Branding is all about image or how people see and experience you. First impressions are lasting impressions that build your business through attracting new clients and that keep them coming back, and telling others about you. In this article we will show you how your business could profit from using printed tapes and giving a special attention to your product packaging.

Holistic Approach

You don’t need to be big business for this to work in your local market. But you do need to do the work of building your brand, and this takes time. Therefore, it is important to take the holistic approach to your branding activities and include the importance of your product packaging and design. Using printed tapes can be of the key value to ensure your brand exposure.

Flexo Printing

When it comes to delivering products, making sure that your materials and packaging stand out is key to turning buyers into customers. But how can you differentiate your business from competition? Flexo printing could provide you with a colourful solution to boost uptake and interest in your products or services.

As online shopping continues to flourish, many retailers are using printed packaging to enhance the customer experience. With millions of e-commerce packages shipped and received every day, companies are vying for unique packaging that makes their products stand out. Personalized packaging tape is a top contender. 

Printing a logo onto tape increases brand awareness and sealing cartons at the same time. Therefore you are using one solution which solves two problems – protects stock in transit and advertises the business.

So, why should you be choosing flexo printing for your new packaging solution? We bring you some advantages of using printed tapes:

Branding

Using printed tape ensures your brand is visible from the time the package leaves your site until it reaches the consumer. In addition, with the increase in online ordering and shipments, custom printed tape will help your company to stand out from the crowd.

Logistics

You can also use bespoke printed tapes to improve traceability, especially in the food industry.  Using printed tape to display your EC number on all your cartons improves supplier and batch identification, therefore assisting traceability.

Professionalism

First impressions are so important.  Custom printed tape, displaying your brand, gives a great first impression when it arrives at your customer.  It shows that you care and that you pay attention to detail, which helps to build confidence in your company and your products.

Identification

Printed tape makes it easy to instantly identify the contents of the carton for proper handling and storage. It is recommended to use standard printed tapes such as ‘QC Hold’ or ‘Quarantine’. This makes it much easier to identify goods within your warehouse, to avoid confusion.

Security

Once your shipment leaves your site, you don’t know who will handle your goods.  Custom printed tape can be an effective anti-tamper measure as printed tape that is broken or resealed is easily identifiable.

Special Instructions

Standard printed tapes carry messages such as ‘Fragile’, ‘This way up’, ‘Handle with care’, etc. This ensures that your goods are handled correctly in transit.  Once they arrive at your customer, this aids the consumer in storing the goods correctly.

Reducing Carton Costs

If you use custom printed tape for branding, this reduces the need to hold large stocks of printed cartons.  Plain cartons are less expensive and you can purchase it in smaller quantities, saving you money and storage.  Printed paper tapes are especially effective and professional looking for this application.

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Doctor Horace Day

Pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA), a key component of adhesive tape variants, was first developed in 1845 by Dr. Horace Day. He made the tape by combining India rubber, pine gum, turpentine, litharge (a yellow lead oxide). As a result, it was the first “rubber-based” adhesive and Dr. Day used it in his practice as a surgical plaster.

Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive

The next major application for a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape came from the auto industry in the 1920s. Two-toned automobiles were becoming increasingly popular. Manufacturers needed an efficient way to produce a clean edge where two colors met, and still maintain the production speed. Each time the areas masked off with paper, held in place with cloth surgical tape, the solvents in the newly-sprayed paint would seep through the cloth causing it to stick to the surface.

Engineer Richard Drew

In 1925 Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company solved this problem with the invention of masking tape. It is a tan paper backing with a rubber adhesive coating which in combination with various oils and resins becomes tacky. Engineer Richard Drew had his hand on the thing.

Drew was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on June 22, 1899. He spent his youth playing banjo in dance halls, eventually earning enough money to attend the University of Minnesota. But he only lasted 18 months in the engineering program. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company soon hired him as a lab tech.

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company

The company was then in the business of manufacturing sandpaper. Consequently, he spent the next two years developing a tape that was sticky yet easy to remove. He experimented with everything from vegetable oil to natural tree gums. A company executive, William McKnight, told Drew to stop messing around and get back to his regular job, which he did, but Drew kept doing tape experiments on his own time.

Scotch Tape Invention

That same year, Drew also came out with his waterproof transparent tape after months of work. The tape took advantage of newly invented cellophane. But the material wasn’t easy to work with, often splitting or tearing in the machine. The adhesive was amber-colored, which ruined the cellophane’s transparency. Afterwards, Drew and his team went on to invent adhesive-coating machines and a new, colorless adhesive. The use of the term Scotch in the name was a pejorative meaning “stingy” in the 1920s and 1930s. It stuck with the brand until today.

New Materials

From this beginning the pressure-sensitive adhesive industry began to grow. Consequently, new tapes were developed and new applications for them were found. Hence, the adhesive component was changed to synthetic rubber compounds. Also, a new transparent backing material developed from regenerated cellulose, called cellophane. In the 1950s cellulose acetate and its copolymers came into use as tape backings. Similarly, synthetic polymers combined with resins came into use as adhesives. Drew died in 1980, at the age of 81. Finally, the National Inventors Board posthumously inducted him into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007.

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