Labeling Innovations from Weber

90 Years and Just Getting Started

This year, we celebrated our 90^th anniversary–a truly momentous occasion. As we interviewed customers and employees throughout 2022 as part of the celebration, one thing became clear. Labeling excellence starts with excellent service. Whether it’s how we treat our employees, how we support our customers or the technologies we provide, at Weber, we work in service to others.

Read on to explore some of the highlights from this year’s celebration.

Our Customers Are the Best–Plain and Simple

At Weber, we don’t look at our customers like a transaction, we look at our partnership as a shared path and at our customers’ success as our own. We were thrilled to hear what some of them had to say about us!

Jeremia Steves from Boar’s Head shared, “Great folks with great solutions–plain and simple. Weber has experience within the space and does a great job of connecting customers' needs with executable solutions.”

3D International started as a humble car wash in the Van Nuys, California area back in 1980 and soon after began manufacturing their own brand of soap, degreasers and tire dressings.  As word spread, they needed to expand the production of their quality automotive products and dedicate themselves to just manufacturing.

With over two decades of research and development, 3D has established a solid name in the car care products industry for car washes, detailers, and car dealerships.

In 2014, 3D built a new facility in Santa Clarita where they moved into creating new  polishing compounds and car-care soaps along with their degreasers and tire dressings. As their fame continued to grow, they expanded, adding new filling and packaging lines to keep up with demand. The 3D International factory headquarters includes a 70,000 square-foot warehouse with computerized mixing, high-speed production and strict quality control.

The company’s Production Manager, Genaro Levy, took some time to tell us about the growth at 3D International and how they are handling their success.

“We were famous for our soaps, tire dressings and degreasers, but since 2010, we have pursued the development of polishing compounds for automotive finishes,” said Gernaro. “3D now has compounds that are unmatched in how fast they polish. This one-step compound polishes (removes swirl marks), protects (adds a protective film), and leaves a great shine.”

The company now produces about 150 different products in a range of containers including 2 oz., 8 oz., 16 oz., 24 oz., 32 oz., 1 gallon, 5 gallons, 55 gallons, and 275 gallon totes! Over 95% of their products are biodegradable and/or green with 100% VOC compliance.

Back in 1926, when the automobile was starting to become commonplace in the United States, there was a problem. Cars like the Ford Model T and the Dodge Series 116 were going faster and farther, but the roads they traveled were mostly still unconnected dirt ribbons.

Two entrepreneurs, Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri, decided they wanted to try to connect the country with a paved road to enhance auto travel. They lobbied the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) for the creation of a route across the country near the center. What eventually evolved over the years was Route 66, which connected Chicago in the East to Santa Monica in the West.  The road grew by connecting smaller local roads into one unified paved US Highway. It opened up the country to commerce and travelers, especially helping the migration to the West during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930’s.

While many changes occurred over the century, including the endpoints, Route 66 has remained a special magical highway romanticizing auto travel in the 40’s-60’s.

The scenic by-ways, small town diners, museums and tourist attractions still bring travelers looking to relive those special times when traveling by car was more than just speeding down a crowded concrete multi-lane raceway. When you mention Route 66 to those that know, it conjures up images of large un-air-conditioned beasts full of families traveling down long stretches of two-lane asphalt.

Larry Tarantolo was lucky enough to grow up in Cicero, IL, right along where Route 66 (Ogden Rd.) passed by on its way to the endpoint at Lake Michigan. He was enamored with the legend of that highway, often traveling it with his family. He learned the history and lived the magic of the famed first road across America.

As a beverage marketing entrepreneur, Larry worked in the industry for years, creating multiple products and working with many experts in the bottling and distribution arena. One of the professionals that Larry befriended was Ron Filbert, a fourth-generation bottler of custom root beers and sodas. Filbert’s Old Time Root Beer is a well-kept Chicago secret that is a hard-to-find Southside treasure. Ron’s plant is located in a brick building on South Ashland in Chicago and it turns out custom hand-made sodas daily. The equipment is old but well-maintained, as you would expect from a seasoned craftsman.

About twenty-five years ago, Larry met Ron and they have developed a great working relationship over the years. And one of the special things tying Larry to Ron’s company is that Filberts and Route 66 were both opened in 1926.

We have two exciting label materials called Transthin 375 and Transthin 400 for making your thermal transfer labels more efficient and economical.

Our Transthin materials are blank thermal-transfer label components that features both a thinner facesheet and a thinner release liner so there are more labels per same diameter roll.

Given the popularity of our high-yield thermal label material offering we are adding a new, and very competitively priced, Transthin 375 product to our portfolio to enhance our existing Transthin 400 material product line.

The Transthin 375 offers optimized economics through the development of a densified facestock, but with a versatile all-purpose rubber-based adhesive, and a highly densified glassine liner for improved web strength and stability.

The facesheet is just 2.5 mils thick but still retains the excellent dispensing characteristics required for successful print-apply applications. The release liner is just 1.7 mils thick but also retains the strength needed for the tension of the rewind reel on a typical label printer applicator.

We offer stock labels for 8” OD rolls for printers and 12” OD rolls for printer-applicators on our Go-Label.com site. Check out the details and prices:

• Product Code L-6541 for 8” OD Rolls

 http://www.go-label.com/4_x_6_Transthin_375_Labels_8_inch_roll_p/l-6541.htm

• Product Code L-6540 for 12” OD Rolls

 http://www.go-label.com/4_x_6_Transthin_375_Labels_p/l-6540.htm

Our complimentary product called Transthin 400 uses a versatile all-temperature adhesive developed to provide good room temperature performance and excellent cold temperature performance.  Because of its cold-temperature properties and good adhesion to corrugated cardboard and plastic packaging, the adhesive is an ideal adhesive for warehouse applications.

The facesheet is just 2.1 mils thick but still retains the excellent dispensing characteristics required for successful print-apply application. The release liner is just 1.5 mils thick but also retains the strength needed for the tension of the rewind reel on a typical label printer applicator.

We offer stock labels for 8” OD rolls for printers and 12” OD rolls for printer-applicators on our Go-Label.com site. Check out the details and prices:

• Product Code L-6528 for 8” OD Rolls

http://www.go-label.com/4_x_2_Transthin_400_Labels_p/l-6528.htm

• Product Code L-6529 for 8” OD Rolls

http://www.go-label.com/4_x_6_Transthin_400_Labels_8_Roll_p/l-6529.htm

• Product Code for 12” OD Rolls

http://www.go-label.com/4_x_6_Transthin_400_Labels_p/l-6527.htm

Compare an 8” OD roll for standard thermal transfer labels versus an 8" roll of Transthin:

• Standard 8” OD 4 x 6: 1,000 labels per roll with 4,000 labels per case.
• Transthin 8” OD 4 x 6: 1,500 labels per roll with 6,000 labels per case.

50% MORE:  500 labels per roll w/ 2,000 labels per case.

• 50% MORE Labels Per Roll
• 50% MORE Labels Per Box
• Lower Freight Costs
• Reduced Inventory Space
• Yield improvement applicable to most environmental scorecards.
• Available in 12” OD for automated applicators.

Transthin materials are designed to work with both stand-alone printers and printer-applicators.  
Zebra, Sato and Datamax desktop printers handle the 8” OD finished rolls whereas our print-apply applicators handle the 12” OD finished rolls.

“It’s all about the community and how we bring people together through beer,” said co-founder and Master Brewer Deb Loch.

Celebrating their fourth anniversary in business, Deb and co-founder Jill Pavlak have been slowly building their brewery through quality products and local participation. Urban Growler (www.urbangrowlerbrewing.com) was opened in July 2014 when Deb and Jill combined their talents and passion to create outstanding beer, food and a welcoming space for the community.

And their brand tag line says it all: “We’re Beer For You!”

As Minnesota’s first female-owned brewery, they had many challenges getting their vision in place. But with the help of friends, family and even total strangers, Urban Growler became a reality. Their patrons believed in the founders vision and their support helped get one of the hottest new breweries off the ground. Now that spirit is being repaid with a company that is there for the community.

The brewery, located at 2325 Endicott St. in St. Paul, Minnesota, features a warm, welcoming taproom, on-location kitchen and an outdoor beer garden. There are also indoor retail spaces that can be rented for hosting meetings, weddings, and local social gatherings.

But one of the most interesting things about Urban Growler is the building itself. This century-old brick and timber space was once home to the St. Paul Police horse stables back in the late 1800’s. After that tenure, it became a manufacturing facility for wooden skis and hockey sticks (after all, this IS Minnesota) as well as other warehousing in later years. The designers for Urban Growler did an awesome job of resurrecting the true character of the old building while adding a few modern updates for comfort and accessibility.

The brewery is looking to output 2000 barrels this year, up from about 1250 last year. Their flagship brews include traditional beers like their CowBell Cream Ale, Midwest IPA and their De-Lovely Porter. They also brew an interesting Kentucky Uncommon Ale and a “West-Coast-hops-meets-East-Coast-maltiness” Golden Hammer IPA. All Urban Growler flagship beers are lovingly handcrafted in 10-barrel batches under the close supervision of Master Brewer Deb.

But one of the best things about being a small brewery is that you can brew small batches and experiment with limited releases. Last year, Urban Growler brewed over 40 different beers, some as small as half-barrel experiments! Most of these end up in the taproom where their popularity is voted on by their customers’ consumption. The more popular winners then might end up as a seasonal or limited release for distribution in cans.

Lately much of their focus has been on a concept that they call “Plow to Pint®”. They have found that people would rather drink locally and that they appreciate locally sourced products. For this endeavor, Urban Growler uses ingredients harvested from farmers in the area to create unique beers with a distinct twist. Some of the recent favorites include Blueberry Wheat featuring blueberries harvested from a family-owned farm in Princeton, MN, and an Oak Aged Imperial Ale with Frontenac Grapes that used classic oak barrels and Frontenac grapes gown outside Red Wing, MN. They are currently working with the Rainforest Alliance in Guatemala and the University of Minnesota to create a collaboration brew using the sustainable ramon nut. Not your ordinary Stout.

While most of the flagship beers at Urban Growler are filled by a Wild Goose system into preprinted cans bought in bulk, these new small batch creations are getting canned and labeled using pressure-sensitive custom-designed labels. This allows the brewery to be more flexibile while doing a small batch economically and using eye-catching designs for their new brews.

Urban Growler has been canning approximately 150 cases of their small batch seasonals every few months. But because of their success, they are now looking to ramp things up to 250-case batches of their special beers once a month. To do this, the brewery had to invest in a new automated labeling system.

After much research and a few false starts, they happened to find Weber Packaging Solutions online. They contacted Weber whose local rep came out to see what the best solution would be for Urban Growler. The brewery was growing and would need to be able to scale up to the larger brew runs at higher speeds in the future. Reliability was key to a new system and it had to be easy for the staff to operate.

You see them everywhere. Small labels attached to your products at the grocery store, Walmart or big box store that allow you to peel them off and save money at check out.

Weber prints many of these type of labels and in this blog we will feature two examples of "Point of Purchase Coupon" labels.

These labels are perfect for adding to packages like boxes, clamshells, bottles, and bags to give your customer a discount or rebate buying incentive. It's a good way to get your product noticed or to entice a potential buyer into trying your brand for the first time.

Two of the most common types of coupon labels are the  extended-content, multi-panel construction label that works best for mail in rebates that requires more space for text and the  simple peel off coupon with deadened adhesive on the back. The peel-off coupons are usually collected at check out and the savings are immediate. 

How to Apply Coupon Labels

There are two basic ways to apply your new coupon labels. The method you use is dependent on whether your products are on the manufacturing line or already offline or in-store. 

• Towa Hand-Held Labeler

When your products are already at the store or at the warehouse, you can apply the labels by hand (labor-intensive!) using an affordable hand-held labeling tool. We would recommend something like the Towa hand-held labeler. Available in six different sizes, the Towa is perfect for small labeling jobs and on-demand labeling.

If you plan to use a hand-held labeler to apply your coupon labels, remember that your labels need to be wound on a 1" core and the roll has to be no more than about 5" in diameter.

This method is labor intensive because you have to swipe the labeler on each product, one at a time. If you have a lot of items to label, this could take a while!

•  Automated Label Applicators

If you plan ahead and can label your products while still being manufactured on a conveyor line, you can use one of the many labeling systems on the market.

We would recommend either a PackLeader labeling system or a Weber Alpha Compact label applicator. Automated labeling methods like this are meant for high-volume labeling that also requires close accuracy (like your coupon label).

Depending on the shape of your product and the speed of the line, you can choose from a range of systems including the PackLeader 501 for round containers like beverages or the Weber Alpha Compact which is perfect for applying labels to the top or sides of a product.

Both systems are economical yet full of advanced features like rugged die-cast aluminum construction, single-key calibration, automatic recognition of missing labels, in-production speed adjustment, and more.

An example of a tricky application is this coupon label applied to a clamshell plastic container filled with trail mix. The clamshell lid is recessed so the label needs to be blow onto the top of the clamshell using a Alpha Tamp-Blow labeling system. The label is brought to within a 1/4" of the product (clearing the lip) and is then blown onto the lid.