Print Wisconsin: Investing in the Right Technology

It’s not every day that you’re tasked with carrying the legacy of the family business, but Connor Miller, director of sales for Print Wisconsin (Stanley, Wisconsin), was ready for the challenge.

But first, let’s start with a little history. Before it became Print Wisconsin, the company was CNC Classics, founded in 1992 to do CNC cutting.

Connor Miller, director of sales for Print Wisconsin.

“It started off as basically a wholesale CNC routing company that provided routing components for other trade companies, display companies, and fixture companies. They did that with multiple CNC routers for quite some time in the early 2000s,” Miller says.

He explains that as logos and branding started growing in popularity, CNC Classics began to do some screen printing in-house. Eventually, they began outsourcing components of projects to other printers.
Miller says they would CNC cut and manufacture, and then they’d send said projects off to other printers, then those printers would send them back. Then CNC Classics would kit, package them, and then they’d be off — back to the printer to be shipped to the client.

However, as CNC began working with increasingly large clients, available time for delays on deadlines became scarce.

“They ended up bringing in their first digital printer around 2007, to allow us to have the control over that, manage that quality and timeline. And then, ever since they invested in that first printer, you know, it kind of grew,” Miller says. “We also realized that, ‘hey, printing is kind of the way of the future. Everybody wants their logo on things, everybody wants branding. It’s a lot of doors for different types of revenue.’”
And with that first digital printer in operation, Print Wisconsin was born.

Since its rebranding, Miller says Print Wisconsin continues to pride itself on quality and meeting timelines, and it continues to work to make itself a one-stop shop for graphics and displays.

Carrying Out a Family Legacy

Initially, Miller’s plan wasn’t to work for his parents. In fact, he was a collegiate basketball player who eventually went to play overseas. But when his contract with his team was up, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.

“The business was always around [when I was] growing up. I watched my parents build it from the ground up, and reinvest into it, and work endless hours to grow it. So, I kind of was around it. My parents, the biggest thing was they said was that I had to go get a corporate job for at least two years before I came back and helped out in the business if I ever wanted to,” Miller says.

But as Miller returned from overseas, he became increasingly involved with the business to help pass the time. And from there, he says, he started other areas of revenue that helped the business grow fairly quickly, including getting Print Wisconsin’s feet wet in e-commerce.

Print Wisconsin’s main focus is still wholesale work for retail to corporate clients and large national clients. But with e-commerce, Miller saw an opportunity.

He explains he wanted to open things up to more “day-to-day” consumers. This started with selling laser-cut products on Etsy, and progressed into an entire division of Print Wisconsin dedicated to making custom cornhole boards.

“We do over $1 million in sales with custom-printed cornhole boards that we CNC cut, manufacture, print, and handle everything in-house, and that’s direct to an everyday type of consumer,” Miller says.
And in the last three to five years his parents have significantly stepped back, allowing him to “do his thing.”

“So, the e-commerce side of things is what I’ve tried to focus on and open up the door. You don’t need as many sales reps, and you kind of get your company name out there,” he says. “It has been my niche in trying to help the business grow without … I’ll say … dealing with the daily headaches of managing more and more people.”

Leaning into Equipment

Miller explains that one of the biggest challenges Print Wisconsin has faced post-COVID has been finding workers, but to help combat that, the company has begun exploring the use of robotics and other automation-forward technologies.

“I’ll never forget, we had these large jobs, and we were diecutting pieces on our CNC of Coroplast and banner material with a drag knife. And then we did some research and obviously came across Zünd,” Miller says.

After that discovery, Miller says he and some team members drove four hours to Zünd’s Milwaukee, U.S. headquarters with samples and materials to work with. It was then that he saw the light.

“I’ll never forget: they were cutting small pieces of banners that would normally take us hours on our CNC in, like, 12 seconds, and I just thought, ‘What have we been doing all of this time,’” Miller says.

He continues, “Ever since then, we decided that there’s equipment out there that, yeah, it might cost a lot of money and it might cost more than what some other brands are. But if there’s anything that can help our workflow operations equipment-wise, and help our employees, and help our quality and jobs to move seamlessly to the shop so we can handle more and more work, then that’s what we’re going to invest our time and money into.”

Since investing in its Zünd digital cutter, Print Wisconsin has also invested in an Epson SureColor S80600L, a Canon Colorado M5 Pro, and a swissQprint Impala, along with swissQprint’s “Rob” — an automated robotic arm system designed to handle the loading and unloading of media for unmanned, continuous production.

Using Robotics to Lift Workers Up

Since investing in the robotic arm, Miller say it’s working out better than he could’ve imagined, and the use of robotics helps relieve some of the pressure of finding new hires, as well as taking some physical labor off existing employees’ hands.

“Any way we could help our employees do less manual labor has been a big thing. After spending time on the floor, we’ve learned that employees don’t like doing the same thing every single day, especially if it’s manual, tiring labor.” Miller says. “So, robotics has been a big investment that we’ve really focused on in the last 12 months, and we’ll continue to focus on it.”