EASY SIGNS OPTS FOR ZÜND IN US AND AUS

Rapidly-growing signage group Easy Signs is investing in Zünd as its digital flatbed cutter systems to power automated precision finishing, at both its Australian and soon-to-open US sites.

At the Sydney site, Easy Signs now has four Zünd cutters, with a fifth on order, all supplied by Starleaton, while over in the US, general manager Steph Talty has taken the initial delivery of a Zünd G3, and Zünd D3, supplied by Zünd America.

The US plant will be almost a duplicate of the Australian operation, with production speed and automation a priority. While roll and rigid print production will be on HP Latex equipment – including HP’s Stitch dye sublimation textile technology – cutting and finishing is where Zünd Systemtechnik G3, D3 and Zünd Cut Centre software is the solution of choice, as it now is in Australia.

Andy Fryer, co-owner of the business, said, “We discovered that the end-of-line is where bottlenecks can be the most costly. If we can’t finish the jobs properly, we can’t honour our twenty-four hour turnaround promise, so reliability and after-sales service become top priorities. With Zünd precision Swiss engineering, productivity and Starleaton’s local support, we have found Zünd cutting solutions outperform anything else on the market.”

Easy Signs in Australia has a Zünd G3 used for fabric cutting with another on the way, plus two recently-installed D3 L-3200s which are used for plastics, cardboard and corrugated cutting and creasing. An additional compact Zünd S3 L-1200 (130mm x 1800mm) is used for sticker and decal cutting, making five installed machines in total from Starleaton and the Swiss manufacturer.

The latest Zünd addition is another G3 3XL 3200, with a working area of 3200 mm x 3200 mm. “We are doubling cutting capacity in our fabric finishing room.” says Fryer, “This one will sit alongside an identical G3.”

It is not just in signs that the company is targeting growth. “Corrugated boxes and folding cartons, along with Point-of-Sale displays are good growth areas for us,” says Fryer. “The new D3s incorporate the latest twin-beam technology allowing to run a double tool set providing cutting and creasing productivity improvement of between 70 -100 per cent.

“Our goal is to offer 24-hour turnaround for boxes, cartons and Point-of-Sale in the same way as we do for soft and hard signage,” says Andy Fryer, “and we may later be looking at the self-adhesive label sector.”

Easy Signs was founded by Andy Fryer and Adam Parnell in 2006, when they established a small sign shop nearby their existing import business. It had typical print and cut roll equipment and serviced its customers by quoting, manufacturing and installing signage.

Realising that growth would be slow with this business model and with strong technical backgrounds, Fryer and Parnell became the first all-online sign supply business in Australia and by 2018 had sales revenues in excess of $12m, earning them places in the AFR fastest-growing and Smart Company Top 50 businesses. With the motto “Making Signs Easy” and the promise of 24-hour order turnaround, Easy Signs was happy to eliminate bespoke quoting, in favour of online pricing, and leave the installations up to the buyers.

The business model worked and, with continuing investment in automated production, physical expansion two years ago into an 8,700sqm facility at Smeaton Grange on the booming outskirts of Sydney,(close to the under-construction Western Sydney International Airport that will open in 2026), revenues for Easy Signs in 2022 will reach record levels.

“We started exporting products to the USA and other parts of the world, mostly for soft signage,” says Andy Fryer. “We started facilitating these orders by managing them from Australia, but soon realised that the USA was a great opportunity for us.”

This has now resulted in further expansion – right into the heart of the East Coast of America, at Allentown, Pennsylvania just 150km west of New York with a 6,600sqm facility. Operations manager Steph Talty has already left Australia to oversee the establishment of Easy Sign’s US operations, where around 130 American jobs are planned to be created within the first three years of operation.

As Fryer noted on the announcement by the State Governor of Pennsylvania, “We have spent years building Easy Signs into a customer centric, ultra-efficient manufacturing company. With a focus on technology and continual innovation, we knew it would one day be ready to launch into a much larger market such as the USA. We look forward to creating a wide range of jobs for Pennsylvanians in the Lehigh Valley, and developing a facility and culture that allows people to enjoy coming to work each day.”