“We had 90 days to relaunch across Southeast Asia, and print was the first impression we couldn’t afford to miss,” said the CMO of a Singapore-based DTC wellness brand. In week one, we mapped every touchpoint: business cards, e-commerce pack-ins, and trial carton sleeves. We also locked a partner: gotprint. I wanted a hybrid model—digital for agility, offset for scale—without losing color discipline.
The finance lead joked that the first question he googled was “what’s the best business credit card,” because the launch budget hinged on flexible terms. He ultimately benchmarked options, including a capitol one spark business card comparison, to stretch working capital for print and media.
Brand-wise, we had one non-negotiable: the business card needed to land like the product—clean, tactile, and credible. That meant a sober, refined finish on the card and a clear ruleset for our mailers and sleeves. The story below is the timeline of what worked, what nearly derailed, and what we’d do again.
Company Overview and History
The company started in 2019 with a single herbal concentrate, selling online and at weekend pop-ups. By 2024, they had a 6-SKU lineup and a growing subscriber base across Singapore and Malaysia. Their visual identity was minimalist on screen, but translating that restraint to print—especially on warm, uncoated stocks—was a recurring challenge.
For the relaunch, we structured print into three streams: 1) premium business cards with a subtle tactile moment, 2) e-commerce pack-ins that double as referral drivers, and 3) short-run carton sleeves for trial bundles. We kept the product team focused on claims and compliance, and my team handled substrate, finish, and color specs. Credit to finance: they set up a dedicated card (yes, they still referenced a capitol one spark business card during research) for production payments to track costs clearly by SKU and country.
Quality and Consistency Issues
The first audit showed the brand’s biggest pain point: color drift. On uncoated paperboard, the primary green wandered by ΔE 5–7 across batches. Photography that looked crisp online printed a touch muddy, and the business card logo lost edge definition on some runs. Waste sat in the 10–14% range, mainly due to color rejects and scuffing on mailers.
We also found a process gap: upstream design files lacked a print-ready handoff—no hard rules on TAC, black builds, or die-line alignment. Without documented tolerances, suppliers were “best-guessing” to help, which explained variation. In short, the brand had a strong identity but an incomplete specification system.
Finally, lead times stretched. The order-to-delivery window hovered at 12–14 days for mixed SKUs. For a 90-day relaunch, that cadence left little room for error. We needed a repeatable workflow where Digital Printing could carry the early waves, and Offset Printing could take over once volumes and forecasts stabilized.
Solution Design and Configuration
We picked a hybrid path. Business cards and short-run sleeves shifted to Digital Printing with UV-LED Printing for crisp type, smoother solids, and faster curing. Scale SKUs queued for Offset Printing once artwork locked. The business cards: 18–20pt paperboard, FSC-certified, with Soft-Touch Coating and Spot UV on the mark. That gave the business card logo a quiet highlight without looking flashy.
On color, we implemented G7 calibration against ISO 12647 aims. Photography moved into a tighter retouch workflow: neutral backgrounds, controlled grain, TAC under 300%, and a single master profile per substrate. For inks, we chose Low-Migration Ink for anything near product contact, and UV Ink on collateral where rub resistance mattered. We set ΔE targets at 2–3 for primaries and 3–4 for photography—ambitious, but achievable with disciplined proofing.
On the commercial side, we kept the flow lean. The team used scheduled windows to batch jobs by substrate to limit changeover time. Based on insights from gotprint’s production dashboard, we organized releases in weekly drops and tracked our gotprint jobs with SKU tags. When seasonal promos like “gotprint free shipping” popped up, we aligned bulk mailers to those windows to keep freight predictable. It wasn’t fancy—just practical blocking and tackling.
Pilot Production and Validation
Weeks 3–4 were for pilots. We ran two rounds of business cards: one with Spot UV over the logomark only, and one with a micro-Spot UV grid across the entire card face. The grid looked great in photography but felt busy in hand, so we scrapped it. First Pass Yield climbed into the 92–95% band on the simpler spec; the grid version sat around 85–90%. Lesson learned—tactility should support the story, not compete with it.
We validated sleeves on uncoated Folding Carton and a smoother CCNB for darker designs. CCNB held shadows better; uncoated carried a softer, natural vibe. We kept both as approved options by SKU. Nearline spectro checks showed ΔE 2–3 on the primaries. For logistics and cash flow, the team tracked batches through the gotprint portal and queued re-orders early whenever the forecast spiked.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Six weeks post-launch, the metrics settled into a stable range: ΔE tightened from 5–7 to 2–3 on core colors; FPY moved from 82–88% to 92–95% on business cards with Soft-Touch + Spot UV; waste shifted from 10–14% to 4–6% across mixed SKUs; weekly throughput for cards rose from 20–25k to 35–40k units without adding headcount. The order-to-delivery window went from 12–14 days to 5–7 days for most releases. Energy per thousand cards measured at 0.6–0.7 kWh, down from 0.9–1.1 kWh on the earlier setup.
Financially, cost per 500-card set moved from SGD 45–55 to SGD 34–39 (spec-dependent). Payback Period on the workflow and training investment landed in the 6–8 month range. Not perfect, and not every SKU behaved the same—photography-heavy sleeves still fluctuate 2–3 points in FPY when artwork cycles rapidly. But for a 90-day timeline, the brand gained a stable base, and we kept the door open for on-demand personalization down the road.
