A picture really does say a thousand words when you see Cheryl Beale's work at her Picture This Enterprises in Hollywood, Florida, a short ride up the beach from Miami. A good portion of her business is large format printing doing custom digital wall coverings, wall murals and special events signage for mostly commercial and corporate accounts, but she also handles residential work. Regardless of whom they are, the customers have noticed a difference since she switched to INX Digital International's Megaink BioMG inks earlier this year.
Keeping the customers happy also is making a difference in the shop's work hours.
The customers are very happy because the BioMG inks are environmentally friendly and contain renewable resources. It's the first question they ask after cost because it's on everyone's mind here in south Florida," Beale said. "For five years we we're happy using the Megaink brand of solvent inks, but when the opportunity to switch to their more environmentally conscious product presented itself we did not hesitate. The BioMG ink has outstanding color and the color gamut of the inks is extremely clean and bright. The reds are great and my printers like it as they don't need as many cleanings."
A visit to the company's web site (www.thewizardofwow) emphasizes her point. Beale began the business in 1996 by leasing 250 square-feet, which gave her enough space for an HP 6-color printer. Counting on her marketing background from her early days in retail, the business took off after she made key contacts with ad agencies that had construction clients during the real estate boom in south Florida. Until the real estate market went bust, she was handling mostly posters and banners for builders from Key West to Tampa. The banners and posters are still an important base of her business for tradeshow clients today.
The digital coverings and wall murals she manages nowadays is strictly custom work, mostly for artists and galleries but for corporate accounts, too. She recently completed a panoramic 10-foot by 20-foot piece for an artist, but fondly recalls wrapping a bus using the BioMG inks for a law firm that specifically handles hurricane cases and promotes the company by visiting properties throughout Broward County. Beale now operates from a 2,500 square-foot office and calls upon four employees to help her get the work out the door, which includes servicing national accounts throughout the U.S.
"The BioMG inks have great performance on a wide variety of media we use," Beale said. "We haven't found a media the inks don't perform on."
Beale used the Megaink brand initially for several reasons. She recognized it had higher density than other inks, better adhesion and UV resistance and it was fast drying, which helped prevent problems and worked exceptionally well with uncoated materials. Solvent inks traditionally have dominated the digital marketplace, but the new BioMG inks are revolutionary and unique to the industry. They offer the same qualities, in addition to the wider color gamut and a savings on energy and ink consumption by as much as 20 percent.
Beale uses the Light Cyan and Light Magenta inks as well as Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. She not only finds their performance working well with her two Roland printers, but also feels more knowledgeable talking about the inks with her customers based on the service and input she receives from INX Digital's Omar Baez.
"I can't say enough good things about the quality of the inks and personnel. The inks work very well with my high performance Roland 54-inch and 62-inch printers. It takes as little as five minutes to print a 2 x 3 poster and 45 minutes to one hour for work like a 10-foot booth display," Beale said. "I've known Omar for six or seven years and he brings a lot of enthusiasm to his job. If I have an issue, it's usually operator driven on our end. The technical support group at INX Digital is extremely helpful, very reactive, and they know their stuff about color, which I find extremely important because it helps me drive my business successfully."
