“We needed our brand collateral to look the same in Berlin as it does in Lisbon,” says Elena Martins, Brand Design Lead at Nordelle, a Europe-based DTC lifestyle e-commerce company. “Pop-up boxes, influencer pack-ins, and business cards were all telling our story—and they needed one voice.”
Nordelle moved its collateral to digital printing after a trial period comparing Offset Printing and UV Printing for short-run events. The team engaged a hybrid workflow and drew on insights from gotprint projects for color targets and finishing options fit for travel, quick reorders, and consistent mark-making on tactile stocks.
Company Overview and History
Founded in 2019, Nordelle sells curated apparel and accessories online, then extends its brand through packaging touchpoints: Folding Carton gift boxes with Soft-Touch Coating, branded tissue, and a business card slipped into every order. In Europe, the team steers to Fogra PSD targets for print consistency and prefers Paperboard and Labelstock for short-run variances. Their brand language relies on tight typography and warm neutrals that shift toward rose-gold Foil Stamping for seasonal campaigns.
Elena describes their constraints plainly: pop-ups and collaborations mean variable quantities—often Short-Run and On-Demand. “We’d launch a collection and need 500 cards for Paris, then 1,200 for Milan in a week,” she says. With Digital Printing, they prototyped a matte base with Spot UV on the back of business card to highlight a compact QR code that ties to drop-collection pages. Procurement tracked trial orders via the amazon business prime card for clear expense lines and quick reconciliations.
How does a designer settle standards for multiple markets? Elena frames it simply: “First we ask, what is the standard size of a business card?” For Nordelle’s European events, they use 85 × 55 mm, while their US collaborations stick to 3.5 × 2 inches. The template grid lets them flip between regions without redrawing type systems—one master file, two size variants, predictable trims via Die-Cutting.
Quality and Consistency Issues
Before the switch, their Offset Printing batches looked beautiful—but the moment substrates changed, ΔE readings drifted. On uncoated stocks, color variance landed around ΔE 4–5; coated runs hit closer to ΔE 2–3. “We wanted a single palette reading across the suite—boxes, inserts, cards,” Elena notes. Digital Printing with UV Ink stabilized their neutral tones and reduced substrate-driven surprises, especially when soft-touch finishes came into play.
There was a catch: the Spot UV over Soft-Touch Coating on the back of business card required careful sequence planning. Early tests left micro-banding on fine lines. The turning point came when the team introduced an LED-UV Printing pass with adjusted laydown and slower curing on variable data sections. “We learned to prioritize tactile clarity over speed,” Elena says. In parallel, the finance team asked about gotprint codes and the potential of gotprint coupon codes 2024 to control ad-hoc print costs; marketing concluded codes are useful for promo windows but not the main lever in spec-driven collateral.
They considered Offset Printing for large seasonal volumes, keeping Digital Printing for Short-Run brand activations. “Offset brings excellent ink holdout on long runs,” Elena explains, “but Digital gave us agility and a closer lock on our neutral palette.” That blend reduced urgent changeovers and let the brand keep a steady file setup. Purchases made with the amazon business prime card flagged samples separately from production—a small operational detail that eased audit trails.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months: color variance on the card suite settled around ΔE 1.5–2.0 across coated stocks, and 2.0–2.5 on selected uncoated Paperboard. First Pass Yield (FPY%) moved from roughly 82–85% to 92–95% on card runs after the curing adjustments. Waste rate on short orders dropped from about 8–10% to 4–5%, largely due to better preflight and predictable Spot UV behavior over Soft-Touch Coating.
Throughput changed in practical terms—daily output rose from roughly 9–10k cards to 11–12k when layouts consolidated multi-SKU grids. Changeover Time shifted from around 35–40 minutes down to roughly 25–30 minutes as artwork files standardized into two regional templates. The payback period for equipment and workflow training is projected at 10–14 months, though Elena cautions that seasonal spikes and new finishes can extend that window.
Not everything went smoothly. Shrink Film and certain metalized stocks refused predictable adhesion during early Foil Stamping trials. The team shelved those materials for gift box sleeves and steered back to Folding Carton with Varnishing when tactile risks outweighed the effect. “We won’t chase every trend,” Elena reflects. “The confidence piece is knowing when to stay within the palette and when to experiment.” Based on lessons gathered alongside projects informed by gotprint, Nordelle kept Digital Printing for agility and reserved Offset Printing for longer campaigns where economies made sense.
