[VIDEO] Geared UP Solutions gets on-demand and short-run sorted with an OKI white toner printer

With a strategic, four-pillared approach to providing branded products and garments to the market and an overarching drive to be its customers' printer of choice, Geared Up Solutions recognised the importance of being able to offer customers items in shorter runs, smaller quantities, and with a speedier turnaround. Not content with time-consuming weeding and the limitations of other print processes, Geared Up Solutions chose an OKI LED white toner printer to fill this void in its product offering.

Jamie Williams chats to GJS about Geared Up Solutions' strategy and how the integration of the OKI LED white toner printer is opening up new opportunities and revenue streams with both new clients and existing ones.

Transcript:

Jamie Williams:
We're Promo and Print Co trading as Geared Up Solutions and we're based here in Brisbane, Queensland servicing the whole of Australia. We operate in four pillars, what we call pillars, that's categories. We offer apparel promotional gear, wide-format signage and safety and PPE. And to compliment that we have a wide range of branding solutions where customers can have their own logo or call to action depending on what, what bit of gear that they pick, that's complemented by our online portal, which we invested heavily in our IT. So we try and make it as easy for the end customer as possible.

We've been going for 10 years 20 years and like any small business with humble beginnings, we started from home. And we started with a focus on the very pointy end of the market, just around apparel but after about 12 months we kept getting asked by our customers to provide other services and products. And so our width naturally grew. So now we offer promotional items and signage. And I think that's really helped us become a one-stop-shop for a lot of our customers. And now one that we can brand anything, from one item to 10,000 items it really closes the loop and gap for our customers.

Geared Up Solutions has, a lot of varying size of customers. We deal with people from one or two mum and dad businesses, right up to large tier-one providers in Australia. By tier one I mean national or Australasian-based companies 43 00:01:44,550 --> 00:01:46,640 with up to 10,000 employees. And you can understand having that width of employee base requires a lot of strategic agility in how we manage those guys and moreover around how they want their brands replicated, on the gear that they order.

Traditionally, we've always used branding technology like embroidery, screen print, pad printing, sublimation, but more recently we've introduced new technology, with the OKI LED white toner printer. It's fantastic for us, especially in the small run feature. There's no weeding, it's a fast turnaround time and, the value that's it has added to us has just been fantastic.

When I first learnt about the OKI LED white toner print technology, I was actually blown away because one of the challenges we have here is how do we print white on dark garments and especially the traditional method of vinyl is really challenging when you've got to weed pieces. And I thought it was just a blessing, to be honest. We've found it functional, it's a fast turnaround time, the quality is exceptional, it's nearly idiot-proof as long as you've done your research on it. It's exceptionally great for small runs, and we've got a lot of customers and they don't like putting pressure on us to turnaround job on the same day, but things happen and up until now we've had to push back on customers and no one likes to do that. So for us, we've found a solution that ticks nearly every box.

The OKI LED white toner printer was just an absolutely easy decision to move into. And what we found is the GJS team have also been invaluable. Everyone from the local sales agent to the tech team, all the way through to the customer service centre. So for us, it was absolute pleasure onboarding the OKI especially when you have the backup support by GJS. So if we had to go through this experience again, I would have no hesitation in working with the GJS team around onboarding new technology.

My advice to anyone booking at an OKI LED white toner printer is understand what your base is, understand what your clients are currently asking for. And also look at your latent and insipid demand, what else is out there that you haven't chased? For us, we worked hard, we've promoted it, we're putting together a catalogue for it. So the more our customers know the better it is. Our advice for anyone looking at an OKI LED white toner printer is do your sums and I'm sure that it will pay dividends as it has for us.

Geared Up Solutions in the next three to five years we've seen a gap in the market, especially in recent events around having local production and local supplies. So we want to absolutely capitalise on that niche. I don't wanna say the word pivot because it seems to be the key word at the moment, but you know, if you look at what that means is we are absolutely going to put ourselves in a position that we want to be the printer of choice through capacity, capability, service ability, delivering local content. So we'll continue to invest in technology. and the guys are excited that we can deliver quality products in quality turnaround time. 

• Highlights
• Customers can now request items in smaller quantities with the same quick turnaround time they have come to expect from Geared UP Solutions
• OKI Pro8432WT A3 white toner printer
• Solved the problem of time-consuming weeding and allowed the printing of white onto dark-coloured garments