Behind E&H Ace Hardware's Summer Sale: A Multi-Location Retail Print Campaign
If you visited an E&H Ace Hardware store in Ohio during its summer sale, you may have seen the promotion on a banner outside, an A-frame sign, a window poster, a flyer, or a postcard.
Behind those pieces was a coordinated print campaign spanning 31 stores across Ohio, multiple sizes and materials, and four different printing processes. E&H supplied the campaign designs and store requirements, while our team handled production, color management, kit packing, and distribution.
With their flagship location in downtown Wooster, E&H works with Wooster Color Point regularly for a range of projects, including retail displays, promotional materials, and custom packaging.
What Went Into E&H Ace Hardware's 31-Store Summer Sale Campaign?
The same summer sale campaign needed to work across large exterior graphics, in-store signage, printed promotions, and materials customers could take with them.
Each E&H summer sale kit included:
3x6-foot vinyl banner
24x36 A-frame signs
24x36 window posters
Smaller window posters
8.5x11 sale flyers
4x6 postcards
Store instruction sheet
The range of sizes, materials, and uses meant the campaign couldn't be run through a single press. Producing the full kit required several printing processes while still keeping the campaign consistent from piece to piece.
How Do You Keep Color Consistent Across Four Printing Methods?
To complete E&H's campaign, we used wide format latex, wide format UV, digital, and offset printing. Using several printing processes lets us produce very different pieces within the same project, but it also makes color consistency more complex.
A color specified in the artwork will not automatically reproduce the same way across every press and material. Paper, vinyl, ink systems, surface finishes, and even the way a material reflects light can affect how the finished color appears. Those differences become more noticeable when several pieces from the same campaign are seen together.
At Wooster Color Point, our presses are color profiled to reproduce color as consistently as possible across the production floor based on the equipment, inks, and materials being used. Color profiles are only one part of the process. Our team also checks and compares output throughout production, making adjustments when needed to keep the pieces aligned.
The combination of calibrated equipment and hands-on craftsmanship helped E&H's banner, signs, posters, flyers, and postcards read as a well-executed campaign.
Why Use One Commercial Printer for a Multi-Format Campaign?
A project like this could be split across several printers, but every additional vendor adds another production schedule, color environment, and set of materials that eventually has to be brought back together.
Wooster Color Point handles offset, digital, and wide format production under one roof. For businesses managing multiple locations, that means one team can manage the job, compare output across processes, and move the completed materials directly into kitting and distribution.
How Does Print Kitting Work for Multiple Store Locations?
E&H provided a breakdown of what each store needed, and our team used those instructions to build the individual kits. Promotional materials and instructions were packed together so every store received the correct pieces and clear directions for how to use them.
How Do You Distribute Print Kits Across 31 Store Locations?
Printing and packing the kits was only part of the job. We also looked at the most cost-effective way to get them to 31 E&H locations across Ohio.
Some kits went through UPS. When a store was close to one of our existing delivery routes, we delivered it ourselves instead. That helped E&H avoid unnecessary shipping costs where it made sense.
Delivering some of the kits ourselves also gave our team a chance to see the campaign reach the stores it was created for. We do not always get to see a finished project in use, so it was especially rewarding to visit other E&H Ace Hardware locations and recognize the same welcoming, community-oriented feeling we know from our local store.
If your business is planning a multi-location retail promotion, seasonal campaign, event, or another project involving several types of printed materials, bring us the full project. Our team can coordinate the printing, finishing, kitting, and delivery needed to move it from files to finished materials. Contact Heather Henthorne to talk about your project.
