By Jeff Peterson, editor-in-chief, PostPress
Kenmore Envelope Company, located in Richmond, Virginia, specializes in high-end envelope manufacturing, which includes everything from the printing and finishes to the final envelope converting. Special finishes and embellishments always have been an important part of what Kenmore offers.
To showcase Kenmore’s abilities, the company believes creating specialty embellished envelope samples for its customers and prospects is an important part of the selling process. In a recent envelope design, the Kenmore team decided it wanted to highlight ‘scent’ coating with its newest sample creation.
“We had a meeting with about a dozen Kenmore team members to throw around ideas and came up with the lollipop idea,” said Scott Evans, Kenmore Envelope president. “From there, we discussed how to make each embellishment impactful and not only shine by itself, but as a whole to the entire design.”
The goal was to have a cutting-edge envelope to showcase the technological investments Kenmore offers without getting too busy with the look and design.
The Kenmore team wanted the colors of the lollipop to pop off the envelope design. Once the flat art was created, the team needed to determine what to add to improve the existing design with Kenmore’s available embellishments – which effects to combine, where to place the embellishments, and what design elements on the envelope to highlight.
The lollipop envelope includes cold foil transfer, 4-color process, Cast & Cure™ clear holographic and spot scent coating that smells exactly like a lollipop. The amazing aspect of the project is that the embellishment and finishes all were accomplished in two passes. The cold foil and 4-color process printing was the first pass, and the Cast & Cure and scent coating were applied in the second pass. All of these were done on a K+B Rapida 106 LED UV offset press with an Eagle Systems’ cold foil module. The final steps in the production were the embossing of the word ‘Color’ and the lollipop on the front side of the envelope and the diecutting. Both were accomplished in one pass on Kenmore’s in-house platen 40″ diecutter. The final envelope was converted on a W+D 628.
The envelope included a silver cold foil in specific areas of the envelope and then the 4-color process was applied inline for the vivid, colorful lollipop and the black background of the envelope. There also was overprinting CMYK over the silver cold foil in the ‘splash’ below the lollipop and the word ‘COLOR’ in the headline. The next pass applied the Cast & Cure film on the black background to showcase a clear holographic pattern over the entire envelope except over the printed lollipop. The Cast & Cure process was applied through Eagle Systems’ cold foil module for the second pass. The scented spot coating then was applied over the lollipop on one of the offset stations inline with the Cast & Cure. Lastly, the wording ‘COLOR’ and the lollipop were embossed in the final pass.
“We limited the amount of cold foil so we didn’t overwhelm the envelope as there’s beauty in having focused cold foil in certain areas,” explained Evans. “The combination of the cold foil and embossing also had a beautiful impact.”
The cold foil used for the lollipop envelope was supplied by Univacco, the Cast & Cure film was supplied by Breit Technologies and the scented scratch-off coating came from Scentisphere.
Kenmore Envelope strongly believes that tailored envelopes have a higher chance of being opened than ones that lack distinction. Clients have shared with Kenmore that the specialty embellishments increase their lift vs. a non-embellished envelope, including feedback from clients that the increase has been three to five times more than in previous non-embellished envelopes.
“I believe our clients and the agencies we have worked with for years have always challenged us about what’s new and next. What can differentiate them from their competitors?” Evans said. “There’s a luxury feel to being a bit different and to stand out.”
The cover of this issue of PostPress was produced by Kenmore Envelope Company, which supplied the covers through the inspiration of the lollipop envelope project.
The USPS reports 56% of the 105 billion pieces of mail it handled in 2023 were marketing pieces. So, it’s no surprise that direct mail has paralleled the strength of the economy even though postage increases have reduced overall mail volumes in recent years.
“The greeting card industry is in a good place,” reported Nora Weiser, executive director of the Greeting Card Association. She explained, “We have a record number of small makers in the industry, and while our largest card buyers by volume, baby boomers, are declining, our largest segment by dollars, millennials, are only now entering their primary card-buying life stages – getting married, having babies and buying a house – as they are now 29-42 years old. The demand for cards has remained strong because millennials have seized onto cards as a key vehicle to further relationships with their friends and family.”
The trading card segment is divided into sports cards and collectible or trading card game cards. Sports cards cover all major US sports plus European football. The collectible and trading card game segment includes Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic: The Gathering and Marvel Champions. Both segments are experiencing healthy sales and are likely to see high single-digit or low double-digit growth during the next two to five years, according to Stefan Congram, global director – Design Centers & NPI at Cartamundi Group.
Extended Producer Responsibility laws in the US may negatively impact folding carton volumes as marketers eliminate the use of folding cartons for some secondary packaging applications, e.g., bottles in cartons. However, any decline is likely to be offset by the adoption of renewable and recyclable folding cartons as an alternative to non-recyclable packaging. As a result, the folding carton market should see steady growth of 5% per year globally and in the US, according to Adam Peek, senior vice president of sales at Meyers, a third-generation family-owned printer with an in-house design studio.
Greenwald: Every customer asks the same question with an embossing job: “Can you make it any deeper?” I suggest operators talk to their engraving suppliers about their recommendation on how deep to make the die. They will want to know the paper stock being used and the press the embossing will be run on. The key is to not have the die made too deep or the makeready will be a disaster. Again, the engraver is the best source.
Scodix SHD gives users the ability to achieve quality and detail that rivals conventional foil stamping and can be applied underneath lamination.
In 2022, as the world began to move past the COVID-19 pandemic, there were concerns about how markets would react as the economy moved toward a ‘new normal.’ Carton shipment growth had been in decline since the Great Recession. Prior to 2020, losses in shipments largely were the result of continued headwinds facing major processed food and consumer product companies. Processed food exports were challenged by the appreciation of the US dollar in 2015, which trickled down to recycled boxboard demand and folding carton shipments. Over the last decade (2010-19), folding carton shipments were under persistent downward pressure and declined at an average annual rate of 1.2%. Since the Great Recession, only four years have not experienced a decline in shipments: 2014, 2017, 2020 and 2021. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, industrial production dropped 7.2% and consumer spending fell 3%. Consumers, however, flush with stimulus money and stuck in lockdown, greatly increased their spending on goods, helping boost carton shipments to some of the strongest years in recent history. Carton shipments recorded extraordinary growth of 5.5% year on year in 2020. These gains were maintained in 2021 when shipments grew another 0.2%. With the remaining pandemic restrictions lifted in 2022, spending started to shift away from goods and back toward services, but strong inventory rebuilding throughout the supply chain helped push shipments up another 4.5%. While 2022 had the highest volume of carton shipments since 2010, it still was 8.7% below the pre-recession peak in 2007.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated recession saw spending shift from services to goods, which had a significant impact on folding carton shipments. While consumer spending in 2020 declined 3% and spending on services dropped 6.2%, nondurables spending increased 2.7%. In 2021, consumer spending rose 8.3%, with nondurables spending increasing 8.8%. Spending on services in 2021 saw a partial recovery, rising 6.3%. In 2022, spending grew 2.7% but began to shift toward services, which increased 4.5% for the year. While still elevated, non-durables good spending dipped 0.5% in 2022. Consumer spending on processed food witnessed strong growth of 5.7% and 3.7% in 2020 and 2021 respectively. With people returning to restaurants and fewer people working from home in 2022, processed food spending dropped 4% in 2022. Lockdown measures and consumer wariness to return to in-person dining caused spending on food service to contract 21% in 2020. Food service spending grew 23.5% in 2021 and another 9.8% in 2022, finishing the year 7.2% above 2019 prepandemic levels. The gains in folding carton demand reflected consumer spending trends. The restocking seen during lockdowns fueled a lot of the growth in shipments. While e-commerce supported some growth in folding carton demand, this will change in the medium term. Folding carton is best suited for shelves in brick-and-mortar stores. However, the shift to e-commerce for dry foods and non-food products could create a separate packaging and delivery channel, which could shift market share from recycled boxboard to corrugated packaging.
In 2020, Canadian folding carton shipments increased significantly by 3%, but decreased 0.3% in 2021 before jumping 3.7% in 2022. Tonnage volume reached 446,000 tons, translating to C$1.25 billion. The macroeconomic environment in Canada over the outlook will be supportive of carton shipment growth; however, the planned closure of a cartonboard mill in 2026 will reduce Canadian folding cartonboard capacity by nearly 30%.
drupa cube