A blue ribbon opportunity

The Brother TapeCreator Pro adds a personalised finish to customised products and you have the chance to win a starter package in our excusive competition

For the past year, Mike Kelly has been at the Newtech roadshows demonstrating the Brother TapeCreator Pro (TP-M5000N), a nifty machine capable of printing both adhesive tape and fabric ribbon of varying width.

It’s the ribbon printing that particularly appeals to the garment decoration business, especially those who print for retail where the gift-wrapping of personalised packages of wedding, birthday and baby gift sets, one-off T-shirts and promotional goods with bespoke ribbon is an easy upsell. Whole rolls can also be sold to customers, and bespoke adhesive tape for packaging up white label goods is another potential sales avenue.

The machine is simple to use. Two widths of ribbon are available – 15mm and 38mm – in a choice of white, light pink, light blue, deep red and dark blue, and a choice of gold, silver, red, royal blue and black inks. The selection is based on the most requested colours, with new black, purple and dark green ribbon colours currently in the pipeline. The adhesive tape widths are 38mm and 50mm.

The user slots the ribbon cassette in the machine, sticks the ribbon end to the cardboard core at the front, closes the lid and it’s ready to go. The TapeCreator Pro uses thermal transfer to ensure the end result is durable, clear and vibrant.

Each machine has P-Touch Editor software included as standard, which has more than 200 templates as well as the ability to quickly and simply create custom designs with customers’ logos etc.

The built-in LCD screen shows how much ink and ribbon is currently in the machine, and users can select what length ribbon they would like printed; possible lengths range from 1m to 25m, with it taking two minutes to print 25m at 300dpi.

A 38mm ribbon will cost the user 90p + VAT in materials for the first metre, then 60p + VAT per metre thereafter. The first metre is more expensive as the initial 50cm of each job is wasted due to the way the printing process works.

For the 15mm tape, the figures work out at 60p + VAT for the first metre and 40p + VAT for every metre thereafter.

Mike Kelly, who is head of the business unit for the TapeCreator, reports that most customers sell customised ribbon for around £5 per metre.

www.brother.co.uk

Mike Kelly of Brother has been demonstrating the printer at the Newtech shows