Vegas People & Jobs: They’ll Wrap It to Go
Sunday, December 20, 2009
A blank billboard across the street from Michael Faulkner’s business says, “Advertise here” and gives a telephone number. Faulkner called the number last week and was told the cost for one month of advertising: $3600.
Michael Faulkner
Photo by Diane Taylor
Faulkner is Vice President of Gatorwraps.com. His company specializes in wrapping vehicles or virtually anything else (helmets, motorcycles, walls, computers, etc.) with a printed vinyl advertising wrap. The cost for a typical vehicle wrap will be between $2000 and $3000, and the wrap will be advertising its product everywhere the vehicle travels for three to five years. “We’re clearly the better buy, yes?” he asks with a grin.
Wrapped and ready to roll.
Photo courtesy of Gatorwraps.com
Advertising is the lifeblood of a number of Las Vegas businesses, and with budgets being tight, vehicle wraps are becoming increasingly popular.
Gatorwraps.com is one of a number of companies in Las Vegas able to provide wraps. Many of these companies are full-service graphics houses that can also provide wraps. Gatorwraps.com actually specializes in wraps with a slogan “skin for your ride”.
“We’re the number one provider of high-end wraps,” Faulkner says not immodestly. “We use 3M or Avery Graphics vinyls.” Company President Rod Voegele heads the company’s Ontario, CA location, with Faulkner leading the company in Las Vegas.
Graphic Artist Percy Gruber previews a wrap design.
Photo by Diane Taylor
“We started in business three years ago,” said Faulkner, “and to get our name around Las Vegas, we actually bought five older vans, wrapped them with our own advertising and drove them around town. We also worked 80 hours a week to serve customers and learn the business. As a result, we have developed a local reputation, and the recession hasn’t hurt us. We have seven employees and call on contract workers as needed. Just last week, we hired an additional person.”
How do vehicle wraps work? A customer presents its digital artwork, and Gatorwraps.com’s in-house graphic designer adapts the artwork to an on-line template for the specific vehicle being wrapped. If a template doesn’t exist for a particular vehicle, measurements of the vehicle are taken, and a new template produced.
Steve Barnett and two other installers working on this van finished in three and a half hours.
Photo by Diane Taylor
The customer approves the artwork and selects the kind of vinyl (gloss, metallic or flat finish) used for the wrap. The artwork then is sent to production. Vinyl with an adhesive and wax paper backing comes in 150-foot rolls and is printed on a 64-inch wide vinyl printer. Printing complete, a different machine then applies clearcoat over the printed face of the vinyl. Depending on the vehicle, a wrap will have a number of printed sections, so the next step is to cut out the various sections prior to installation.
Installers have a picture of how the final product is to look. Like applying contact paper, bubbles, wrinkles and mismatched pieces can ruin a job, though the sticky side of the vinyl is initially only slightly tacky and can be readjusted. The installer can then press down harder to make the pieces stick more permanently, and finally a blowtorch is used to heat the wrap and provide the final bonding to the vehicle. Even with the final bonding, however, the wrap can eventually be removed with no damage to the vehicle.
On display in the Gatorwraps.com lobby, a wrapped helmet.
Photo by Diane Taylor
Gatorwraps’ customers include business owners, racing teams, media outlets, ad agencies and individuals. This Christmas, Gatorwraps provided the Kia wrap for the Holly Jolly Christmas vehicle used to promote Lotus Broadcasting’s involvement in the Toys for Tots campaign featuring entertainer Holly Madison.
Though each project is different, Faulkner notes that his convention business often gets the fastest turnaround. “Convention business is usually a last-minute business for us,” he says. “We had one booth wrapping project that had to be done overnight because the original artwork brought to Las Vegas misspelled the company name!”
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
Loading ...
It used to be that there were only a couple of graphics design shops in the USA that were capable of creating and designing large scale vehicle wraps. One of these places was Super Graphics in Sunnyvale, California and in the 1990′s Megan and I were instrumental in commissioning some of these projects. One of these was the wrap we placed on the Phoenix One — which was our home-on-a-roll for 6.5 years. I thought I could find a larger photo, but I can’t seem to locate those image files but in the meantime, here’s a little one of the newly wrapped Phoenix One in 1999.