The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light that we as a society – and as an industry – should “expect the unexpected.” With hindsight being 2020 (pun intended!), so many businesses and individuals have or shoud have benefited from having a contingency plan in place.

In the case of the pandemic, a number of situations arose. At some manufacturing operations, production had to temporarily halt due to staff either becoming sick with the virus or unable to come to work due to exposure. Plus, many people have had to stay home to take care of family members who were ill or need to look after children who could not attend school due to closures. While those in the print industry were fortunate to have their work deemed “essential,” the virus’ impact was far-reaching and unavoidable.

Nimble converters were wise to quickly establish protocols to keep workers safe and operations up-and-running. This included downsizing shifts to skeleton crews while having those that could work from home do so. Of course, in a label printing facility, machines need to be operated by people – in person – so for a production staff, working from home just isn’t possible.

Another aspect of the pandemic brought to light the need for a contingency plan – getting new, unexpected business in volumes that a company may not be able to handle alone. No one ever wants to turn away business. And with the right relationships, foresight and a plan in place, label converters don't have to.

One of the benefits of membership to industry groups and associations is the ability to network and establish relationships that can help mitigate potential problems before and as they arise.

FLAG, the Flexo Label Advantage Group, is an organization that provides opportunities for members to be more competitive in the marketplace and become stronger companies. FLAG provides bottom line buying group savings on commonly used materials in the industry via its vendor partners for substrates, tools and dies, inks, prepress, overlaminates and more, as well as label sales growth opportunities. Contingency planning is another valuable benefit of FLAG membership, though. The pandemic put this element of FLAG in the spotlight.

“FLAG recognizes the challenges that independent label converters face when it comes to catastrophic backup and contingency planning,” says JC McKay, FLAG’s VP of business development. “We provide our members with benefits similar to those of large national converters, one of which includes the ability to solidify a contingency plan amongst our over 100-member network. Working with our members to support one another, especially during the recent COVID outbreak, is a valuable resource that our members can provide to their customers and facilities. For example, when COVID hit here in North America, we immediately set up a contingency planning group on Member Connections – our member online platform. Over 40 members are participating to support one another if needed due to a COVID outbreak.”

John McKay, FLAG’s president and founder, explains how FLAG helps its converter members with contingency planning. He says, “Catastrophic recovery planning has always been a benefit of FLAG membership, and we viewed this as a two-part process: First, providing our members, who primarily are independently-owned label converters, with tools to prepare their own facilities for a catastrophic event, and secondly, providing members with a network of reliable, trustworthy backup companies who can produce work if they are down. Many members use this capability as a selling tool as it inspires confidence with potential customers.”

FLAG provides resources for both of those needs with its 24/7 FLAG Member Portal, where there are documents and checklists to assist in preparing their companies for a catastrophic event. Also on the portal is a complete list of FLAG members and a private forum for them to reach out to others with their needs. The growth of FLAG has provided a valuable network of label converters all across North America. This is especially true if a catastrophic event hits a large area of the country, as there is always a place to turn to for help. 

FLAG established Member Peer Groups a couple years ago, which are small groups of members that meet regularly to discuss issues they are all dealing with individually. “There is a level of honesty and frank dialog that they find through FLAG and these Peer Group discussions. During the pandemic, it has been a tremendous benefit for members to learn from others how they were handling the various business and HR issues they all faced. They realized that they are not alone,” John McKay says.

Besides FLAG members helping others during catastrophic events, they have the ability to outsource work to members who have capabilities they do not have, resulting in a broader offering of products and services to their customers. FLAG has also seen members from the East Coast outsource work to the West Coast because their customer did not want the final product shipped across the country.

Overcoming a hand sanitizer label challenge
Very late one Thursday afternoon in June 2020, Chuck Keefe, president of Marathon Label in Wausau, WI, received a referral from an industry colleague. CFA Promotions, a promotional agency in Massachusetts, needed 400,000 hand sanitizer labels printed in the Chicago area for its customer Anvyl – and it needed them fast.

Anvyl is a cloud-based supplier relationship management platform that allows companies to manage suppliers, oversee production and house historical product data from procurement to delivery of inbound goods. Like many companies across the globe, Anvyl has pivoted to supplying PPE equipment during the pandemic, and according to its website, “Our expertise in identifying suppliers has uniquely positioned our team to help. We are prioritizing aid by sourcing critical items like face masks and hand sanitizer.”

Although Marathon Label could provide the labels by early the next week, the customer was “desperate” and needed them much sooner — by the end of the weekend in Chicago.  Clearly, that would only be possible with a digital press. Marathon Label, however, specializes in longer runs of prime packaging and industrial labels and sells exclusively to distributors. Although CFA Promotions was not a current customer, Keefe immediately jumped into action and put in the time working through his contact database in an attempt to find a local converter with a digital press who could print the labels. But finding a converter who would willingly “blow up their Friday schedule” for an unknown customer was proving to be daunting.

And then Keefe, a long-term FLAG member, thought about utilizing the FLAG network to find someone who might be willing to meet the quick turnaround. He remembered meeting Mark Turk, president of International Label & Printing at a FLAG Annual Meeting, and recalled that International Label had a Domino press.  But without Turk’s contact info, Keefe turned to JC McKay, for help, who responded immediately and reached Mark Turk at 7:30 p.m. that evening at his home.

International Label & Printing is a full-service printer/converter in Elk Grove Village, IL, just outside of Chicago. Turk and his partners, Bob Gorzynski and Tony Dardano, bought the company in 1993 and will essentially print “anything that comes in a roll.” And with two hybrid flexo/digital presses – that’s translated to a large number of winery and craft labels for companies throughout Illinois and the surrounding areas. And lately – a whole lot of sanitizer labels. Speed-to-market from its CEI BossJet Powered by Domino has been a key differentiator for the award-winning, 30-person company.

After a few iterations with the artwork, the labels were run and picked up by the customer by the end of day Monday. And based on its responsiveness and excellent print quality, International Label &Printing immediately received a second order from the customer.

Marathon Label and International Label have both been successfully managing the ups and downs of the pandemic. Fortunately, their customers have been deemed essential and business has been steady.  This challenging request for hand sanitizer labels, however, pointed out two unexpected byproducts of business “not-as-usual.”

The first was that it requires extra efforts to meet urgent customer demand in a pandemic. Chuck Keefe put in the time because it was simply the right thing to do — even though he had no relationship with the customer and frankly had nothing to gain.  International Labels’ entire production team, led by operations manager Robert Gerstung, demonstrated a “can-do” attitude and made the order possible. And JC McKay worked into the evening to harness the power of FLAG.

Secondly was the need for new levels of trust.  Turk and International Label disrupted their Friday production schedule for an unknown customer with a “desperate” need. This type of order could easily have blown up in their face – but they successfully turned it around in one day. Once again, because it was the right thing to do. And Keefe had to trust in International Label’s capabilities and reputation as he made the recommendation.

According to Keefe, “Based on their feedback and the second order, it’s clear that the folks at Anvyl were very pleased with the quality of the labels and our responsiveness to their need for near instant turnaround.  With these labels, Anvyl can meet the demands for hand sanitizers that will now be distributed in hospitals, and with first responders and private organizations.”

In thanking Keefe for the referral, Turk concludes, “This is definitely a feather in the FLAG cap, demonstrating how an organization can truly help its members.”

Stronger than the Storm
While the pandemic illustrated the importance of having the ability to effectively outsource work to peer converters, contingency planning was a need long before the words “coronavirus” and “COVID” were part of our everyday lexicon. Before, during and after COVID, natural disasters have been wreaking havoc on manufacturing operations across the globe.

In 2012, Ksidrane Inc., a flexo and digital label printer on Long Island, NY, was having its best year ever, which is saying a lot considering the company’s rich, at the time, 66-year history. And then came the storm. The infamous Hurricane Sandy, also known as Superstorm Sandy, has the distinction of being the second costliest hurricane in US history. Long Island, part of the New York metro area, was hit particularly hard, and Ksidrane’s 10,500 square-foot label manufacturing facility in the town of Freeport was ravaged.

“It was a Monday night, everyone went home, and we were watching the plant on our security cameras, over the internet. At some point, the power went out,” recalls Neil Sidrane, Ksidrane’s owner and president. “When one of my managers came in the next morning, he called and said, ‘It’s not pretty down here’.”

Four feet of water in a label plant is certainly not pretty, to say the least, and the deluge wiped out just about all of Ksidrane’s equipment. “Our whole setup was ruined,” Sidrane says. “Our presses, finishing equipment, platemaking – everything we had was either damaged or destroyed.”

Ksidrane is a family business, started by Neil’s father in the 1950s in his apartment in New York City on a flexo press he built from scratch. Over six decades the company evolved into a full-service label and packaging provider, acquiring modern flexo printing and converting equipment to complement the handful of homemade flexo label presses built by Neil’s father. In 2010, Ksidrane made the leap to digital with the addition of an HP Indigo WS6000 press along with a fully-loaded A B Graphic finishing machine. Prior to the storm, Ksidrane had been steadily migrating work from flexo to digital, and the new technology had opened up new markets and opportunities.

And then Sandy hit.

What happened next is telling of the camaraderie and kinship that exists in the label industry.

“Having been in business for so many years, I have a lot of friends in the industry,” Sidrane says. “I turned to my vendors and asked them to place a moratorium on any money we owed them, and they all obliged. We were in a good cash position, so we didn’t owe too much money, and many of our vendors just wiped it off, and said, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it.’

“Our equipment vendors HP and A B Graphic, they stepped up to the plate and went above and beyond for us – they did some amazing things – scrambling around, finding us equipment,” Sidrane says.

Until Ksidrane could repair its water-damaged digital converting equipment, HP was able to procure a demo press, and A B Graphic took a machine being used for training in Spain, reconditioned it and shipped it to New York for Ksidrane to use in conjunction with the HP press.

“And they didn’t charge us a dime,” Sidrane says of A B Graphic. “They are the vendor of the century for us.”

In the meantime, while Ksidrane’s vendors were scrambling to find replacement equipment, the company still had to find a way to serve its customers. This is where Sidrane’s label converting friends and peers come in.

“Before our vendors found replacement equipment, I turned to people in the industry I’d known for years and started shipping work out to them,” Sidrane explains. Coming to the aid of Ksidrane was Pennsylvania-based Labels by Peluzzi and fellow Long Island converter Precision Label. For months, the two companies ran Ksidrane’s flexo work. For digital runs, Ksidrane sent work to Reid Label & Graphics in Massachusetts (now known as New England Label).

The real ace-in-the-hole, Sidrane says, was Scott Rudolph at Piping Rock Health Products, a Long Island-based nutraceuticals company. Piping Rock had recently bought an HP Indigo press to print its own labels. “For a year, we ran our digital jobs with Scott’s equipment. He just gave us carte blanche use of his facilities. We paid all of the bills and expenses, used our own employees, and it was like another plant for us. And that’s what really saved the day. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Sidrane says.

Throughout the year-and-a-half long ordeal of losing its facility and equipment, Ksidrane didn’t lose a single customer. “Prior to the storm, our backlogs had gotten bigger and bigger, so it was very challenging. We worked with our customers very closely, and everyone was so accommodating. We gave them what they needed.”

Neil Sidrane did not want to bring the repaired and refurbished equipment back to the same facility that got flooded by Sandy, fearing something like that could happen again. After looking at what must have been every industrial park in Long Island, Sidrane came upon a 22,000 square-foot facility in Farmingdale that turned out to be a perfect fit.

The building is about 28,000 square feet, over two levels, including mezzanine level office space. The plant was a significant upgrade from the company’s previous home in Freeport, and all of Ksidrane's employees displaced by Sandy were rehired.