11.13.08
A selection of products from Brio Fragrance, featuring labels from S&K Label. |
Janet Hare, co-founder of Brio with her husband Ken Tkachuck, says "Hot Topic is heavily into licensing," and while their forte is new, they're also into retro for their target audience of 12-18 year olds. "We run an average of two new products a month for them," Hare adds, "with very short lead times."
Tkachuck says that they were initially introduced to S&K Label by two of their contract fillers. They had an emergency run one day for Marcy Labs and Marcy called Ken Harvanek at S&K. To make a long story short, Harvanek had the labels run in one hour.
"This is the level of service we have been getting from S&K ever since," Tkachuck says, "beginning with one and two color wraparound labels and progressing to multi-color labels on their Indigo press that, with several hits of white on the bottom, really popped. He adds that S&K is part of Brio's team. "They treat us like family. Not many suppliers fight to keep costs down, continually offering suggestions such as layering colors on the Indigo to get away from silkscreen multicolor labels, which didn't offer the shadings we now can get," he says.
Since 2004, S&K has run all of Brio's work with one exception, and that was a large order that, at the time, S&K felt was too big for them. Tkachuck mentions that "everyone at S&K knows what's going on; if someone is traveling, out sick or just not available, somebody else is right there to take up the slack and keep things going."
Brio does work for the Torrid Company, a sister firm of Hot Topic with stores in over 40 states, Urban Outfitters with over 140 shops, Claire's with 3,000 locations worldwide, and the 200-store Midwest chain of Vanityshops.com. A lot of Brio's customers are teen retailers and their audiences are always looking for new things. And they're even doing work for the Cartoon Network. Brio concentrates on lower minimum runs (5,000-6,000) and has even done 2,500 runs. Their experience has taught them that pressure sensitive beats silkscreen hands down when cost and turnaround are the primary considerations.
Tkachuck and Hare say that their first employee was a full time designer. "Anna Timm has done such an outstanding job with our licensees that they give her a lot of flexibility in how to present the art," Hare says. "When you have a product that begins with a concept and continues through design and production right on through shipping," she adds, "you know your customer has a high degree of confidence in you and you simply have to deliver each and every time."
Okay, so the client has totally off the wall production requirements, is constantly changing inventories to reflect the latest fads, and has drop-dead due dates. If you're the label partner, how do you handle that? S&K Labels, of Bloomingdale, IL, began answering that for Brio when it ran their first order in 2004 in an hour. Company founder Harvanek felt there was a niche for quality, short run, extremely fast delivery and chose to build S&K by investing in flatbed presses in the 1970s instead of going to longer run rotary like most other label companies. While their production now includes the WS2000 Indigo, they still have a host of flatbed presses equipped with embossing and hot stamping so they can turn out high quality product extremely fast.
One of the first S&K customer orders run on the Indigo was for Brio Fragrance. Mike Harvanek, son of the owner and now the company vice president, says that "since our forte is service, we found that the best way to keep customers was to find and keep suppliers who care as much about producing and delivering quality products as we do."
S&K continues to pull rabbits out of the hat for Hare and Tkachuck. In late October of this year, Brio got a rush order for Nightmare Before Christmas body mist fragrances, which are on sale from Halloween to Christmas. "S&K came through again with flying colors," Hare said. "They got artwork on Monday, provided proofs Tuesday and delivered labels on Friday, the week before Halloween."
So how does S&K do it? Mike Harvanek says luck has nothing to do with it. "Rather, it's a combination of partnering with the right suppliers who have proved over the years that they'll deliver what and when they promise and who also meet high standards of quality."
"When you build a business on the premise of short term delivery," he says, "you can't afford to have problems with raw stock or top coating on materials used with the Indigo." The answer for S&K is Masterpiece Graphix of Fenton, MO, USA, whom Mike Harvanek says "has never delivered a problem material in over three years."
Other S&K partners perform equally as admirably, Harvanek says. "We've been using Apple steel rule dies for years, and we have over 1000 dies in inventory. S&K also relies on Fyco Photoengraving of Elgin, IL, for its plates.
Sounds like treating your suppliers like you want to be treated is a formula that works not only for Brio Fragrance, but also for S&K Label, Fyco, Masterpiece Graphix and Apple Steel Rule Dies.