The Ukraine-based company leverages product diversification as a factor for success
Grand Style organically combines self-sufficient areas, such as furniture, trade equipment, POS manufacturing, branding, making of company gifts and individual souvenir products, into their industrial UV printing services on a wide range of materials and finished products.
The key to a successful business model for Grand Style is to target different audiences of customers, including small retailers, advertising agencies, and large retail chains. Based in Kiev, Ukraine, the company addresses the domestic market and has also grown to serve international clients. Grand Style is keen to embark on complex projects with the use of the creative design and a large number of production stages: cutting of materials, 3D milling, vacuum moulding, laser engraving, furniture production, printing, various light, and dynamic effects, all which give additional value to the end-product.
Grand Style became pioneers in the Ukrainian market by launching “sustainable packaging”. Mimaki technologies played a big role in helping the company move in this direction, with UV printing, white ink printing, and the ability to apply a selective UV varnish/texturing all serving as excellent tools for promoting “sustainable packaging”.
The furniture side to the company relates to the development and design of shops, shopping malls, trade equipment, and the design of turnkey trading platforms, which you cannot do without environmentally friendly UV printing, as well as direct printing on hard materials.
The founders and managers of Grand Style have always focused on the quality of the products, which is achieved through a strict selections of the technologies and the materials used. The main emphasis in their work has been the development and production of unique design solutions for the middle and premium market. Cooperation with global corporations has paved the way for multiple productions of global and local developers.
Grand Style works with clients from European Union and CIS on a regular basis, aiming to provide quality designs or any other developments – often embodied in circulation. Designers who wish to pursue production and industrial design often embark on a professional career at Grand Style and work there for a long time.
In addition to the above offering, Grand Style has high ambitions related to industrial design, paying particular attention to the development of various generic gadgets for homes, consumer goods, trade marketing, and marketing.
Selection and purchase of equipment
One of the best solutions for the range of tasks carried out by Grand Style has been Mimaki’s technology offering, which is represented in Ukraine by Media Print Ukraine. The cooperation of the two has lasted for about eight years.
The equipment of the Japanese manufacturer in Grand Style’s production line includes desktop UV printer Mimaki UJF 3042 MKII – equipped with Mimaki’s Kebab option to print onto cylindrical items, the Mimaki UCJV300-160 web printer, the Mimaki JFX200-2513 and Mimaki JFX200-2513 EX UV printers.
Grand Style needed industrial UV equipment to efficiently meet the expectations, not only fulfilling clients’ orders but also product design and implementation for their own needs and testing opportunities for future development. Grand Style considered proposals from several printer manufacturers, but in terms of “price-quality” ratio, Mimaki’s equipment was a clear favourite.
The purchase of the first Mimaki JFX200-2513 printer is largely due to the desire to understand how this device meets the necessary tasks of the company. The Mimaki JFX200-2513 operating experience turned out to be quite successful so, at the end of 2020, Grand Style’s equipment fleet was replenished with a more advanced version of the printer – the Mimaki JFX200-2513 EX.
A lot of Mimaki’s innovative Core Technologies are incorporated in both versions. These include Nozzle Check Unit (NCU) and Nozzle Recovery System (NRS) that automatically detect nozzle outages and switch them to operational nozzles, as well as Mimaki Circulation Technology (MCT) that prevents ink particles from settling. The two models print identically, a crucial feature when using both devices to fulfil complex orders enables to achieve the same print quality. However, the new Mimaki JFX200-2513 EX is one and a half times faster than the Mimaki JFX200-2513.
For printing on the Mimaki JFX200-2513 / JFX200-2513 EX, Grand Style chose the new universal line of ink, LUS-120, with a richer colour gamut and the most optimal in terms of “price-quality” compared to other serial Mimaki inks. UV printers are adaptable and constantly print on a variety of materials, so the same series of ink is used for both machines.
The company primarily works with plastics (acrylic, polycarbonate, occasionally PVC plastics, composite), wood, plywood, from which are subsequently assembled. The rest of the orders include posters, signs, plates, and finished dimensional products.
Using UV technology, the company also prints on a wide variety of finished products, from mats to sculptures of hands carved from foam rubber to leather key chains and rake handles, to detailed topographic maps for farmers.
Best foreign practices for Ukraine
Alexander Prokha, CEO and founder of Grand Style, emphasises that during the “post-COVID” economic recovery, the best foreign practices will become incorporated into the Ukrainian retail market very quickly.
Today one of the main priorities for Grand Style is developing the Ukrainian market by offering the best designs for retail space and POSM. In fact, global corporations that order services of industrial and graphic design, equipment design, retail boutiques, retail space and POSM, relay part of their experience to the Ukrainian market. According to the Grand Style motto: “The future does not stop, as well as development.”
In all current areas, the company has a development plan, which is adjusted depending on the changing market. In this regard, it plans to deepen and expand the partnership with Mediaprint Ukraine and Mimaki. In the next five years, Grand Style plans to include entering two, brand new markets. At this stage, the company is focusing on analysing the market and continuing to improve the product itself.
