Journey to Personalisation

October 2017

We often hear the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” yet, many people will before buying a product. How do we as business owners, encourage customers to look beyond the façade of our packaging?

In today’s Australia, breweries are a dime a dozen; it’s quite hard to stand out from them all. However, one company that is being able to do this successfully is Athletic Club Brewery, based in Ballarat, Victoria. The Brewery aims to provide customers a variety of their personal homemade brews and invite them in for a unique experience, or even a self-brewing session. From the popular Pale Ale to the Extra Special Bitter brews that they sell, one of the reasons this company stands out from the rest is their ability to educate audiences in the personal taste a brew can have and give small communities and individuals a unique experience that they won’t forget.

Back in the late 90’s, owner and founder of the Athletic Club Brewery Peter Parry did some traveling throughout the United States and grew fond of the small breweries in the small towns. Peter, who always had a passion in brewing, decided to set-up a micro-brewery and has been thriving in this industry for the past eight months.

Athletic Club Brewery’s main focus when serving customers is being able to give them a unique experience when they come into the brewery, whether that is through the self-brewing sessions they provide, or sitting down and enjoying the ambience within the brewery. When you walk into this environment, the Brewery provides their own designed and handmade furniture. Customers will often comment on the warm and relaxed feeling they experience due to the personalised touch to the bar and surrounds. The self-brewing sessions that the Athletic Club Brewery provide, focus predominantly on educating the individuals about how to get the specific and personal taste that they are dreaming about. By engaging with the audience and simplifying the process, they are able to achieve this.

Peter and his team wanted to find a way to express the taste externally on the bottle, not only for individuals but also for their brand as a company. Athletic Club Brewery’s ethos is predominantly focused on the personal taste within the brews. Beer is about the taste, the brewery loses their authenticity if they do not use the right ingredients, and as a result of this, they end up losing their brand. Athletic Club Brewery wanted to look further on how they could give customers a more personal and unique experience. Like their brews, the soul of the brew is very personal to the company and customer; they wanted to give customers the same feeling on the external part of the bottle. Peter came into contact with Great Engineering and found that their BenchMAX technology and Epson’s C7500G label printer was the perfect fit for them.

Driven by the need to personalise, Great Engineering designed an interface that can integrate Epson labelling machines, allowing customers to print and apply on demand. BenchMAX is one of the many interfaces that Great Engineering has designed to ensure the printing of labels can be completed in a smooth and efficient process.

Great Engineering (GE) has designed an interface box that sits between the Brewery’s labelling machines and the Epson printers to integrate a full colour print and apply solution.

The GE interface works as a middle man; it will receive a signal from the applicator and sends the signal to print the next batch of labels. This package gives the opportunity for companies to print and apply their own labels in-house to respond to marketing trends. “People need to be able to recognise your brand at the end of the day.” – Peter Parry

For self-brewing sessions, this meant that customers would be able to come into the brewery, create a brew from scratch and represent their work with a personalised label. For them, it is a huge achievement and the majority of people want to add their own personal touch to the can or bottle to highlight the achievement they have made. Whether customers want a bottle, keg or can made with a unique design; versus five hundred for an engagement party, the Brewery could successfully achieve both.

“Sponsorships came to us based on the fact we could customise labelling for them, we could sponsor and promote the companies through the personalisation of high quality label making, just like that. We can put your photo, face, anything you would like on it, instantly.” – Peter Parry

Peter and his team are able to produce over 300 cans in an hour that are high quality, with a low cost rate, which is very convenient when they are able to do it in the comfort of their own Brewery. For Peter, another reason he wanted to get into this personalised labelling for customers was to be able sponsor a variety of clubs, communities and companies whilst incorporating their own logo into the design.

“We can do this for people, no one else does this, this is a really high selling point for us… That’s what customers want at the end of the day, a personal touch, if you can customise and attract that niche market that you’re aiming for, it makes it a lot easier for us.” – Peter Parry

The Epson C7500G label maker allows companies like Athletic Club Brewery; help achieve a personalised experience, not only for the individual, but for communities and the company. They are able to achieve their own personal touch through their own personalised brews. Whether the company wants to make one label, fifty labels or a thousand, they are able to achieve this quickly and efficiently combining Great Engineering’s BenchMAX. For attracting these niche markets the affordability and time efficiency that these two products give is exceptional. For the growing trend to give consumers personalisation in the market, Athletic Club Brewery is thriving because they are able to do this and no other competitors are. They are able to stand out like no other. Quite simply, we all do judge a book by its cover every now and then; being able to give a personalised touch to our brand and consumers ensures that when customers are judging a book by its cover they are seeing through the exterior of the product.

Watch ColorWorks C7500G in action.

About Epson and Epson Australia
Epson is a global technology leader dedicated to connecting people, things and information with its original efficient, compact and precision technologies. With a lineup that ranges from inkjet printers and digital printing systems to 3LCD projectors, smart glasses, sensing systems and industrial robots, the company is focused on driving innovations and exceeding customer expectations in inkjet, visual communications, wearables and robotics. Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, the Epson Group comprises more than 72,000 employees in 88 companies around the world, and is proud of its contributions to the communities in which it operates and its ongoing efforts to reduce environmental impacts.

Epson Australia offers an extensive array of award-winning image capture and image output products for the commercial, industrial, consumer, business, photography and graphic arts markets, and is also a leading supplier of value-added point-of-sale (POS) solutions for the retail market. Epson is the market leader in Australia and worldwide in sales of projectors for the home, office and education. Established in 1983 Epson Australia is headquartered in North Ryde NSW and is a subsidiary of the Epson Group headquartered in Japan.

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