When Brian Mercer founded Brouwerij West in 2009 he sought to craft distinctive beers and provide a unique customer experience. His brewery, located on Los Angeles’ historic waterfront, has established a loyal following by brewing award-winning beers while using visually-appealing eye-catching labels to appeal to beer enthsusiasts. 

Brouwerij West obtains these labels from Wizard Labels – a custom label manufacturer known for its innovation and responsiveness. Wizard Labels’ focus on printing high-quality digital custom product labels with industry-leading turn-times has positioned the company as a leader in serving mid-market companies throughout several industries, including beverage and food.

In keeping with their approach to creating distinctive beers, Brouwerij West also adopted a revolutionary style in its product labeling. Sometimes described as “chaotic design," the craft beer brand's intricate labels use multiple overlapping images to create an eye-catching result. Their custom-built label application system then “wraps” these labels around aluminum cans, creating a one-of-a-kind look for each of their products.

Mercer, who serves as Brouwerij West's CEO, underscores the significance of the label when it comes to branding. He says, “As a recovering professional photographer turned craft brewer, the artistry in our product labels has always been important to me and to our brand.”

As with many craft brewers today, Brouwerij West chose aluminum cans for its beer packaging. According to Mercer, not only do aluminum cans better maintain product freshness and appeal to changing consumer preferences for cans, labels easily adhere to the uniform aluminum surface. This enables small-batch brewers such as Brouwerij West to use versatile, cost-effective pressure sensitive labels for their packaging.

Brouwerij West frequently releases new batches in smaller quantities – typically, between 140 to 700 cases – with each batch needing its own unique identity. This requires not only quick turnaround,  but also a cost-effective approach to producing these intricate product labels.

Wizard Labels uses a fleet of HP Indigo digital printing presses, coupled with an extremely efficient production process, to enable a two to three business day production cycle – all without charging rush fees. The company’s use of sophisticated laser finishing technology enables the label printer to cut and finish ornate labels in a single pass, saving the cost and time associated with traditional tooling-based operations. 

Steve Smith, president of Wizard Labels, explains, "All those grey 'voids' between the colored elements on the Brouwerij West can labels are cut out by our lasers during the finishing phase. And the labels are actually long enough to wrap around the can and overlap, thus creating a multi-layered effect."

Wizard Labels’ combination of digital printing expertise and industry-leading production turnaround helps Brouwerij West quickly get new releases to market. It also minimizes the likelihood of being stuck with unused labels for a brew that is being replaced by a new batch.

Mercer concludes, “We love working with Wizard Labels! Their ability to quickly and reliably produce our intricate, artistic labels has been a real game changer for us.”

For more information, contact Brouwerij West or Wizard Labels.

In the October 2016 issue of Label & Narrow Web, editor Steve Katz selected Wizard Labels was selected as a "Company to Watch."