Use the ‘right stuff’ says Simister
With the contentious circle made up of customer, sign-maker, and materials manufacturer getting ever tighter and trickier to navigate, Metamark’s sales director Ian Simister has stuck out in the hope of educating the market about the virtue of simply using the right material for the right job.
Wednesday, 09 Dec 2015 11:07 GMT
Metamark has very precise specification guides that can help customers choose the perfect material for each application
Simister emphasizes that specifying the wrong material can produce two sets of consequences. One is that the project fails and an angry customer comes looking for compensation and remedial work.
The second consequence is that material is ‘over-specified’ into an application. This often increases the overall quote for a job, meaning it could be lost, and sees ultra-expensive and unnecessary material needing to be stocked.
According to Simister, Metamark’s approach is to engineer materials that ‘just work’ rather than ‘work just’.
“It’s a confidence thing,” says Ian Simister, who adds: “We create a margin of performance headroom that sees our material performing optimally to the end of the rated service expectation rather than hanging on for grim life.
“Performance is clearly central to the case we make for all of our materials but the numbers have to be backed up by something somewhere. It’s all very well asserting that something is going to last for, say, five years, but that reality is tested, industry wide, day in and day out.”
Performance is clearly central to the case we make for all of our
materials but the numbers have to be backed up by something somewhere”
Another key facet to consider on this issue is that sign-makers often struggle to keep up to date with the capabilities of new materials and how they can aid in hitting the ‘sweet-spot’ of the right material for the right job. With an extensive portfolio of products that can be browsed through, Metamark does seem to be breaking the mould when it comes to developing materials that are perfect for niche applications, but also work well on a general basis.
Ian
Simister, sales director at Metamark, nnnn
argues that sign-makers need to place as
much importance on new state-of-the-art
materials as they do on hardware such
as
printers
Simister continues: “There’s not a company out there that wouldn’t claim to be continually improving its products. Fewer though can claim to introduce things that are genuinely new. We’re among the latter. Anyone who has a free choice over materials specification needs to be in step with what today’s materials make possible in order to make informed decisions.”
Having talked about performance and trust, Simister is also emphatic about the need for product consistency, concluding: “Customers who’ve elected to use and specify Metamark materials widely often capitalise on our products’ consistency by using them in creative ways within a single job. For example, livery work is undertaken where our wrapping film, MD-X is used on sections of the work that feature complex surfaces, and our MD5 is used on flat parts. The printed results yielded by both match and the whole is then appropriately specified.”
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