On October 26, 2017, MPS North America officially opened the new Demo & Applications Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This was a great step for me to experience, after joining the MPS team as Technical Sales Consultant & Area Sales Manager in March 2017.
In this blog, I’ll tell you a little bit more about the success of this demo center, and why I think it’s important to have a demo center in the first place.
Seeing is believing
I’ve been in sales for many years, and I know that “Seeing is believing” is a cliché, but true. When people are considering investments of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars, they want to see what they’ll get. A demo center therefore is crucial. MPS always had their demo facility at the headquarters in The Netherlands, but for American customers that’s often just too far away. After building up an organization here in The States, opening a demo center was the logical next step. I’m glad we did so, and we’ve had many successful demos since the opening last October!
There have been about 10 demonstrations for potential customers at our new facility. It’s great to give people the opportunity of seeing the press running, but also to get in touch with MPS Systems North America as an organization, and to meet the people behind it. We think it’s very important to have that personal contact. As we are on the Green Bay Packaging campus, we have done quite some last-minute demos for customers of Green Bay Packaging as well.
Special printing projects
Together with Patrick McNerney, my colleague who is our Print Service Engineer at our demo center, we have been working on some special printing projects. A good example is the revolutionary new 3D lenticular label technology that we launched in cooperation with Imageworx. This new roll-fed lens film uses micro lenses (a technology that is also used for 3D displays), to magnify printed micro images and show illusion of depth, movement or the ability to change or morph into a new image as the label is viewed from different angles. For the lenticular 3D effects to work correctly, three parts of the process must be perfect:
1. the prepress
2. mounting of the plates (they have to be perfectly straight)
3. printing in perfect register
It was the first time this high-quality result was ever achieved on a flexo press. This is something we’re proud of! We are constantly working on new projects to present to customers; projects that add value to their labels and packaging. There are many more exciting developments in printing technology to follow.
Industry buzz
Ever since we opened the demo center in Green Bay, I noticed there’s a lot more buzz around MPS; articles in the major trade magazines, online presence, and blogs from my colleagues have been well-received. The new projects we’ve been working on have created an industry buzz not only in the US, but all over the world. Printing is not just an art, but a science as well. MPS has made both possible.
Hybrid printing
In the future, I hope the next step will be to add a hybrid EF SYMJET to our North American demo center, so people can experience the benefits of combining flexo and digital printing technologies. If you’d like to know more about hybrid printing, check out this webinar that my Dutch colleague Hans Poortinga gave about Hybrid Printing and the added value to a future-proof printing process:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ijjkTIuI-aM
Come to our open house
We will open the doors of our Demo & Applications Center in Green Bay for a walk through open house.
You are warmly invited to come and see our EF mulit-substrate flexo press running and to speak to our technical staff about Service, parts, and the products we have to offer.
Tuesday, April 17: 2:30 - 5:30
Wednesday, April 18: 2:00 - 5:00
Click here for more information about the open house. Will we see you there?
Get in touch
Would you like to know more about the possibilities of having a live demonstration of our EF multi-substrate press in Green Bay? Feel free to contact me or the Area Sales Manager in your region.