Meat-dresses, super-yachts and back gardens-come-theme parks – celebrities seem to enjoy splashing the cash on whatever new fad takes their fancy. And yet, one trend seems to be enduring – covering their astronomically expensive cars with gaudy patterns.
Just last month, a picture of a camouflage-patterned Bentley Continental GT appeared on Twitter, courtesy of footballer Mario Balotelli, who was pictured standing next to it looking menacing (or as menacing as you can look in a onesie that matches your car). And the likes of Elton John and Jenson Button have also dabbled – with chrome-effect and matt black wrappings respectively.
But car wrapping is now fast becoming something us normals want to do, too. Be it wrapping a work vehicle or personalising your own car, the opportunity for wide-format printers to produce wrap work is expanding fast. Combined with the fact that there are relatively few specialist wrap printers out there, this should be making those wide-format printers not currently in the market sit up and pay attention. The problem is, wrapping is more difficult than just printing on some vinyl and it is potentially not as lucrative as it looks.
On-the-road appeal
That the opportunity is there for wide-format printers is widely acknowledged. James Sahota, managing director at Group 101 printer and vehicle wrapping sub-business Wraps 101, says customers are now really starting to see how effective a marketing tool printed vehicle graphics are.
"People are realising that an advert on a vehicle will be out on the road all day long; it’s a fantastic selling tool because your vehicle is constantly moving around where people are going to see it," he says.
Meanwhile, colour changes are also becoming ever-more popular, with businesses and consumers alike.
"The bit of the market that is growing most rapidly is the colour change market," says Phil McMullin, business manager at supplier of vehicle wrapping materials and training provider Spandex. He explains that this is perhaps the most accessible end of the market for businesses new to vehicle wrapping, as it doesn’t even require them to own the right spec printer, just to buy in some coloured self-adhesive vinyl.
"The charge for colour changes varies a lot, but typically it’s a lot cheaper than a paint job," he explains of why there is such customer demand for this application.
"Colour changes are popular because if you cover a vehicle as opposed to spraying it, the paintwork under there is going to stay the same as it was the day it was wrapped," adds Joe Bartnicki, technical director at large format material and machine vendors Grafityp. "Five years down the line when you take that wrap off, it’s going to be in pristine condition."
Well equipped
The other good news for wide-format wrapping wannabes is that many signage and display printers already have the right kind of printing kit to produce vehicle graphics, according to McMullin.
"If they have a wide-format printer capable of printing onto a high-quality cast film, and it’s printing durable outdoor inks, then they’re pretty much ready to go as far as the equipment’s concerned," he says. "Most signmakers of a reasonable size in the market today will have one of those pieces of equipment."
But for many, the fact that there’s plenty of appetite out there for wrapping and that those wanting to offer it probably won’t have to buy lots of new kit, is beside the point. What people often underestimate is the degree of skill needed.
"I’ve seen lots of companies recently come into wrapping and then go again," reports Sean Davies, managing director at Creative FX, the printer behind transforming the cars of both Elton John and Jenson Button.
"They do about three cars, muck them up, and then end up with heavy bills," he says. "Because if you damage a car you’re in big trouble, especially with some of the cars we do – we’ve worked on million-pound cars. We use scalpels when we work so there’s definitely a danger with that if you don’t know what you’re doing."
The simple solution to ensuring costly mistakes aren’t made, would seem to be rigorous training. And there are many two- and three-day courses, run by the likes of Spandex, Grafityp and machine manufacturers Roland, out there.
But Grafityp’s Bartnicki warns that the training course should be just the start. What is needed for a vehicle wrapper to become truly proficient at such a fiddly process, is practice, practice and more practice. "We always liken it to playing an instrument," he says. "We can teach you to play the instrument, but to become Jimi Hendrix, you’ve got to practice like hell."
For staff to get this practice in, they will of course have to be written-off for a fair amount of time, have enough vinyl to experiment with and a company car to practise on. When these costs and inconveniences are factored in, suddenly vehicle wrapping starts to look a less appealing strand to add to a business.
And it’s not just a case of practising until you are accomplished, says Creative FX’s Davies. As with an instrument, you’ve got to carry on practising regularly if you want to stay good. This is why just doing the occasional job is a bad idea, says Davies, as people quickly forget, or never discover in the first place, all the little tricks that make the difference between a professional job and bodge. "It needs to be done every day – we’re learning new techniques all of the time," he says.
Time is money
And the real danger in leaving staff to go rusty is that they probably then won’t be able to turn a vehicle wrap around quickly enough to make a decent profit. Even more so than in other areas of business – as vehicle wrapping, unlike other print processes, requires at least two people on the job at all times and usually takes a couple of days – time is money.
If the printer isn’t speedy, warns Group 101’s Sahota, they may soon see their wrap margins dwindle, due to the fact that the going rate for this kind of work isn’t actually that high anymore.
"It’s not like the good old days when you could charge £2,500-£3,000 for one vehicle. With the price of materials coming down there are so many more people doing it and so prices have been driven down," says Sahota. "That’s why we wouldn’t touch anything worth less than £500, because once you’ve factored the materials and staff time for even just a couple days, you might see yourself only making £50. So we stick to the higher-end work – if someone’s spent hundreds of thousands on a car, they’re not going to quibble a price of £1,800 or £1,900."
"Even then the profit margin isn’t as high as on other sorts of work," adds Sahota. "For example, if you compare it to 60% for business cards, it’s not going to be the most lucrative job you’ll do."
Sebastian Stanley, managing director at The Bigger Printing Company, agrees that the labour-intensive nature of vehicle wrapping can mean lower profit margins than on other sorts of work. This is why his company has resisted going down this route, he explains.
"We often get enquiries about vehicle wrapping, but it just doesn’t make sense for the scale of our business," he says. "Smaller outfits can do it profitably because they haven’t the same machine and building overheads to make back. To get £1,000 for a wrap isn’t that attractive when you’ve invested £400,000-£500,000 on Océ Arizonas and sizable premises. We’d rather do work like floor graphics and display boards where we can leave our machines working on them all night. That’s a job we can scale up because the machine’s doing the sweating.
Room to move
Vehicle wrapping might, then, be best-suited to smaller outfits in some ways. But these companies will need to ensure they have the right kind of space, warns Spandex’s McMullin.
"All the equipment needed is quite straightforward, but the main thing is the environment for actually applying the vinyl," he says. "You need somewhere big enough to pull a vehicle in and move around it, but also somewhere that’s a constant temperature, that’s not going to drop below 10°C or go above 26 or 27°C. Otherwise the vinyl won’t adhere properly."
And the one thing sign printers may not already have and will need to invest in, if they’re to offer not just colour changes but personalised signage as well, will be a laminating machine, he adds.
"With a solvent printer, which is what the majority of printers have, the solvent applies the pigment by eating into the face of the vinyl, and that makes the surface very soft and easy to abrade," he explains. "So you do need to put a laminate film, not a liquid laminate, over the top. So the printer will have to spend £2,000-£3,000 on a decent laminator."
Of course, this is a relatively low level of kit spend, so the barrier to entry for most won’t actually be the cost of the machinery and materials needed. More of an obstacle will be acquiring the skills, which can be difficult to recruit and hard to learn.
And printers will need to examine the business case for wrapping. With plenty of footballers and other moneyed folk keen to follow in the footsteps of Balotelli, vehicle wrapping could indeed prove a lucrative addition to a sign and display business. But even those with the right skillset in-house will have to be wary of an ever-more saturated market pushing prices dangerously low on more run-of-the-mill wraps. Otherwise Balotelli’s belligerent Twitter pic, could take on a whole new, even more menacing, feel.
MASTERING THE ART OF THE MAKE-OVER
Do you remember laminating exercise books at secondary school? I do. "A nice easy task," my 13-year-old self would think. "I’ll just do it 10 minutes before bed, leaving me more time to pore over the multi-layered and incredibly poignant plot developments of Dawson’s Creek."
