The Label Store invests in new technology to keep in front

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :30/04/2008 08:40:46

Operations Director Phil Clarke and former Sales and Marketing Director Tony Allen explain why The Label Store offers much more than labels - it’s the complete bar code labelling solution.

Written by Rebecca Waters and produced by Charles Sizeland

“Bar-coding symbologies have always been seen as something of a black art in the industry,” says Label Store’s Tony Allen, Sales and Marketing Director. “If you were to descend on any large manufacturing organisation in the UK and ask them about bar-coding, you’d probably find that there is an extremely small number, maybe one or two people in the largest of organisations who really do understand bar-coding in the true sense of the word.”

Indeed bar-coding has always been a complexity; how can so much data be stored in the widths and spacings of printed parallel lines, patterns of dots and concentric circles, and text codes hidden within images?

“It’s a bit technical,” is Tony’s answer.

Film master

Founded as a specialist business division of KTP Ltd (formerly Kingstown Photo Codes), The Label Store’s parent company began operating at a time when UK multiple retailers were discovering the art of bar-coding and needing lots of assistance in that area,” Tony explains.

In the early days, KTP’s business was making bar code film masters and producing artwork for packaging and labels – which it used to buy from local printers. In the early 1980s, the Label Store was set up to make KTP self-sufficient in the manufacture of self-adhesive labels.

When Tony joined the company in 2001, KTP had developed substantially and consisted of two divisions, a business solutions division whose task it was to provide complete bar-coding solutions to manufacturers, logistics companies and retailers and The Label Store, whose co-business then, and still is now, the manufacture of self-adhesive labels for barcode and variable data overprinting.

With this success came change. In 2002, KTP was acquired TrenStar, an American organisation, who subsequently sold The Label Store in 2004 to Robin Stammers, founder of thermal media business Mediamec, who re-founded the company as The Label Store (UK) Ltd…

April 30, 2008