Sumo smashes bottlenecks with HP Scitex

Sumo Visual Group is upping its production capacity to better serve its promotion-hungry time-poor retail clients with a new HP Scitex FB10000 digital press, and is scoring runs in the global awards scene with a second Popai win.

The Melbourne-based outfit, which boasts clients from some of Australia’s major retail and quick service restaurant businesses, brought in the HP Scitex to better serve its clients, which often turn around large-scale promotional and branding projects across hundreds of stores on a two-weekly basis.

Gary Fawcett, national sales director with Sumo, says, “Our clients need to be constantly up to date with their trends, styles and ranges. Marketing departments are generally running behind, so they need a printer to provide quick turnaround and reliable quality products to represent their brand instore.”

He says Sumo has kept on the cutting edge with its printing fleet, but the new HP is giving it both the capacity and throughput to get more jobs out under pressure. With a 3200mm by 1600mm sheet size – which Fawcett says covers the majority of point of sale matter – and printing at up to four times faster than Sumo’s other machines, the Scitex whips out POS to furnish those last-minute promotional changeouts.

The press is backed up by the latest prepress software and a large format guillotine to eliminate all potential bottlenecks. Fawcett says, “We can’t have the machine spitting out these giant sheets at a thousand miles an hour, then waiting for our older, relatively slower cutting machines. We stack up the sheets, they go onto the new guillotine, chop, then out the door quickly. So the whole system is designed for turnaround.”

As well as its core print business, which makes up around 60 to 70 per cent of the business, Sumo has also diversified into large hard signage and digital signage, where it is kicking significant goals. It was in the digital space that it won its second Global Popai Award, now two years in a row, with an interactive touchscreen display called the Interactive Natural Medicines Wall, for Chemmart Pharmacy.

The Chemmart display guides customers to find the right vitamin for their needs, with the ability to play ads in idle mode and record analytics on clicks and session behaviour.

Sumo says the first installation clocked up more than 1,000 users within three months, and around 60 per cent of users completed a full session ending in product selection.

Fawcett says the company appreciates the recognition through Popai, but essentially it is just a side effect of producing good work for clients. He says, “What’s great about winning awards is it happens automatically. If you create good work and submit it to an independent body that appreciates it, all of a sudden you’re there, through good work and talent.”

Sumo thinks of itself as an Australian company serving an Australian customer base, but with a reach that extends into the global market. It recently won a partnership with a major Aussie retailer to supply its international franchises as well as on the domestic front.

Sumo has managed this project through offshore partnerships, but can also manufacture onshore and ship jobs out when pressed for time. Fawcett says, “We can either print here in Australia, or we can print with partners around the world across Asia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, and the US. We rose to our customers challenge and created a group solution.

“We are on the precipice of exponential growth. The business has matured, and we are ready to take on the world.”

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