It’s all about the quality imperative for this supplier of visual communication

“Being an entrepreneur means knowing what you can do. And more importantly: what you can’t. Anything you can’t do yourself, you should outsource.” That’s the motto of self-made entrepreneur Tars van den Broek, who is based in Sint Anthonis, located in the province of Brabant in The Netherlands. He started out as an independent stand and model builder. Activities turned the one-man show into a company, which in turn quickly evolved to become a total supplier of visual presentations. High quality print proved a complementary service and that’s why owner Tars recently purchased a Mimaki printer. High quality demands finally found a match.

Flexible

“The company charm resides in the fact that we’re extremely responsive. If everything would be structured and fixed beforehand, you’d let a computer handle everything. But there are so many individual needs and requirements, that I can put my expertise to good use.” Tars jokingly comments. “Our customers appreciate that we improvise, we we’re always ready for them, 24/7. I didn’t get a specific training on this; I just know what customers like. I’m a customer myself, so I can quickly relate to any kind of situation, consider it my forte. I always tell my crew to put themselves in a customer’s shoes: “what would you do if you were the client?” If you know the answer to that, you know how to treat a customer right.”

Flexibility is a key ingredient in the successful formula of Tars Visuele Presentaties (Tars Visual Presentations). “Being flexible allows us to be more efficient.” claims Tars. “Our designers don’t just design. They also calculate and plan the projects. Any key customer has his/her own designer, who is the single point of contact for the whole project. This formula works like a charm.”

Totality

Tars Visuele Presentatie delivers a total package. This can consist of stand creation, lettering, inside and outside signage and print jobs. The latter is quite extraordinary, as Tars usually profiles as a signage producer. “Customers come to us for the total package. Their print job won’t be more expensive here than it would be elsewhere. We start off with the design and close the project when it passes quality control and is ready for delivery. We make sure the customer gets what he/she wants, provided it meets our high quality standards.” comments Tars van den Broek.

Musea

The company works for various museums throughout the country. This dates back to 1996 with a question from the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden. Their interior designer asked Tars to darken the windows so as to minimise any UV effect on the interior, but not to an extent that all light and feeling would be lost inside the old building. In cooperation with their material supplier Spandex, they came up with a window film that met all requirements and could be put on the windows. Tars supplied all windows in the building with five layers of window film. One thing led to another and the promotion made sure the company now cooperates with museums all over the country. Tars printed the entire exhibition oversight for the Jeroen Bosch Museum in Heusden on the one Mimaki printer.

Materials

The materials and substrates are the basis of everything, and for that Tars relies on his excellent relationship with Spandex. “It’s essential to me that I know I can rely on just the sole supplier for any question regarding materials and any question I may have on this.”, claims Tars. “From window films to machines, without exception. Our relationship has been ongoing for many years and it all relies on people to people interaction. Spandex knows the name of that game. The cherry on the cake is that we have one single point of contact who immediately comes to the rescue if and whenever there is an issue.

Advice

“Many years ago we decided to invest in a print and cut machine by means of compromise. As it turns out, we couldn’t print when cutting and vice versa. Obviously that wasn’t the best of choices. So we turned to Spandex for advice and opted for a printer that could deliver high quality print and we also went for a cutter that delivered at the same level. Separating printing and cutting proved a wise decision, we gained a higher quality and more flexibility. We selected the Mimaki JV150-160 printer and a Summa cutting machine. Spandex recommended the Caldera software that was barcode enabled, which completed the workflow. I aimed for a 100% quality proof result, but ended up with 120%.”, Tars cheerfully concludes.

Spandex accountmanager Michel Ghielen states that the Mimaki printer supplies the highest quality that can be provided in the 1.60-meter width market segment. Tars concludes: “We bought the machine as it came so highly recommended by Spandex. We relied on their extensive knowhow and were right to do so. We never needed to look back.”