The Supply of Hand Finishing Extras and Special Binding Materials

Agencies are asked by every single client to come up with something different. This request gets passed to the creative types in the agencies who then come up with an idea. To a printer these ideas often come under the category of “ball-ache” but to us they are often “just another job”. Over the years we have been asked to source all kinds of weird and wonderful add-ons as well as the slightly more standard hand finishing products which crop up all the time.

There are many suppliers of hand finishing goods in the UK and Whitney Woods has built a good working relationship with the best of them in order to be able to react quickly to demand for the slightly unusual. In the manufacture of presentation products, items such as CD studs or CD spiders are in constant demand as are binding screws and bead chains. For display items, plastic wobbler arms are a regular on the list of add-ons along with the occasional request for suction cups, stick-on Euro slots or showcard struts. Less common items might include special hooks, cords and nylon fishing line for mobiles – that is display, not phones!

Sales aids are often required to have clear pockets to hold business cards, CDs or leaflets to give them a personalized look. If you take a look at our pop-up mailers website you will find recycling wheels which include bead chains. Our mini-showcards involve the addition of stand-up struts at the back, whilst pop-up handbags and pop-up lanterns have handles which are created by the addition of treasury tags.

Printed Goods, Self Adhesive Products and Hand Finishing

Sourcing these items is only part of the exercise. We also have to affix the add-ons to the printed goods and ensure that they are packed in a proper fashion in order to ensure that the goods to not get damaged marked or scratched in transit. For example, the chunky heads on brass binding screws can make an awful mess of a lovely print job if they are allowed to jostle about whilst in transit. We always take care to pack such items properly, interleaving if necessary to ensure that the goods reach the customer in excellent condition. Other items might benefit from being poly-bagged or even bubble-wrapped. Of course, this takes up more time that just throwing the stuff in a box and we charge accordingly. Our prices have been known to frighten off certain printers even though we all know that it make more sense to pay extra to guarantee that the job is done correctly.

There’s a saying - “You pays your money, you takes your choice” Perhaps it should be “You pays your money. You takes your chance!” And remember that other saying that is peculiar to the print trade – “There’s always time for a reprint!"

Our popupmailers website features more on how we use self adhesive foam in the manufacture of certain promotional products. To see more please click on Wobbly Heads.

Some of these products are used by paper crafts enthusiasts and are available for purchase on our popupcrafts website: http://www.popupcrafts.co.uk/Self_Adhesive_Items/cat232946_166482.aspx