T shirts. This year we set up a T-shirts making workshop on the 1st floor of the showroom. Customers visit our workshop where they print their own T-shirts starting with a GOCCOPRO 100 screen. What we have recognised is customers’ needs are becoming more diverse. The number of so-called “prosumers’ ‘is increasing. Prosumers are fussy about design. They are not satisfied with hand out goods and they do not want to buy T-shirts from our standard stock. They want to design T-shirts of their own style and make unique designs by themselves. Today everyone is looking for something different even mass-produce low-priced goods, are unable to satisfy all the needs of our customers. We provide customers with T-shirts that they really want to wear. We can accept small orders or individual customer orders because set up is so quick and easy. This is the reason that Mr Kume came up with the idea of setting up the T-shirts print workshops and found the GOCCOPRO 100 to fit the bill perfectly.

When creating screens with the GOCCOPRO 100 the edges are easily kept very sharp and the image processing is excellent.

This has stimulated our business creativity.

Mr Kume told us, “Our company receives orders for T-shirts through the internet.

We have now set out two options for screen making when printing our T-shirts.

Option 1)

Is the high quality screen making for high quantity screen printing by an emulsion screen. With this option screen costs around €90.

We use this option when a customer orders a couple of thousand T-shirts or if they may re-order soon.

Option 2)

Is easy screen making using the GOCCOPRO 100 for standard quality screen printing. With this option one screen costs around €27.

We use this option when an order is small and one-time and a customer may not place a repeat order

Mr Kume said, “I don’t think GOCCOPRO 100 is the complete solution to our business even although we can do everything with this machine, but GOCCOPRO 100 is a fantastic tool that can satisfy many needs our customers have. We also use GOCCOPRO 100 for screen-printing pre-production samples of new design. It also helps us to come up with new creative design ideas”

“The print quality given by GOCCOPRO 100 is completely satisfactory. Sharp edges and great tones I do not think end-users can tell the difference between prints made by emulation screens and prints made by GOCCOPRO 100. Emulation screen making is an analogue process so it is not as accurate as the digital screen making on GOCCOPRO 100. Accuracy and uniformity are far better when screen making is done with a GOCCOPRO 100. This is also a strong point of the machine. Another strong point of GOCCOPRO 100 is the machine has the excellent halftone imaging process. This process enables users to make proper screens for graphical designs.” Mr Kume highly rates the half tone values and said, “Emulation screen making requires special skills for halftone. However, when I look at T-shirts that have a photo design printed by GOCCOPRO 100, I recognise subtle colour shading is very well expressed and lines as fine as hair are clearly expressed. Users can easily make this kind of outstanding screen printing on GOCCOPRO 100 with just a single touch of the button.” Mr Kume went on, “Screen making by GOCCOPRO 100 is more than easy, all you have to do is just hook up PC and touch the button. This simple operation is a very big advantage over emulation screen making. Besides, you don’t have to think where you keep screens after screen printing”

Mr Kume said, “We have been building up the good brand image of high quality T-shirts by providing customers with good quality. We didn’t hesitated to introduce GOCCOPRO 100 into our business. The thought of using a Digital Screen Maker for screen printing instead of the conventional emulsion screen maker may damage our brand image is just nonsense. Producing good standard products is only one factor. Economising our labour and production cost also contributes to enhancing the quality of our company.”

What made Mr Kume introduce GOCCOPRO 100 into its business?

GOCCOPRO 100 is a good attraction to the workshop. Also, it can be used for screen-printing pre-production samples of new design T-shirts. It helps our designers to be more creative.
GOCCOPRO 100 can very easily generate a screen for graphical arts.
Master making is fast and economical. This saves our skilled labor time and cost.

Corporate Profile

Kume Textile Company
The president & owner of the company: Mr. Nobuyuki Kume
URL. http://www.kume.jp
Kume Textile Company was established as a T-shirts maker in 1935 and has been playing a role of pioneer of a fashionable T-shirts designer, producer and supplier since the middle of the 1950’s. Kume Textile Company has elevated the position of T-shirts to fashionable apparel and have been a T-shirts making specialist for a half century. Kume Textile Company has Japanese craftsmen specialising in hand-making special design T-shirts. The craftsmen select fabric, cut it, sew it, and make a T-shirt and then screen-print it. Kume Textile Company is environmently conscious and is supported by many fans.

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If you would like to find out more about any digital screen makers please get in touch using the information below

E-Mail: sales@goccopro.co.uk

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