Expo Visit Ignites Label Opportunity for Monument Health
Like many trade show attendees, Larry Mills cringes a bit when exhibitors scan his badge, knowing it will bring a flood of marketing messages to his inbox. But when VIPColor Technologies scanned him at PRINTING United Expo 2025 in Orlando, Florida, last fall, it brought him an unexpected bonus: a huge discount off a label printer just for visiting the booth.
“There was a substantial discount,” affirms Mills, manager of Monument Health Printing Services.
Now on his production floor in Rapid City, South Dakota, the VP750 commercial color label printer, powered by Memjet advanced inkjet technology, will greatly enhance the three-employee in-plant’s ability to provide numerous types of labels for the healthcare system. It also opens the door to new label products the shop hasn’t been able to print on its Roland VersaCAMM VS-640 and Roland TrueVIS VG2-640 print-and-cut devices.
“It is going to allow me to dig deeper into the current labels that we’re purchasing on the outside,” he says, such as stickers for IV bags and biohazard materials, home medical equipment labeling, and pharmacy labels. “We buy thousands of those.”
Mills started printing labels and stickers soon after acquiring the Roland in 2013.
“I just looked at what the machine was capable of doing,” he says. He saw opportunities for labeling medical devices, QR code stickers for the security department, branded giveaway stickers for health screenings, stickers for children’s coloring books, and more.
So, he got the ball rolling by printing circle stickers with the Monument Health logo and showing them around. Intrigued, marketing started designing its own stickers to use for community events. Eventually the Monument Health Foundation began selling stickers in its store. Interest in stickers and labels increased from there.
When Mills went to PRINTING United Expo to look for a replacement for the shop’s digital press last fall, he spent the last day of the show checking out label printers too. The VP750 caught his eye. Printing at up to 12” per second, it could produce more than 2,000 4x3″ labels in 10 minutes.
This stat was on his mind when he returned to the shop to learn that marketing had just ordered a run of 9,000 circle stickers.
“It took about nine days machine time to print and cut and to weed the matrix off the back of them,” he laments. “Where, in my calculation, with this label printer … it would have been about three hours.”
So he talked with his boss, convinced him of the benefits of the machine, and now it’s ready for action. With a heavy-duty aluminum frame, it uses water-resistant inks, he points out, and has a cutter so it can print individual labels or deliver them on a roll.
Mills credits his visit to PRINTING United Expo with showing him the possibilities a new label printer could bring and letting him compare different models.
“Going to a show like that is invaluable,” he lauds. “There's still some things that you need face to face. You need to see the equipment. Seeing the machine work … and how it's built – a salesman can't tell you is it sturdy or not … over a Teams meeting. You've got more of a personal contact with the sales people. A handshake goes a long way.”
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited 200 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
