Kall Kwik, a well-known UK brand, was founded in the late 1970s to make fast turnaround print available to a broad range of small and medium sized businesses as well as to individuals. Owner Phil Beverley joined the Welwyn Garden City Kall Kwik branch in 2012 and then bought the business from the previous owner in 2018.
Since then, he’s made a series of investments in both print and finishing equipment to ensure that the quality and efficiency of the service offered to customers continues to improve even more.
Phil explains,“Previously, printing timescales were expressed in weeks rather than days or hours, and print production was dominated by large corporations. Kall Kwik revolutionized the market with the early adoption of color and digital print, making it possible for a much broader range of customers to get smaller quantities of print delivered to tight deadlines.
“This investment with Fujifilm is one of many I’ve made in recent years, and it’s a particularly important one. We’d been considering a replacement for our previous toner production press for a couple of years, and when we saw the Revoria EC2100S, we decided to take a closer look. We ran tests on the press at the Fujifilm demo centre in Luton, and based on that hands-on experience, and the advice of Will Doherty at Digital Printing Systems UK (DPS), we decided it was the best fit for our needs.
“We’re very familiar and comfortable with Fujifilm engineering and design, having used many Xerox presses over the years, so investing in Fujifilm technology made sense to us. But in the Revoria EC2100S we also have the added benefit of a press that has been carefully engineered to include a fifth colour channel. This gives us massive advantages, and all at a price point that’s similar to what we’d be paying for CMYK only from other manufacturers.”
Phil anticipates the new press having a big impact on production quality and capabilities. “The addition of pink toner means we can hit a lot more pantone colors than we have been able to before and we can take quality levels up significantly as well. We do a lot of art prints – and anticipate being able to move a lot of that production from our inkjet printers. The EC2100S will also be excellent for short run booklet and magazine production, and image-heavy books. Fujifilm has also recently announced that silver and white toner will also soon be available. We do a lot of wedding stationery, so silver toner gives us a much more cost-effective alternative to foil for those sorts of products. Overall, we’re confident that this is a long term investment that’s going to help us as we continue to grow.”
On the sales and installation process, Phil comments, “Both Will at DPS, and Fujifilm, have been excellent to deal with. We trust Will for his impartial advice, and we’ve been hugely impressed with Fujifilm through the whole process. It really feels like they want to work with us to get the best out of the press, rather than just making a sale. That hasn’t always been our experience with other suppliers in the past. We were also very impressed that we got two full days of training as part of the purchase agreement – far more time than we’ve ever had for any other equipment investment.”
Andy Kent, general manager, Fujifilm Graphic Systems UK comments, “Our new EC2100S and SC285S presses are designed to make 5-colour printing more accessible than ever – we call it 5uper Color. It’s hard to imagine a customer better placed than Kall Kwik to make this a reality in the UK. We look forward to working with them to bring the benefits of 5uper Color to more people than ever before.”
