Be the Superhero with Durable Goods Labels

Have you ever wondered what it takes to adhere a label to a bicycle? A vacuum cleaner? How about a household dryer? Or, even more challenging, under the hood of an automobile?

Meet the durable goods label. To understand the near Herculean task required of these products, imagine a Marvel Comics character standing against the attacks of a host of evil-doers. Each evil character is hurling its most wicked weapons all at once. Flames coming in from the left. Dodge! Corrosive chemicals coming in from the right. Weave! Catastrophic hailstorm from above—duuuuuck! The attacks are unrelenting. Our hero must stand against the forces of environmental evil without a break for years on end.

This is the durable goods label. It must withstand attacks ranging from extreme temperatures and exposure to corrosive chemicals to UV-rays, flames, and gasoline. At the same time, the durable goods label must also be highly printable, and that print needs to remain crisp, clear, and legible, often at very small font sizes, for the life of the product.

Defining Durable Goods

What, exactly, are durable goods? Durable goods are defined as products that have a long life span (often as long as three years or more). This is contrasted with non-durable goods, which are intended to be used in a shorter period of time (such as food, cosmetics, and household cleaners).

Durable goods labels provide product, manufacturer, consumer safety, and other information and must be permanently adhered. They can also provide branding, “track and trace” functionality, and security features, among other functions. Completely clear labels are often used as protective shields to preserve the images or text underneath.

Durable goods labels offer great sales opportunities. The fact that they are so multi-functional gives you the opportunity to open discussions for cross- and upsells. Maybe the account is using durable goods labels for three of these five functions. But what about the other two? This opens the door to a series of new conversations.

Built from the Ground Up

Durable goods labels share common characteristics with security labels, GHS, HazCom, and other industrial labels in that they must adhere to a wide range of substrates with different surfaces and compositions, and withstand their own unique combination of environmental conditions. They can’t be purchased off the rack. Every durable goods label is built from the ground up for a specific application.

This is where the distributor comes in. Think about everything that has to happen to get these labels right. In order to be permanently adhered—and weather pretty much anything—durable goods labels might need to be flame-retardant, solvent-resistant, and withstand the most extreme temperatures. They might need to withstand gasoline splashes orgetting left out in a sandstorm.

Few clients are capable of putting such labels together on their own. It can take years of R&D to understand how to pull all of these requirements together without the label degrading, detaching, or allowing the print to wear. Clients need help. You are not expected to

have all of this information at the ready. With Wise at your back, you just need to be able to ask the right questions.

Opening the Door to New Markets

Durable goods labels also open doors into new market verticals that you might not have approached. Among the markets into which you can sell these products:

• Appliances
• Automotive
• Aviation
• Bicycles
• Consumer Electronics
• Electrical components
• Home and office furnishings
• Industrial products
• Lawn and garden equipment
• Tools

Once you get comfortable selling durable goods labels into one market, you can feel confident in taking that knowledge to the others, as well.

If this sounds like a lot, take heart—that’s why we’re here. This sounds daunting to your customers, too. That’s why their relationship with you is so valuable. You have something they don’t. You have us, with our decades of experience, to make you the hero that comes in to save the day.

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