Get the Best Results When You Hire an Installer

If you outsource your wide-format graphic installations, you may think that bringing an installer in at the end of the process to do that last part of the job makes sense, but installer Greg Schopmeyer of Greg Schopmeyer Enterprises in Tarpon Springs, Fla., says that could be a devastating mistake for the project.

With a 30-year career under his belt, Schopmeyer has worked on all sides of the print business, from screen printing to transit advertising to all forms of installation, which he solely focuses on now. He’s paired a wide variety of media with the surfaces they need to be installed on — from the windows to the walls and beyond.

“In a perfect world, the installer would be involved at the very beginning, when the printer is bidding on the job,” Schopmeyer says, because an experienced installer will bring ideas on which media will work best for the project, how the media can be attached, what stipulations there might be on the job and different types of hardware that can be used with the chosen media.

“We’re the final line,” he says. “If you print on the wrong stuff and it’s not working, it doesn’t make any of us look good.”

Some of the key things Schopmeyer needs to know when coming into a job include:

  • Location
  • Measurements
  • Customer expectations
  • Required longevity of the graphic
  • How it will be paneled
  • If he needs the graphic printed with a bleed

“I’ve been in the industry such a long time, and I’ve done a lot of crazy different installs,” Schopmeyer says. “You have to be able to look at all the perameters when planning to do a job. Along the way, I’ve figured out processes for how to make things work. And the most important thing is: Get the installer involved as soon as you can with any sort of project.”

Take a look below at the gallery of installation jobs Schopmeyer has worked on in recent years.

An Economical Alternative to Dye-Sub Fabrics for Displays

Printing fabric banners with an inkjet printerWhen it comes to display graphics, everybody wants something “different” to help set them apart. That’s exactly what a number of customers were requesting from Productive Displays, Addison, Ill., for their trade show banners.

Some had seen dye-sublimation fabrics at trade shows and liked the look of it. So they wondered if Productive Displays could produce something similar.

“We had a different type of poly fabric in the past that was no longer available. Then we went tried another six or seven materials and none of them were really good solutions for us: they weren’t vibrant enough and the saturation was too high,” explains Bruce Ulrich, president of Productive Displays. “When we traded our aqueous printer for a Canon iPF8300S we talked to Bryce Montisano at LexJet and found the right inkjet fabric.”

Fabric banners for trade showsThe fabric is LexJet Poly Select Heavy, and Ulrich says it’s met their imaging needs and the needs of their customers for nice fabric banner displays.

“The LexJet fabric provides us the ability to present customers with a fabric alternative without the need for a dye-sublimation process. We’re able to utilize the capacity of our existing printers and it’s also a less costly process for the customer,” explains Ulrich. “We presented it to those customers, and we have about half a dozen customers who use that material regularly. The ones who are using it have totally bought into it. The LexJet fabric is a very nice solution, and it’s difficult to tell the difference between dye-sub and this material.”