Notes from a traveling technician / sales rep

Let me start by saying – I love my job. I have the opportunity to interact with customers at all levels and assist them in expanding their businesses. On the
one side of my job, I am a technician and installer for Roland VersaCAMM units.
I get to setup these amazing printers and also to help people when they are
having a problem. Sometimes I am onsite with them and other times I am able to
assist over the phone and internet. The other part of my job is sales. I enjoy
helping people expand their business and find new ways of getting into markets.

This month has been busy to say the least. It is not quite over and already I have been to 6 different states, attended a tradeshow (NBM Fort Worth), performed 2 new unit
installations, 4 on site technical assist calls, 5 on site training sessions,
and have an advanced technician course that I will be taking this week at
Roland! Needless to say, I have not been home much.

I would like to share with you some of the experiences I have had over this past month interacting with customers much like yourself. There are 5 in particular that I
think show the cross section of our customers and I am sure that you can relate
to at least one of them.

The first one is a large company that produces sports apparel to resellers. They have 3 VersaCAMM units at this time and were trying to match output colors on all
three printers and have those colors match the materials they were producing
garments out of. I went on site to help them use the Roland Spot Color matching
system and to train their employees on different areas of production using the
printer. The spot color system allowed them to produce a chart right out of
Versaworks and use that chart to get exact color matching on all of their
output. They had been trying to create their own library and “tweak” the colors
between their different printers to get close to the target color. By using the
Roland color system, we were able to get a color that was consistently
reproduced and matched the garments they produce.

The second customer was an install of a sweet new VS 300 VersaCAMM with 8 color system. The customers’ current business was in heat transfer and largely in the
rhinestone transfers. To say that liked to have “bling” would be an
understatement! Their target markets were the fashion industry and the school
system. With the current market that they had, the 8 color system with metallic
ink was a perfect match for their business. This new addition allowed them to
not only produce garments on a short run basis as they had been needing, but to
expand into other markets that their customers needed like custom decals and
banners. It was a great day of installation and on site training.

The third stop I will tell you about is a small “Mom and Pop” shop that had mostly been doing embroidery and a small amount of cad cut vinyl heat transfers. They had a
market in the local school system and services businesses providing them with
garments. I was there to install a new VP 300i Versacamm so they could expand
into small multi color runs and expand into a growing market of wall graphics
that their customers had been asking for. We also trained on the vehicle
market, something that they wanted to get into, and how to produce those items
using their new equipment.

Next there was a tech call and training session with a business that was heavily involved in pad printing and promotional products. They had purchased a VersaCAMM unit
to produce banners, decals and magnets that they used to bring that portion of
their promotional business in house. We trained on using the machinery to
produce garments and help them expand even further into a new market.

Lastly is the tech and training call that I did for a screen printing and embroidery business that had purchased a VersaCAMM to produce those garments that just did
not work well in screen printing. They were able to produce left chest logos
with unlimited colors for a low price that their previous means could never do!
They were also expanding into the sign business and the wall graphic arena by
producing custom wall graphics of the local sports teams. They are well on
their way to not only paying off their new equipment in less than a year, but
expanding their business into so many new areas!

You can see that our customers are diverse in size, business type and customer base. They have all expanded and succeeded in an economy that many say is down. I enjoy
going out and meeting each of them and seeing how they make it happen, day in
and day out. I take inspiration from them and pass it on to other customers.
Each one shows me something different, a new way of doing things. I think in
many ways I learn just as much from them, and I get to pass it on to you.

Yeah, I really do love my job!