AstroNova: Product ID Go-to-Market Challenges

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We can discuss some competitors. At a high level, the thesis behind customers buying these printers is that they can do shorter runs, which are cheaper, more flexible, and faster compared to going to a commercial print shop. In the analog days, they had to do really long runs. Now, with digital printers, there are web stores where you can get shorter runs at a more competitive price. Could you talk about the label market and how it evolved over the 12 years you were there? I'd love to hear how you think AstroNova fits into that market today or at least as of your most recent experience.

When I first started, business was thriving. We were participating in exhibitions, and people were attending them. We ranked decently on Google's first page for commercial and industrial label printers. The QL4100Xe was popular, especially in the license plate industry. It was a massive printer, difficult to carry, and weighed a ton, but it had four ribbons, CMYK, so it printed in color. That was the industrial printer and it was used by quite a few customers. We made a lot of money on the ribbon sales from that.

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Why do you think that was?

Additionally, these dealers and resellers had relationships with label manufacturers to whom they would refer customers. As a result, our label manufacturing capability, which was one of our unique selling propositions (USPs), became less of a USP. We really struggled because our leads primarily came from exhibitions.

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Sorry, that was quite a long question. We can take it one part at a time.

Yes, you could go to exhibitions, but nine times out of 10, if you're a business wanting to print your own labels, what are you going to do in this day and age? You're going to Google it, right? If you want to buy something, you do two things. You either go on Amazon or you go on Google. I'm not too sure about social media, that's a completely different audience. You're not going to sell a £5,000, £10,000, definitely not a £50,000 printer to somebody scrolling on Instagram. It just doesn't happen. You might open the door to something that might happen in two years time, but you want to be where the intent is highest.

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