Premier Canopies Invests in Colex Sharpcut Flatbed Cutter

Colex Sharpcut flatbed cutter

For some PSPs, the answer to keeping up with printers and the challenge of finishing, is outsourcing. While demand remains steady or increases, this bides time before committing to the purchase of a digital cutter.

Premier Canopies, based in Huntington Beach, CA, recently brought its finishing capabilities in-house with the purchase of a Sharpcut flatbed cutter from Colex (Booths 1437 and 1446). The company, founded in 2012, offers dye-sublimation, digital printing, POP, trade show display, flag and vinyl banner services. Its 22 employees work in a 12,000-sqft printing facility offering the company’s services nationwide to more than 1,300 distributors.

In 2016, Craig Tucker, owner, decided to grow the digital printing side by purchasing two flatbed printers and a Latex printer. With a full digital print facility, Tucker realized a huge backlog in finishing started to occur.

While focused on productivity, Tucker had to address finishing. “The main goal was to not only improve finishing speed, but also improve accuracy on each and every job.” Premier Canopies chose the 5-by-10-foot Colex Sharpcut SX-1631 digital flatbed cutter.

“We learned that jobs that would take three to four days to cut would take only a few hours to turnaround on the Sharpcut,” Tucker says.

Within a month of operation, the cutter already exceeds expectations. The Sharpcut has been in use for a large range of materials including wood, acrylic, vinyl banner, PVC, sintra, foamboard and coroplast. With the versatility of blades, each of these substrates are easy to cut.

By 2020, Premier Canopies hopes to be in a new 30,000-sqft facility. The Colex Sharpcut SX-1631 is poised to play an instrumental role in this growth.