Diamond Finish

After I returned to Optima from a two year tour with Exhibitgroup / Giltspur, now GES, I spent some time working in R&D. One of the products that we developed was Diamond Finish.  I think I came up with the name and when looking back, the name does not really tell you what the hell it is.  I had not really thought about Diamond Finish in the past year or so, but knew that there are customers who know what it is and they buy it (I will explain what it is eventually).  Well Jim Hoffmann made a comment about DF and I decided to take a look at the numbers and see how many customers buy it and how often.  On one hand I was impressed – a solid number of companies buy it and the sales dollars were pretty good.  But as I scanned the list of buyers I noticed a trend – the buyers were almost all from the first year we rolled it out as a product and not many new additions.  Translation, we have not done a good job sharing something that we are the only people able too produce.  SOOO, you have probably seen some mention of it lately via our Newsletter and e-marketing.  I want to further share because it really is a good product.

Here is my super simple description and logic as to why you should incorporate it into your next retractable bannerstand sale.  Diamond Finish is a special opaque polyester backer that we laminate onto the back of dye-sub graphics that get loaded into retractable bannerstands.  I can tell you from the R&D days that laminating fabric is hard, very hard to be clear, but the gang on our team have figured it out and are very good add it.

So what does it get me you ask?  Its intent was to create a nearly opaque graphic that has the vibrant color of dye sub fabric, lays nice and flat (no Inkjet curl at the edges) and retracts easily into the banner stand canister.  We knew that banner stands were getting used every where and the non tradeshow applications were really starting to pop up and our clients asked for opacity.  So give me great color, make the graphic lay flat, and don’t let the pole show through from ambient light.  That was the need and Diamond Finish was and still is the best answer.

If you have never added Diamond Finish to a project, please add it to your next retractable banner stand and I know your customer will appreciate you expanding the usefulness of their retractable bannerstand(s). Happy selling!

Dave S. Brown
VP of Sales
Optima Graphics