1. How do you think the crisis caused by the pandemic has influenced the visual communication market?
AMS – The influence has naturally been negative. In “normal” crisis conditions, advertising is one of the first areas affected and where budgets are cut. However, this situation was worse since it wasn’t a crisis that cut budgets, it was a total and abrupt halt to all kinds of events – such as fairs, sporting events, retail advertising – where visual communication is the most common medium.
2. Are you optimistic about the recovery? When do you think we’ll return to pre-pandemic levels?
AMS – At Decal, we’re very optimistic because we’ve used this sort of “time capsule” to reinforce and advance various projects we had underway. Both in terms of investments in the factory and the preparation of new ranges, which we will be presenting soon.
About the recovery, just as this market is the first to be affected when there is a crisis, it is also the first to emerge from it, since visual communication is critical to the recovery. Brands, businesses and events need to communicate in order to succeed and, as such, they usually come back strongly. So, for our sector, we predict that 2022 will be the same as 2019.
3. What advances do you think are yet to come in the self-adhesive materials and films market?
AMS – I don’t think there is anything yet to come, but rather to be implemented, particularly more sustainable materials. If there’s one good thing that this crisis has brought, it’s a greater awareness of sustainability and ecology and we believe that the demand for ecological materials will certainly be the trend. Not just in the future, but already with a strong increase in demand in the present.
The difficulty is that these products have always been much more expensive than those that don’t have these characteristics. We decided to respond to this market need with a range of PVC Free products at prices as competitive as ordinary PVC.
4. What is your company’s most recent innovation for this market?
AMS – Actually, we don’t have one innovation, we have many.
I’ll start with the alldecor 2d range, which we launched to keep up with one of the biggest trends of this pandemic – the renovation of spaces, whether commercial, hotel or, above all, private. A set of decorative textured films for wall and furniture applications, accommodating the ecological concern of being PVC Free.
For the digital printing market, we have prepared a range of monomeric or polymeric materials that are moisture-proof, curl-proof and curl-proof when subjected to temperature during printing. Let’s call it the state of the art in digital printing.
I’ll end with Dot Free. There are several products on the market, more or less popular, for window decoration/communication, but they all suffer from the same problem: reduced transparency. The problem is the type of adhesive used, which is visible because it is made of small circles of adhesive (visually poor and of low quality).
Many brand owners wanted the same concept of a product with truly crystalline properties, as if it were a directly printed shop window. After extensive research, we met the challenge with the Dot Free range (PVC and PVC free), which accommodates all printing technologies and fully meets the quality requirements of advertisers.
5. What kind of customers are you targeting?
AMS – These novelties include innovative products for the areas of advertising, architecture, decoration and commercial communication.
6. What differentiates your product from others on the market?
AMS – All the ranges we are launching have PVC and PVC Free options. So we have products for the printing technology that still occupies the largest percentage of the market, but also for the new and future trends of UV LED, latex or others.
7. What is your global offer of self-adhesive materials and films?
AMS – Thank you for the opportunity. So I can mention another novelty, Polymeric Car Wrapping. Decal’s offer is quite complete, as it includes monomeric and polymeric PVC printing media. This new range includes printing and laminating films for wrapping vehicles or objects, making it a clearly more competitive alternative for these applications.
The products have all types of permanent, removable or removable smooth surface adhesive, with the possible grey back combination, or high tack adhesives for adhering to surfaces with low surface tension. In addition, there is the PVC Free range, with an external guarantee of up to 4 years, making it a strong sustainable and competitive alternative to the use of PVC.
We have a range of monomeric, polymeric and PVC Free laminations with an adhesive that guarantees high transparency, no whitish effect and conformability on UV prints, avoiding the silvering effect. We’re also talking about an adhesive with intrinsic characteristics of high resistance to ageing.
I’d like to add the films for decorating glass with bubble-free adhesive, allowing application with water, which reduces installation time by a third. I’ll end with the recent alldecor 2d range, where decorating walls or furniture has never had so many sensations…
It’s important to note that any of the new ranges – monomeric, polymeric or PVC Free – have products with fire-retardant B1 certification (standard EN 13501-1:2018).
8. On which surfaces are these types of materials still used and what could they be used for?
AMS – The most appropriate question is not so much which surfaces to apply them to, but what to apply them to. This is where decals stand to make all the difference.
