This has been the year of the micro-exhibition. Across all the industries Output covers, we've seen many manufacturers and suppliers opt to take their wares on the road in a bit to impress new and old customers in a cosier setting. Many have told us that the chance to engage with both clients and resellers in a more personable way makes for a winning situation all round, giving everyone the time to ask and answer the questions needed to make business happen.
HP, of course, has decided to do this at an epic scale that probably only HP can manage. The HP latex truck is a 16.5m customised truck and trailer fully wrapped in a sleek black conformable vinyl. Its German number plates belie its epic journey around Europe: France, Germany twice, Benelux, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Spain and now the UK and Ireland have all heard the latex message in its one-truck quest to spread the word and convert users from eco-solvent.
The latex truck will be moving on to Ireland after its UK leg
After tea and coffee we were given a very short, spritely presentation which dashed through the technology element – water, pigment and the mystery latex particle bond on the surface through heating, which evaporates the water and cures the ink – and focused much more on the applications. Yes, the explanation is important, but those who are truly geeky (hello, Mother!) will know where to look for more information anyway.
HP's presenter moved quickly onto more pertinent topics for the dozen or so display business representatives around me: the advantages of HDPE over PVC, for example, which is stronger and lighter, and also ties in with the HP Media Take-Back Scheme. This is an initiative Output has supported since we started and we are pleased to see HP continue to offer it to companies for free – as well as remaining invisible in the process to improve the value-add. They also suggest considering textile over PVC for improved margins and easier logistics.
Two new offers are also on the table from HP, one of which it has managed to keep remarkably quiet: becoming an HP Ecosolutions 'Trained Printing Company' as a green endorsement after a nine-part modular webinar, to be completed in one's own time, to show that the business has environmental awareness in its veins when compiling jobs. There's also the newly announced HP Latex University to help train staff in new applications and latex-flavoured prospects.
The event's main pull, though, is in the conversations that happened after inspiration from the condensed seminar. Most companies attended in pairs: purse-string-holder and technical guru, asking questions in tandem to the appropriate rep. (What about feeding less tensile substrates through? What advantages does the LX610 ink offer over the previous version?) I looked up from my tweets at one stage to hear three conversations: a conformability demo, a deep technical Q&A about curing, and an existing latex owner negotiating his way up to an L26500.
Not bad for a day's event; British and Irish businesses should take a look while the truck's wheels are still turning.