In your experience, what have been some of the biggest challenges Arkay has encountered in maintaining high-quality standards while scaling production? How are these resolved?
Arkay uses offset printing, which offers a variety of production advantages to our customers. Although a disadvantage with offset printing can be color variation on long runs, Arkay has recently purchased the Prinect Inpress Control system to help with this issue. This is an in-line automated system to control ink levels without operator intervention to keep colors more consistent. Another challenge we face for larger volume runs is maintaining die cutting and gluing specifications to ensure our cartons run effectively on our customers’ packing lines. To that end Arkay has a strong quality control program that inspects cartons throughout the production run to ensure cartons keep consistent performance levels.
How does Arkay measure the impact of your packaging on customer experience and brand perception?
We recognize that our customers are “selling beauty” and so we require our packaging to represent that. Working with various of our customers’ departments – including Marketing and Packaging Development – we obtain their feedback on our packaging, which enables us to then make recommendations for improvements to the appearance and shelf presence.
How does Arkay incorporate global design trends into product offerings, especially considering cultural differences across markets?
With our state-of-the-art production capabilities, we offer a variety of decorative options to meet most any request. A major trend currently is towards more sustainable packaging. Arkay meets that goal through production methods that include cold foil as an option to foil stamping, transfer metalized stock as an option to film laminated materials, and the use of sustainable materials that include post-consumer recycled fiber.
Can you talk about how Arkay builds and maintains long-term partnerships with clients? What do you find is the key to sustaining these relationships over the years?
Maintaining long-term relationships is the bedrock of Arkay’s corporate philosophy – and a key to Arkay’s success over our 100+ year history. One of Arkay’s customers has been loyal to us for 50 years and there are many more who have been with us for over a decade and who have come to count on our talent, quality, excellent customer service, and vision. Those relationships are maintained by prioritizing our customers’’ needs – always doing our best to provide premium quality that matches their expectations on every order that we produce – with our culture of respect and integrity.
