Swing Sophistication - Tags, hangers, swing tickets
By Tom Kerchiss, RK Print Coat Instruments
In building a successful brand it’s surprisingly often the smaller and often seemingly subtle elements that a consumer looks at and which makes a lasting impression and clinches the sale.
Brand leaders and ‘wannabe’s’, especially those associated with the production and marketing of fashion goods and items of apparel now accept that swing tickets, tags, metal labels, etc., not only provide an interested potential product purchaser with information on size and pricing but they are also a highly effective builder of brand identity.
Fashion brand owners and their designers are amongst those that utilise swing tickets as a comprehensive communication channel.
Seasalt Cornwall for instance attaches two swing tickets on their premium ‘RAIN’ branded garments. These tickets outline garment care, guarantee and feature a material swatch. The company’s red anchor logo set against a watery grey raindrop with the name of the product line ‘RAIN’ is central to the top fold of one of two swing tickets, the second fold which carries the raindrop theme but on a blue background features the guarantee and on-line contact information.
Many fashion and fashion accessories brands now regularly incorporate a sample of the fabric or leather used in the manufacture of the item. To illustrate this further: the Fat Face brand currently supply a sample of leather stamped with brand name for their range of tote bags.
In some instances swing tickets may also be supplied with small sealed envelopes that hold spare buttons, etc. Swing tickets together with the information and marketing message contained eliminate the need of a shopper to seek out the shop assistant for guidance, all of which contributes to the consumers’ sense of independence.
Swing tickets are no longer simple pieces of card with punched eyelet holes to which a piece of string is looped through, now, and as an extension of the brand they are multi-coloured brand image enhancement devices. The card may be printed on 350gsm card, the thickness of a business card or thicker; they can be gloss embossed on 450gsm card and matt laminated, etc. Tickets made up of thick card can be sandwiched or laminated together with an inner layer of a different colour for decorative effect.
Tickets can be constructed with a brown crafted or distressed look suitable for affixing to outdoor adventure clothing and they don’t always need to be made of card, sometimes tags are made from metal, various types of plastics, even cork, bamboo or a combination of material laminates. In fact there is almost no end to the type of swing ticket that can be designed.
There are many features that the narrow web converter can add to tickets to make them more noticeable and ensure that they become an important part of the shopping experience. A good example of how successful a tag/swing ticket can be in building brand identity is the TY Beanie Babies. The tags on these highly marketable and successful soft toys became inexorably tied in with the product. Indeed, the resale value of these toys/collectables was affected when a consumer tried to resell a Beanie Babies without its label/tag.
Swing tickets are versatile. They can be die cut into different shapes, embossed; they can be subject to enhanced spot UV processes, they can be laser engraved; screen, flexo and flexo/digital printed and they can be turned into smart label tickets and tags that incorporate RFID stock control with product protection chips imbedded between stratified and suitably laminated substrate layers.
Marketers and designers can take some liberties in terms of design. Outrageous designs and off the wall colour garner attention and this approach can work well with products such as children’s clothing, toys, T-shirts and electronic goods for teenagers. It is a different matter for branded premium quality items where colour, logo and other elements are defined and a degree of conservatism is required. As with packaging and other means of communication once the brand owner has settled upon colour, graphics, text and logo and upon the other unique selling points it becomes critical that the converter meets these requirements on a consistent basis.
Colour communication, proofing and other means of quality control, product development has assumed even greater importance in recent years largely due to the increased pressure placed upon converters and consumable providers, ink manufacturers, etc., to comply with accredited requirements, avoid reworking, and penalties.
Flexography and increasingly UV flexo is favoured for many swing ticket applications. Brand owners like the vibrant high gloss finish that UV can provide. An additional benefit is that UV flexo ink chemistry creates a polymer chain that results in an ink surface finish that is highly resistant to scuff and abrasion. The FlexiProof family of devices including the FlexiProof UV can be used for colour matching; determine printability, gloss, durability, chemical resistance, rub resistance and flexibility and to assess how material/inks react over time and for trialling and R & D purposes, etc.
The ability to print/proof offline, minimises on production machine ink adjustment, minimises production machine waste and reduces the need for a press to be taken out of production for trialling purposes. A particular benefit of the FlexiProof UV is that printing and curing seamlessly on this device highlights potential problems that may occur with inks, which can be difficult or impossible using conventional proofing methods. Pin holing for instance cannot normally be captured effectively using conventional methods. By the time a proof is made and then taken offline to a UV conveyor surface properties will have changed.
The K Printing Proofer is another colour communication/proofing option. This compact device is suitable for proofing and the production of presentation samples and for various quality related procedures. It can produce proofs using flexo or gravure and gravure offset inks and can also be used to produce for comparison purposes wet and dry laminated samples.
RK Print Coat Instruments Ltd
Litlington, Royston, Hertfordshire SG8 0QZ
www.rkprint.com sales@rkprint.com
Source: RK Print Coat Instruments Ltd
