Photos on Canvas - A Winning Business Model

The photos on canvas business model is relatively new in the digital printing industry. If you have been printing photos on canvas as a service for 5 years, consider yourself a pioneer. It is one facet of this industry that has seen dramatic growth since its inception, and continues to grow, despite the radical changes in the global economic climate. The exact opposite appears to be the case in the fine art market. The way I see it, the photos on canvas model is very successful for two reasons. 1) High perceived value for a reasonable price. The cost of a canvas print with your own photograph is significantly lower than that of a fine art canvas print. Consumers are basically paying for the product and the service, but not for the creativity or work of an artist. 2) The novelty of having your own photograph printed and stretched on canvas rather than a traditional glossy photo paper. I constantly watch friends, family, trade show attendees light up when they see a high resolution photograph stretched on canvas. This is a brand new product for the digital age, where everyone has a high-resolution digital camera. With a low cost product that has widespread consumer appeal and high profit margins…photos on canvas appears to be a winning business model that is here to stay.

Diversification into Photos on Canvas, Running Rampant

Well, a recession begins, a year of time passes, and diversification is in the air as prevalent as the oxygen we breathe. Within our industry, it means that giclee printing companies are executing upon new strategies that leverage from their fine art giclee printing equipment, technology, and expertise. It seems like every day we are hearing about another giclee printing services firm expanding (from a services standpoint) from giclee art reproduction into the photos on canvas market.

The photos on canvas market is primarily online driven. Professional canvas prints are made available to professional photographers to reproduce their own work and for the general consumer looking to put photos to canvas (such as an amateur family photo). This market is now seeing an influx of competition from the traditional fine art giclee reproduction crowd.

The bottom line is that the "kill or be killed" mentality is hot and heavy these days. Let's face it -most of these companies aren't entering into the canvas photo market in order to expand - they are entering so that their giclee printing business in general will survive the economic storm. Such an entry will come with significant risk. In order to compete, these giclee printing companies must invest in a new and complex ecommerce website with special capabilities (and its going to cost a lot to compete with those who have been offerring photos on canvas for years). But having a website doesnt get you anywhere if nobody knows about it. Therefore, the canvas photo business model will require a substantial investment in consistent, aggressive advertising in order to drive traffic to the website. The advertising will compete amongst many others and better be compelling if any canvas prints are going to move. Furthermore, the current recession means that the market is shrinking.

Many entrepreneurs in general fall into the trap of thinking that its going to be easy to switch from one business model to another and suddenly its all going to make sense. To summarize - it aint going to be easy.

What are the major advantages with solvent based printers in comparison to water based printers?

Speed and Efficiency: Solvent printers (such as the Roland XJ640, and the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000) are generally faster than water based (such as the Epson Stylus Pro 9880, Epson Stylus Pro 9800, Epson 7800, and Epson 4800) at producing giclee prints. Usually 25-50% more efficient. Solvent printing is geared more for production and is an industrial type machine. Commercial printer businesses predominately use solvent printing machines. These printers are designed to print wide rolls like 64" and above. They also have wider in diameter and higher in weight media capacity.
Cost of Ownership and Consumables: Solvent printing technology is designed every day, long-term high volume production runs. Their built to last, total workhorses! I know of companies that have the same machines in production for over 8 years and going. You will not have to upgrade or update your hardware every few years like most aqueous technology. Solvent inks cost 50-75% LESS than water based ink, this is a substantial savings considering it’s the most expensive consumable you purchase! Inkjet media like canvas and paper is one more cost savings component. This varies of course with the quality of the substrate, and if there’s an inkjet coating layer applied to the base. Solvent ink does not require an inkjet receptive coating, but it will indefinitely improve the output.
No Coating Saves Time and Money: there’s no top-coating (giclee varnish or giclee coating) necessary with so is the most important advantage solvent inks have over water based! You print onto canvas, you wrap your canvas prints, you ship the canvas prints. There’s no post treatment with top-coating canvas prints. What does this mean to you? You eliminate a huge step of production, perhaps the longest step if you include lamination dry time for every canvas print. And of course the waste incurred on canvas with coating rejects, or the trial and error with rolling and spraying liquid laminates. Your turnaround will be cut by 50% opposed to water based printing on canvas. Then there’s the actual cost of the coating chemistry itself, ranges from $30-$110 per container. Finally, the cost of labor(s) that are needed to apply the canvas varnish. This is a big expense that varies from shop to shop but without a doubt adds up over time.

Early to Solvent Printing

Here's my view....In 2004, there were a few early adopters or perhaps "risk takers" that delved into the solvent printing world! Prior to this, these decor art publisher/printing companies had been operating production and producing giclee prints with aqueous inks on Iris, Epson and Roland printer's (such as the Epson Stylus Pro 9800, Epson Stylus Pro 7800, Epson Stylus Pro 4800). The Roland 540, 740 Sol-Jet and Mimaki Jv3 solvent based printers produced the best giclee print quality and resolution. Solvent technology now appealed to some canvas transfer companies and they embraced digital canvas printing. At this time Giclee was really acceptable on all levels......finally! Fine art inkjet canvas was making a big splash in the market now. The goal for these companies was to break into the hotel market, furniture outlets and mainly big box stores digitally with a giclee canvas art prints at an extremely competitive price. The price point at this level was unobtainable with their current water based giclee printing technology. Before this transformation took place, the giclee art prints provided by suppliers for big box stores were lithography canvas and digital prints imported from overseas. The materials costs were too high for ink and canvas, along with the extra steps in production like top-coating canvas. These businesses had to be more responsive with faster turnaround times and more efficient print speeds. They had to manufacture a canvas print at the absolute lowest cost possible. Of course the image quality had to meet this market standard. This digital solvent canvas product was far superior to the competition.

UV Inhibitors and the Truth About Print Longevity

It seems like there has been a lot of discussion recently regarding UV inhibitors in post-print protective laminates (giclee varnish). While I am pleased to see the genuine concern for archival properties and longevity of giclee prints, I feel that the primary issue is being lost in the details. The question that giclee printing professionals should be asking is, how archival are my giclee prints? This is what printmakers really want to know and it cannot be answered simply by understanding how much and what types of UV inhibitors are present in their laminate of choice. In fact, in some cases, UV inhibitors can actually detract from the quality of an giclee print. Let me explain.

Many variables must be taken into consideration to accurately evaluate the longevity of your inkjet print. Printmakers must not only understand the archival properties of their ink, substrate, and laminate, but how these variables interact with each other. Even if you are using the most archival ink, the most archival canvas, and the most archival laminate, if these products have not been tested together, the compatibility, or lack thereof, could nullify the individual properties of each variable. In other words, the final giclee print may be less than the sum of its parts. Here of a couple of examples of how this can happen.

Suppose you are applying a very archival, solvent-based laminate with a substantial amount of UV inhibitors to a very archival water-resistant, matte inkjet canvas. Though individually both are archival, the matte inkjet canvas may be too absorbent to accept the solvent laminate, which results in micro-cracks on the surface or edges of your giclee print. These micro-cracks will cause the microporous canvas to absorb impurities in the atmosphere and oxidize, causing the giclee print to breakdown and degrade over time.

Suppose you are applying an archival water-based laminate with a substantial amount of UV inhibitors onto a giclee canvas which contains Optical Brightener Additives (OBA’s), as most inkjet canvases do. The idea here is that the UV inhibitors will prevent the OBA’s from firing by reducing the exposure to UV light. (OBA’s burn up and cause the inkjet canvas to return to its natural yellow color with prolonged exposure to UV light). This is a decent idea in theory; however, it presents an entirely new problem, metamerism. OBA’s use UV light to make a substrate appear brighter and whiter than it actually is. Without the presence of UV light, they cannot be activated. Therefore, by color correcting and printing an image under UV light, then applying a laminate containing UV inhibitors, the base white point and all of the colors on top will shift as the OBA’s are not being able to serve their purpose because the catalyst has been prevented by the laminate. Most experienced giclee printing professionals know that metamerism can cost time, money, and stress.

The only way to truly know if your giclee prints are archival is to have your final giclee print tested by an organization that has the ability to perform accelerated fade-testing (Fine Art Trade Guild, RIT, Wilhelm Research Institute, etc.) At Breathing Color we provide our customers with Archival Quality Certificates which certifies the longevity of our Chromata White Canvas with our Glamour II coating, and the most prominent OEM inks in the industry. This certificate uses 2 different methods and organizations to validate its promise. If you use our Chromata White Canvas, with our Glamour II coating with Epson, HP, Canon, or Roland aqueous OEM inks, your giclee print is certified archival. If you don’t use our products, you should demand this type of certification from the manufactures of the products you are using to make your inkjet prints. Unless the canvas, laminate, and ink have been tested together and certified, longevity cannot be accurately determined. And, given that the majority of inkjet canvas and fine art papers on the market have not been print permanence tested, you should assume they are not archival.

IUSA 2009 - Solvent Technology Introduction

I just returned home from exhibiting at the Imaging USA show in Phoenix, some of the best and most well-respected photographers attend this show. We had a 64" Roland XJ (eco-solvent printer) in our booth, to show off the quality of our new line of archival, solvent canvas, PureG. I was pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback we received, as this was the basically the first introduction of solvent printing technology into the high-end fine art photography community. We were not quite sure what to expect as solvent technology has historically gotten a bad rap among the most savvy giclee printing professionals and photographers (not too long ago, inkjet canvas did too). This show would be the first true test of changing this perception by demonstrating the recent technological advancements in solvent printers and canvas, in terms of print quality, longevity, and the containment of solvent odor, for the giclee art print. The advantages of solvent printing have never been disputed (lower production cost, faster production speed, no need for post-print laminate).

No one could believe the quality of giclee prints that were coming off of this machine, right there in our booth. The prints flowed onto the floor completely dry, with durable inks, ready to be stretched and sold. The very idea of being able to avoid the arduous and costly process of laminating giclee canvas, was enough to draw serious attention from all those who walked by. Some very prominent photographers even brought over their own images to more accurately evaluate the giclee print quality and were thoroughly impressed and excited when they saw the detail and density of familiar images. I saw smiles stretch across their faces as they vigorously tried to rub the freshly printed black ink onto the unprinted white canvas, and found that they couldn’t.

While solvent printers are still very expensive and will only be seriously considered by giclee printing professionals who are doing a fair amount of volume, one thing is clear…solvent technology is finally ready for prime time. I am now convinced that the quality is there, we have always known that the cost and time of production are significantly less than aqueous giclee printing, and now with our new line of OBA-Free, certified archival canvas…solvent technology offers a clear competitive advantage for the volume canvas giclee printing professional and deserves serious consideration.

Optical Brightener Additives: A Candid Discussion

A lot of giclee printing professionals are curious about whether the presence of optical brightener additives in a giclee canvas matters to them. As the innovators of the world's first white optical brightener free canvas, let us help explain our reasons behind the breakthrough technology.

What most people dont know is that optical brighteners are bleaches. These bleaches, which are also found in white t-shirts and other textiles and laundry detergents, absorb ultraviolet (UV) light and emit back visible blue light. They trick your eye into thinking that something is whiter than it really is. These bleaches only last so long, until the point that they actually burn out and no longer do anything. These bleaches are also harmful to the environment because when they are used in manufacturing, they are often found in domestic waste waters, and are toxic to fish and other animals.

Now let's look from an art perspective. In terms of giclee, just imagine a valued fine art giclee piece where the bleaches have burned out of the inkjet receptive coating. What happens is the canvas becomes its natural color (which would appear as a yellow color to the eye), and the colors would shift. Now, the fine art print wont look as it was originally intended to look - and instead it will look yellow. Over time, this will happen to an inkjet canvas manufactured with optical brighteners whether it has been laminated with a giclee varnish or not (put a giclee print of this nature in direct sunlight for about one week and you will see for yourself). Is yellowing like this acceptable for the fine art market? In our opinion: Decor - Yes. Fine Art - No.

Then there's the metamerism issue with the optical brighteners. Optical Brightners excaerbate the effects of metamerism. See, optical brighteners require UV in order to "fire", or appear to our eyes. If there's no UV exposure, the optical brighteners will not "fire" and the giclee print looks just as it would without optical brighteners - a more yellow color. Is color shifting like this acceptable for the fine art market? In our opinion: Decor - Yes. Fine Art - No.

More on this subject later....