The Real Flower Company was looking for a way to put their potted flower plants in the right light by printing their own labels on site. They found the ideal solution in the DTM CX86e Colour Tag Printer.
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The Real Flower Company is all about luxury bouquets created from exquisitely scented roses, English flowers, herbs and foliage grown on their own English and Kenyan Fairtrade and sustainable farms. Owner of The Real Flower Company is Rosebie Morton, who founded the company in 1999 with a vision to grow and sell beautiful scented flowers, whilst placing provenance, sustainability, and good business ethics into all the company does. She first started growing scented garden roses in the walled garden at her family farm in Hampshire.
Robert Marsden is the farm manager and he and his team take care of each and every bloom growing on their farm. He and Mrs. Morton judge when the flowers are ready. They are then handpicked to ensure freshness and optimum scent and passed to their florists at the farm in Hampshire, or at one of their two London shops where they become the bouquets, arrangements and displays for homes, businesses and events.
Besides cut flowers, The Real Flower Company also sells plants in pots, such as rose bushes. And for those pots they were looking for a printing solution to produce their own labels. They found it in the DTM CX86e Colour Tag Printer. In the past they sold the plants without any information. “We also hand wrote plant names on loop and lock labels which was not very professional,” explains Marsden their previous workaround. The labels offered very limited information about the plant, sometimes fell off and were lost. Marsden continues: “It was difficult to promote a plant without any data shown unless the plant was in peak bloom, which minimised selling opportunities.” That had to change.
The printing solution that they were looking for needed to produce water- and UV-resistant labels in a cost and time effective manner. The CX86e is a dry toner printer featuring digital LED technology. Meaning the printed output is pin sharp, waterproof, UV- as well as chemical-resistant and therefore very durable. Perfect for the use The Real Flower Company intended.
Marsden is happy with the result explaining “The label shows an image and a description of the plant and how to grow it and provides all the information the buyer needs when buying a new plant, which helps a lot with sales.”
The labels adhere to the pots well and are used indoors and outdoors. It’s important that they last a season, as it might take a while to sell a potted plant. DTM Print suggested their PermaTec line of reliable outdoor resistant material, that is made of a mixture of sand and polyethylene.
During spring, when the majority of their plants are potted up, is the key time for their CX86e. Then it produces 10 to 100 labels at a time, leading to approximately 1,500 to 2,500 pots and therefore labels per year. With the CX86e, special attention was paid to simple maintenance. Only a three-colour toner cartridge that lasts for thousands of prints needs to be changed. This eliminates the need to stock individual toner cartridges and the device is ready to use again in just a few seconds. Further components of the printer such as drum unit, transfer belt and fuser have been designed for a long service life with more than 100,000 prints. Those can also be replaced by Marsden and his team themselves. Shortly after they purchased the printer in February 2022, DTM Print visited the farm to help with training and answer specific questions about label design and use of images.
Marsden believes that “We are already selling a greater number of plants which we feel is maybe down to the fact that the customer sees on the label what the flower will look like, and has all the information regarding looking after them. It also makes us look a lot more professional.”