May 8, 2008.

Below is the latest information on materials, hardware and pricing. For more information, see the respective pages for each product, or contact us and we'll be happy to explain the features of any of our products.

Equipment

We are looking into offering canvas stretching services. Currently, we send canvas prints rolled to our customers, or send them to a local frame shop for stretching when our customers prefer to receive them already stretched. Because we're having more customers request this service, we will most likely add this service so we can offer stretched canvas at a more competitive price, while maintaining control of the timing and quality of the finished product. Keep watching the What's New page for more information on this service in the coming weeks.

Printing Materials

We have added two new environmentally friendly fabrics that are currently the only materials that protect the environment throughout their life cycle - EverGreen Fire Retardant Cloth and EverGreen Blockout Fabric. They are manufactured using clean energy with an 80% energy savings over PVC banner production and do not create any VOC (volatile organic compounds) during their manufacture. The materials themselves are free of PVC, phthalates, phosphates, formaldehyde and glycol-ether (volatile carcinogenic and reprotoxic fabrics traditionally used in the coating industry). Because they are lighter weight than PVC banner materials, they require less fuel for the transportation of an equivalent number of square feet, and they produces 50% less volume of waste to destroy. If disposed of inside a landfill, they create only half the leachate pollution as PVC fabrics. If incinerated, they can produce new energy while releasing 77% less carbon monoxide in the air and 3 times less greenhouse effect gases, and 83% less acid gas is released reducing the acid rain effect.

Both of these new EverGreen fabrics are highly flame retardant and produce good color and image quality with very low gloss so their excellent in a wide variety of lighting environments. The EverGreen Blockout Fabric has a black backing to make it completely opaque and was designed especially for use in banner stand graphics.

We've updated our materials for trade show use. We simplified the options, eliminated the options that were inexpensive because they were made with paper and replaced them with equally inexpensive options that are far more durable and better looking. We never liked offering the paper based tradeshow graphics because they don't last, but we wanted to have less expensive options for our customers on a budget. Now, we have materials that are inexpensive, great looking and durable. The new lineup for tradeshow materials is now the Tradeshow Banner, Economy Tradeshow, and Premium Tradeshow. Tradeshow Banner is a 12 mil material with a 7 mil polyester base film with a 5 mil textured laminate, Economy Tradeshow is a 17 mil material with a 12 mil polyester base film with a 5 mil textured laminate, and the Premium Tradeshow is a 22 mil material with a 12 mil polyester base film with a 10 mil polycarbonate laminate.

The Tradeshow Banner is the premier material for banner stand graphics being the most durable material printed at the highest resolution and having the greatest image quality and color depth. We've been able to reduce the price to make it fit into more budgets, but it is still the most expensive banner stand material we offer, so it won't appeal to everyone. However, for anyone who wants a graphic to last a very long time while maintaining good looks, this one is an excellent choice.

The Economy Tradeshow is the material of choice for graphics that attach to the carpet surface of tradeshow booths with velcro. It is also popular as a less expensive option for full mural graphics that attach to booth frames with magnets. It's a lighter weight than the Premium Tradeshow that we typically recommend for this purpose, but several booth manufacturers recommend it so we are testing it ourselves in the meantime to verify that we like the results, but since it's recommend by the manufacturers, we are trusting their advice in the meantime.

The Premium Tradeshow is the top of the line material for booth graphics. This is the most durable and best looking material available and is the preferred material for pop up booth graphics, especially full murals.

We are still testing some fibre-based papers. These papers are modeled after the traditional fibre-based materials used in a conventional darkroom for a high-end, classic look and feel. They are designed for fine photographic reproduction of the highest quality. There are several manufacturers who now offer these papers, we are experimenting to find the best products and then we'll add them to our lineup.

On the horizon is also a new material designed for building wraps and graphics. This material is supposed to adhere to rough surfaces such as brick, cinder block and stucco, yet remain removable so you can now put your message directly on your building. We're going to test it out on our store front and if it works, we'll be adding it to the list as well.

Hardware

We have a major edition to our Hardware & Other Services; an entirely new section devoted to signholders. In this section we have a wide variety of signholders that hold one, two or three 22x28 signs for retail stores, theaters, airports, malls, conference centers, showrooms, or any place where you need to display your message. We also have the innovative StandTall signholders for displaying rigid mounted graphics up to 6 feet tall, as well as the Mightee Mounts that can hold any self supporting rigid graphic up to 1" thick. Be sure to visit the new Signholder page to learn more about these exciting new products.

We also just completed a transition to a different manufacturer for our poster and banner hanging hardware in order to offer better products and prices to our customers. The most significant difference for our customers is that now these poster and banner hangers are sold as a kit with the top and bottom rail and hanging clips, and there is no service charge for small orders. This should make it much easier to order and more cost effective for our customers. The other change is that these hangers all come in specific sizes. While custom sizes are still possible, the standard sizes should work for the vast majority of customers.

For poster and banner hanging, we now have two different styles of plastic hanging hardware, SnapGraphics Gripper and EasyGraphics Gripper. SnapGraphics hangers snap open and clamp closed on the graphic, similar to our previous products, but these hold the graphics more securely, especially with thinner materials such as fabric. EasyGraphics hangers feature plastic teeth that grip any graphic when it's inserted into the opening. This style won't work with fabric or other soft, flexible materials as the graphic needs to be stiff enough that you can push it in past the plastic teeth. We've had good success with our 7 mil photo papers, but for any material that's thinner we recommend the SnapGraphics.

Each of these products also comes in aluminum clad versions that have either a rounded or square profile, with either the standard 1" tall profile or the taller 1.5" profile. With the standard profile a small part of the plastic insert is visible, and with the taller profile, the plastic insert is completely hidden. Both styles are available in a silver or black finish.

In addition, we have new graphic frame options. The Clipster is a unique, inexpensive, modern looking frame that floats unmounted graphics in the middle of the frame. The Perfex frame are aluminum slot loading frames in a variety of sizes and finishes with different corner treatments, and there are also new wall mounted snap frames so be sure to visit the Graphic Frames page under Hardware & Other Services to find out more about these new products.

As always, we are currently investigating several other hardware options including several different hard cases for banner stands, new outdoor portable flagpole displays, a few different imported retractable banner stands from China that look promising, as well as some new outdoor sign and banner display hardware that we will be adding after we've had time to test them.

Website

We realized that the last revision to the website, which was meant to simplify the location of pricing information, actually made it more difficult for our customers to find prices for the different printing materials and hardware that we offer. As a result, we have revamped the layout so that pricing information is shown with the description of every product so customers aren't required to navigate around the website to figure out pricing. If our order form is every completed, it will also calculate pricing, but this should help our customers figure out the costs related to each material they may be interested in a much easier way. We also added optional banner prices for all our banner stands so the price for upgraded banner options are available on the same page. This way our customers can see what the other popular options will cost to help in making a decision about whether or not to choose the standard banner material or one of the other options.

The order form is still undergoing a major upgrade which should be done very soon. We seem to be hung up the price calculation functionality. Many of you have been requesting this for a long time, so we want to make sure it works correctly before putting it into use or it will cause more problems than it solves. Some of the other new features we are adding include the ability for customers to manage their own account, manage the files they upload for printing jobs, as well as edit the details of an order before sending it. The new order form will also calculate the price for each custom print job based on the size, quantity and materials chosen. These were all requested features from our customers who used our current order form so we are working to make these improvements to make the order process easier and more efficient.

We've also finally begun our company e-mail newsletter. We've had many customers signing up for this since we began producing them monthly, so we're making an extra effort to keep up on the monthly schedule of updates. The newsletter highlights new products, special materials, and offers some special pricing opportunities. If you wish to sign up you can do so below, or from the Contact Us page.

Newsletter Subscription

We are always on the lookout for the best products to offer our customers, and cost is an important consideration, but there is no point in offering inexpensive materials if the quality is poor. As usual, sales claims and reality are rarely the same so we continue to search the globe for the best materials at the best prices. In fact, many of our favorites are coming out of Europe at the moment, so rest assured that if a material exists, and works well, we will offer it to our customers. It makes for a great deal of work for us to wade through all these new products to weed out the bad ones, but this way our customers don't have be our "beta testers".

Be sure to check back here frequently, as we will try to post new developments as they occur.