Pentel®
Pentel Maximizes Savings and Speed-to-Market
with the ezCombo® and rFoil® Program
Background
Pentel goes for the gold in their Limited Edition Brush Pen
“Go for the gold!” “Gold standard” “Pure gold” “Pot of gold” “Dripping with gold” are all popular sayings that reflect how we perceive gold. We use it to convey achievement, wealth and value in our everyday lives. Even the semblance of gold, with all of its eye-popping sparkle makes us take notice. So, when the Foil Stamping and Embossing Association (FSEA) conducted an independent study on how foil-enhanced packaging affects consumer behavior, manufacturers and retailers took notice. Foil-embellished packaging rated better than 80% over non-foiled products in general appeal, quality, value, and brand awareness. This translated into a 26.7% increase in sales in favor of choosing a foil-packaged product over a plain-labeled competitor sitting side-by-side on a store shelf. And that’s exactly the kind of star power Pentel was looking for when they rolled out their Limited-Edition Brush Pocket Pens to specialty craft stores across the country.
Specifications
Market Segment
Specialty Craft Stores
Primary Channel
Retail
Format
Paperboard Folding Carton
Materials
18 pt SBS, C1S
Printing
ezCombo® and rFoil®
Solution
Pentel is a world leader and innovator of writing instruments. They have entrusted their folding carton and blister packaging to Rohrer for over 25 years, and the Limited Edition was just another project…or was it? Because this was to be a special promotion with a limited time offer, Pentel wanted to add gold foil to an existing folding carton to grab the consumers’ eye on the store shelf. But foil-enhanced packaging requires specialized production processes and materials that could over-burden their budget. This was a unique packaging challenge and Rohrer had the ideal solution with their proprietary ezCombo® and rFoil® Program.
There are two ways to integrate foil; hot foil stamping and cold foil. Hot stamping utilizes heat and pressure to bond the foil to the carton substrate in a secondary or more costly and time-consuming offline print run. These runs include limited color choices and require printing plates that may add thousands of dollars to a packaging project. Cold foil can be done in a single pass at a significantly lower cost.
The cold foil process starts with a UV-curable adhesive that is printed directly onto the cardboard in selected areas. A printing blanket then presses the adhesive and foil together. Next, the foil is stripped away in the non-glued areas revealing the desired foil effect. Cold foil also provides more color choices because color is printed over the foil as a stain. This allows the full use and flexibility of the CMYK palette. Pentel was then able to pick their perfect gold color from our custom color book.
Pentel maximized their savings and speed to market thanks to Rohrer’s industry leading ezCombo® and rFoil® Program. This shared tooling arrangement increases efficiency and reduces start-up costs and set-up times for all customers. What’s more, ezCombo® can be used for virtually any blister card or folding cartons – not just for cold foil applications, so future projects can enjoy the same benefits!
