Spectra tapes blog

With black Friday and the holiday season fast approaching, it is important for companies shipping products to understand the value of custom printed tape. Regardless who their end customer is, there are many benefits to having your logo printed on your packaging tape.

Think about the millions of boxes in transit every holiday season. How will your packages stand out from your competition? Aside from everyone being able to easily identify your shipment, there are a slew of other reasons why companies should consider this product.

When a company uses custom printed tape, they are making it harder for someone to tamper with their packages. This is due to the fact that it is highly evident if a box has been previously opened. With regular tape, anyone can simply open it, take something and reseal it without looking too obvious. Thus rates of pilferage will decrease since anyone outside your company will not have access to your tape to even try to make it seem like it has never been opened.

If you compare the costs of custom printed boxes to that of custom printed tape, it is no secret that the latter is a more cost-effective way to stand out. In addition, the time for the manufacturer to produce your custom printed boxes in all sizes and gets it to you would take long and an employee would have to constantly keep tabs on just how many boxes are left in each size. But with custom printed tape, it is possible to seal a lot of packages with just one roll without worrying about running out of a certain size. Another reason to go with custom printed tape rather than boxes is you can get more creative with tape due to the fact that you can use different colors and fonts that stick out.

That being said, it is a great form of advertising and will make a good first impression to the person who receives the package(s). Instead of getting a boring package, making the receiver guess who it is from, they will immediately recognize your logo and be instantly excited to open it. When a package is less than impressive, it will not yield a memorable experience for the receiver since your package is the first thing they will see and not the contents.

When your logo appears on even your package, it is a great way to keep a constant reminder your customers about your brand. This way, anytime they have a need, they will think about your brand first.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of this saying before but if you look at past companies who have failed, more likely than not, bad management have led them to this downfall. There are many reasons how or why a company can fail based on its leadership. Some examples are lack of character, lack of vision and lack of execution. In addition, there needs to be a perfect combination of market conditions and it is up to the leader to know how the company is performing and where they stand.

Once that is understood, leaders have to strategize on short-term and long-term goals to leverage the best possible outcome for their organization. At Spectra Tapes, just like any other business, it is important for the leader to be active in daily tasks, set the organizational culture as well as think about long-term goals for the company while looking at how the market is performing.

Due to the lean strategy implemented by leadership, Spectra Tapes has reduced a lot in what could have been wasted resources. For those of you not aware of what going lean means, in a nutshell it is organizing your workspace in a way to reduce the time and other resources to get a project done. This has saved us countless hours of labor and capital. By now we should all know the key to successfully implementing a lean journey in any company; it all starts with leadership.

According to Industry Week, on average, over 60% of lean transformations fail. With all the resources we have available to us such as books, online articles, podcasts and countless consulting firms, you would think it would stick. Granted there are other reasons it might not catch on such as inadequate training, lack of time or funding and so on. But ultimately the most important element comes down to is strong leadership to implement any kind of initiative within an organization.

What is meant by strong leadership in order to go lean are the people at the top of the organization. They should be strong and passionate and positive role models for the employees working for them.

I’m sure you’ve heard of qualities leaders must possess to be good at what they do. There are actually specific qualities in a lean leader, which sets them apart from regular leaders as well. The foundations are discipline and humility since it takes the former to keep the lean journey going even though at times it may be hard and draining.

That being said, because of the leadership present at Spectra Tapes, we know we can fulfill our promise by getting your order to your door on or before the set date.

For those of you who have preciously shopped around for tape, you might have come across the jargon used to describe various properties of the tape such as how much adhesive is applied to the film.

The adhesive is probably the most important element of the tape. Places like China tend to combine the amount of adhesive applied on a film with the thickness of the tape to make it appear as though the quality of the tape is superior. The word used to describe it is micron. Therefore the higher the micron, the better the tape should be. The qualities to look for in the adhesive are the ease of application and the coating, which has to be very thinly applied to the backing material. The process heavily depends on the kind of adhesive made for the appropriate film.

There are additional steps that need to be taken after the adhesive is complete. For example, some of the film’s backing first needs to be backed up chemically or physically for the adhesive to bind to it better.

Before the tape is cut into the size we are familiar with, it first needs to be coated. The material then needs to be covered with some kind of material that can be anything from fabric, plastic films, foam or various other options. It is only after the coating has dried, if that is a necessary step, the entire strip is rewound. If the entire strip is double-sided, it has to go through the same process again with the costing and applying the adhesive layer on top. When all of these steps are finally complete, it is only then the wide rolls are cut into the smaller rolls we see in stores.

Every company has a slightly different way to produce their tape. Through research and development, they can improve their product slightly to have an edge over competitors.

Another variable to keep in mind is the cost of the raw materials to produce the tape. It is sometimes hard to tell the price direction a certain material is going in. For example, earlier in 2017, the price of plastics such as PP rose 20% and PVC by 10%. Exchange rates also have an impact on how to price the finished product. Depending on what part of the world the tape is produced in, the tape’s manufacturing cost will also be impacted.

It is now possible to chat with us during business hours. In order to serve our customers better and answer their questions, it is a great solution to provide real time answers instead of other methods of communication. Companies have to think about their online website somewhat like a brick and mortar store. When you walk into a store, there are salespeople around to help and guide the customer through the funnel. This doesn’t have to be different once the setting has changed to the online world. Customers will still need assistance, therefore it is recommended to have a live chat feature on your online store.

In your Google Analytics, you can see just how many people have visited your site in a given time period and how many of those have purchased a product or service. It is a good exercise to do an A/B test on a site with a live chat feature and one without. A fairly obvious hypothesis is one where there are no salespeople to help your online customers, they will shop around on your competitors sites if they do not get the assistance they are looking for. It is important to build trust with customers especially if you are a new brand. Once that has been established, and the communication with the customer has gone well, it is more likely they will place an order with you.

Depending on the size of your organization, there are countless solutions out there for businesses who are looking to get live chat on their website. This feature will give you an edge over competition and make your business more competitive.

After our business hours, it is possible to leave your email and a detailed message. A customer service representative will get back to you at their earliest convenience.

Another advantage of having live chat is to get customer comments directly from them and inquire further about their experience. To make sure other customers have an easier time on your site, make the necessary changes whether it is adding content to your site or to change its layout in order to make things more clear. Getting pain points from customers directly is a great asset.

Custom printed packaging tape has many benefits to the user. Think about all the packages currently in transit and how they must look. Probably a sea of brown boxes with a clear packing tape going across it. Once you get custom printed tape for your packages, they will become easily identifiable and stand out.

It is important to get your designer to come up with a great concept on how you would like your tape to look like. It is best to first contact the company to estimate how much it would cost to produce the tape. Then you can budget how you would like your design to be and how much to order. The more colors the tape has, the more expensive your custom roll will be. This is due to the number of plates used in the printing process.

Once the plate(s) for your logo are made, it is not necessary to purchase them again on your second order. They are stored in your file where they are retrieved when needed. The only time these will need to be redone is if you want the logo on the tape to be modified.

Or if there is too much wear and tear, the plate has to also be replaced by a new one. An estimate on when it needs to be replaced is if it is used up continuously for eight-hour shifts for a duration of a week and a half. Another variable is how much experience the employee who mounted the plate on the machinery has. The most common sized tape, 48 x 66, without mounting time and cleaning, should take fifteen minutes to print a case.

To be able to first make a plate, companies should provide high-resolution imagery. The supported formats are AI, EPS or vector. Customer satisfaction is the priority and to ensure that, your brand will be contacted if there is a problem with the quality or resolution of the image provided. If a lower quality image is used, the logo on the tape will not appear as crisp.

Another great advantage of using custom printed tape is that rates of pilferage and tampering will decrease significantly. This is because it is highly obvious if someone repackages the box with regular tape. As the receiver, if you notice the tape on the package has been previously opened, make sure all the contents in the shipment are all still there.

When purchasing packaging tape, there is also the option of getting high security tamperproof tape. The way it is designed is when it is delivered, the receiver will remove the seal from the surface of the box to reveal a tamper-evident message. Depending on who the manufacturer of the tape was, it will say slightly different words along the lines of “void/opened”.
This residue which gets left behind is almost impossible to remove. Unlike other regular packaging tape, high security tape is resistant to extreme hot and cold temperatures. Also for the companies that would like customization, it is possible to to do so for an extra cost. Depending on what you are looking for, Spectra Tapes has either blue tape that can be customized or red tape that is numbered sequentially every 6″ and perforated. This will allow it to be also used as a label for full security and be able to be recognized immediately. Think about all the boxes out there in transit that look just like one another. Wouldn’t you want your boxes to stand out from the pack?
Not only does high security tape provide you with that, it is even suitable in a variety of surfaces if they are clean or dry. These surfaces can either be stainless steel, painted metal, polyester, PVC and glass. Be advised that they have to be clean of oil, dirt, grease and other contaminants.
Industries that commonly use this kind of tape are financial institutions, jewellery, lottery, governmental, corporate security, and couriers. The whole idea of having this product is to protect the merchandise found inside. With high security tape, it is fairly obvious if someone tampered with your package. Since even a since piece of tape is not like the others, there is no way to get around it.
High security tapes are a more secure option than using custom printed packaging tape such as polypropylene, PVC, acrylic or gummed tape. These are good options for shipping certain products such as clothing and other goods valued under a certain amount. As you may have noticed, the industries who are more likely to use high security tape tend to sell items that most people would want to get their hands on.
It is recommended to store such tape at an ambient temperature of between 10-20 degrees Celsius (50-68 degrees Fahrenheit) to ensure the product will perform the most optimally.

Gummed tape, also known as water activated or paper tape, has gained a lot of popularity since Amazon, the ecommerce giant, started using it. Gummed tape was on its way out at that point mainly due to the difficulty of application.

There are hand and machine dispensers on the market to make the application process easier. They have to be for gummed tape only since the dispensers for other kinds of tape will not work. Since the adhesive on the tape is not activated yet, these dispensers brush water on them and cut them in the length required to seal the box.

Aside from the fact that it takes more effort to seal packages, there are many advantages to using gummed tape. Between polypropylene, PVC, acrylic and gummed tape, the latter provides the best security for your products. This is due to the fiberglass strands in the tape. They are very strong which makes it very obvious if someone tampered with the package. It is extremely difficult to remove without showing signs of someone previously opening it.

Gummed tape also bonds very quickly to any kind of box no matter how recycled it is. In addition, the other tapes may not all be recyclable friendly but since gummed tape is made out of paper, there is no need to worry about removing the tape first. This is why it is the most environmentally friendly option for packaging.

In addition, it holds securely in all kinds of weather and will stay firm when sealing boxes that are overfilled. Since the tape is wet when applied, be careful closing these packages. Due to the fact that it’s wet, it will shift around and not stick right away. It needs to be first held down until the piece of tape is well bound. After that, it should never unbind. Even if a box is under stuffed, regular tape will start to unbind especially if there are heavier boxes placed on top if it during shipping. But with gummed tape, you will not have that problem.

With the dispenser for gummed tape, it will allow you to choose the exact length you need to seal your boxes. Therefore there is zero waste compared to the other kinds of tape mentioned above because it may take more of these tapes to close certain boxes. But with gummed tape, unless someone applies it wrong, there is no reason to double tape a box with it.

There is a popular lyric by Drake, which states “started from the bottom now we’re here”. The lean journey is something everyone in an organization has to understand, ponder over and execute in order for a company to thrive. That is why, even employees considered at the bottom of an organization should be encouraged to contribute ideas on how to, more efficiently, run tasks. That is key to ensuring success in the lean journey.

For those of you who don’t know what the lean process is, it is simply a way to reduce waste. For example, in order for tasks to take less time, thinking of different layouts for production, better organization as well as clearer and constant communication is a great place to start. At Spectra Tapes, employees are encouraged to come up with personal goals for themselves. This way, it is easier for a company to know where they stand and where their employees want it to go.

Going lean is a continuous goal the owner and CEO of the company has adopted. No matter how much progress a company makes, there is always something that can be done to reduce waste. There are businesses that follow the lean process who have even taken it to the point where they would ask themselves “do we really need this?” Some examples of questions they would be asking are no more staplers so why are we printing paper? If we need more than one page, why aren’t we printing on both sides?

There is an article to draw inspiration from when starting to go lean. It is called 2 Second Lean by Paul Akers. Like many business owners out there, Paul wanted to grow his business and that meant understanding and fixing issues that arose. That’s when he hired a manufacturing consultant to come in to help with his inventory problems.

They told him that he basically did not know what he is doing. It was then Paul began his lean journey to cut as much waste possible. If you think about it, the less clutter and waste there is, the more productive employees will be. Albert Einstein is known to have said, “The leader is one who, out of the clutter, brings simplicity”.

Notice how it’s called a lean journey because it is a continuous process to keep learning and getting rid of waste. A company is never done being lean; there is always something more they can be doing.

Tape has come a long way since it was first invented. The purpose of tape  first created roll of tape might not even be what you thought. It was actually intended to make the process of painting a car two-tone much easier.

In the 1920s it was almost impossible to get a very clean finish on a two-tone paint job for cars. The supplies they had at the time left glue residue on the car and made the glue hard to remove.

That is when an employee at 3M invented masking tape after noticing the trouble workers were having. So it was not even to seal packages for shipments like we might have thought. Today, because of the rising popularity of online shopping, there is an increase in the number of items being shipped all across the globe.

With the ease of starting an online business, anyone can simply start a brand tomorrow and begin selling online. But with all that increased competition, wouldn’t you want your packages to stand out from your competition?

When you ship a package out to a customer, a supplier or whoever it may be, the first thing they will notice is the package and not what is inside. Make sure it is a memorable experience since your brand will be top of mind next time they need a product like yours again.

If you ship to a store, your products will be easier to locate and restock with the use of printed packaging tape. One of the biggest reasons people make the switch from a standard tape to custom printed is the reduction of pilferage. It is an economical way to prevent the public from opening up your package, taking a few items and resealing the box.

Since people within your organization only have access to your branded tape, it would be very obvious if someone tampered with your package once it is in transit. There are even different high security tapes, which can be partly customized.

Tape is not the only thing that can be customized since boxes can also have a brand’s logo printed on the sides of them. They are generally more expensive to get done and there needs to be a regular inventory count of each size box to make sure there are enough in stock.

It does not even offer the extra benefit of reducing pilferage and tampering. That is why looking into the option of getting custom printed tape for your business worth the investment.

When it comes to ecommerce, the package customers will receive represents the most direct touch point with them. It is surprisingly even the most under-utilized opportunity for ecommerce merchants.

When it comes to products that don’t get damaged during shipment, companies usually opt for the most cost effective packaging. This would mean the use of fairly bland bags and ordinary boxes is common.

There is so much more companies can be doing with their packages. As you know, first impressions matter and this would bring your brand experience a long way. The extension of your brand into every touch point shared with customers is very important.

This is due to the fact that first impressions form very quickly and they can persist even though someone is faced with contradictory information at a later time. If you think about it, the package sets the tone for what customers will find inside.

The package will raise the expectations of the product found inside. This then influences how the customer perceives the product found inside. Another thing to think about it just how the package looks once it is in the customer’s mailbox or doorstep.

All of these have to be taken into consideration to build a strong brand and create strong customer touch points. Companies who neglect their packaging but do make an effort to cultivate an image of the brand are not fully cultivating their image.

There are so many creative ways brands can create more value and add personalization through their packaging. One of the ways this can be done is with the use of custom printed packaging tape.

Instead of customers receiving your package and thinking “Oh I got a box, who is it from”, they will instead think “Oh I got a box from Brand X”. The latter is more memorable and has a lasting impact.

Custom printed tape has many more advantages such as reducing pilferage and tampering of your packages. It is no secret which company is shipping out their products therefore during delivery, you never know just who may come in contact with your boxes.

When brands use a tape easily found on the market, it is easy to reseal it and make it as though no one went through the package to begin with. Although with printed packaging tape, it would be obvious someone tried to reseal it.