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April 04, 05 Reader Services |
Steven Spiro, chief executive officer of Tracer Imaging L.L.C. in White Plains. The lenticular printing company has hired the Westchester Business Accelerator L.L.C. in hopes of achieving future growth. Printer makes good impression Remember those old rings you'd find in boxes of Cracker Jack? The face of the ring was a set of plastic lines which, when you turned the ring turned back and forth, gave a clown or superhero the appearance of being in motion. The owner of a White Plains business has spent the past few years perfecting a modern twist to that old-school printing technology, with success. Steven Spiro's Tracer Imaging L.L.C. uses its own processes and equipment to produce multi-dimensional "lenticular" images that convey more and faster motion than was ever possible with those old toy rings. In a Christmas card printed by Tracer two years ago, actor Tom Hanks and his family appear to be waving American flags when the image is moved up and down "To get fluid motion you need 15-plus frames per second. If you have 50 to 60 frames, you can get enough motion for a 2 to 3 second video. I became very enamored with the technology and its applications," Spiro said. Lenticular images were traditionally created by attaching a set of elongated plastic lenses, or lenticules, to an image that is interlaced so only a portion appears behind each lenticule. Once a field practiced by a handful of companies, lenticular printing has seen dozens of new companies over the past decade thanks to computer technology that has lowered costs, said Dillon Mooney, a technical consultant in charge of the technical inquiry desk at the Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, a trade group in Sewickley, Pa. "The new technology made lenticular printing a lot more economical and feasible. It opened up this specialty to a lot of different printers," Mooney said. Yet the costs are much higher than traditional printing," Spiro said. Tracer Imaging has developed its own photo printing process that uses an imaging device capable of resolutions as high as 8,000 dots per inch, compared with the 300 dpi resolution common for most photos printed in magazines and newspapers. For offset printing projects requiring 30,000 pieces or more, the company uses its own software to interlace images and its own method of laminating lenticules to a photographic print
POINT OF SALE DISPLAYS Spiro says he's found one potentially lucrative use for lenticular images point-of-sale displays. The percentage of Americans making point-of-sale purchasing decisions has zoomed from 7 percent in 1970 to 65 percent in recent years, according to the Trade Promotion Management Association, an industry group in Fountain Hills, Ariz. "Companies are saying, 'We've got to do something to differentiate our products from those of our competitors. We need to spend more money on our individual signage,'" Spiro said. Tracer Imaging has attracted several big-name customers. For Somers-based Pepsi-Cola, Tracer Imaging created lenticular cards given to more than 100,000 fans attending NASCAR's Pepsi 400 race in 2003. The front showed Pepsi-sponsored driver Jeff Gordon's car morphing in color from blue to dark blue and gold, the colors of Pepsi's billion-dollar sweepstakes promotion that year. The cards would have been worth a free 2-liter bottle had Gordon won that race (he finished 14th) Fewer than 100 had been dropped to the ground by fans, Pepsi's marketing team found out a sign of fan acceptance. For Timberland, Tracer has created images showing how its shoes could compress once wearers took off the detachable heel. For Unilever, Spiro's company designed images of Serena Williams for cards promoting Close-Up toothpaste, shortly before selling it and other oral care brands in the United States and Canada to Church & Dwight Company Inc. of Princeton, N.J. And for SoBe Beverages, Tracer is creating new point-of-sale signs for the juices of the Pepsi sister brand. Officially established in June 2004, Tracer Imaging spent three previous years developing its technologies and establishing its customer niches. In addition to consumer goods companies, Tracer Imaging has created promotional images for movies, from a poster for Men in Black II (2002) to the motion image on the packaging of the Spider-Man II promotional DVD sent to media outlets last summer. The company has also helped movie makers keep unwanted people away from the set of Fun with Dick & Jane, a Jim Carrey movie set to come out around the December holiday season, by making lenticular badges for actors and crew members. Tracer Imaging employs 10 people and is based at 20 Haarlem Ave., near Metro-North Railroad's North White Plains station. The company also has a 15,000-square-foot manufacturing and R&D facility in Hawthorne, Calif., through a partnership with Lithographix Inc., a lithography business with sales offices and plants nationwide, including an office in New York City. Reflecting that partnership, Tracer plans to change its name later this year to Tracer Graphix. Spiro will only say Tracer Imaging is projecting "a few million dollars" in revenue this year and more than $10 million over the next two years. To reach those milestones and grow further, Tracer Imaging has entered into an agreement with the Westchester Business Accelerator L.L.C. Spiro said he first heard of the accelerator when he met Jeffrey Zink, managing director/partner, at a business show in New York City. Zink said the company's proprietary technology and track record of early success bodes well for its future. Said Spiro: "We have been keeping a dialogue going the past couple of months. I think an association with the accelerator will truly be valuable to our company." The accelerator's services, he added, should prove very valuable when Tracer is ready to pursue venture capital financing. That won't happen for a while since Tracer Imaging will need the next three to six months to wrap up a first angel round of financing, for an amount Spiro would not disclose. "We have found a nichy, profitable business in store signage using lenticular images," Spiro said. "It's a novel technology that's been around for a long time, but its cost has decreased with the removal of labor from the manufacturing process, and the quality of the images has improved dramatically." For more information on Tracer Imaging, go to www.tracerimaging.com
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Copyright 2004, Westfair Communications Inc. |