Small, Fast and Built Around Data · Adam Peek · King of the Mountain
For years, Adam talked about the packaging industry.
Now he gets to live it every day.
At LOUPE Americas in Chicago, Morten B. Reitoft meets Adam from Label King, the Salt Lake City label company he joined Robert Parker in building just over a year ago.
Moving from sales, podcasts, LinkedIn, and industry events into actually running a production company has brought an entirely different perspective.
And Label King is deliberately lean.
Adam is currently the only person in the front office, yet the company has added more than 40 new customers during its first year together. He credits much of that efficiency not to having the newest printing equipment, but to using CERM and other software to process information quickly and avoid adding administrative people simply to move data around.
That allows the company to focus its resources elsewhere: building culture, hiring good production people, serving customers, and responding quickly.
And responsiveness is a surprisingly powerful competitive advantage.
Customers don’t always expect an immediate solution. Sometimes they simply want somebody to answer the phone, reply to the text message, or acknowledge the email — even when that message arrives at 10 o’clock at night.
Label King combines that service mentality with flexo, digital inkjet, and increasingly sophisticated variable-data capabilities. A Domino print bar installed on a Mark Andy press is already producing millions of variable QR-code labels every month, supported by partnerships with technology and authentication platforms.
For Adam, however, the objective isn’t necessarily to build the biggest label company possible.
He doesn’t talk about needing ten presses or hundreds of employees within a predetermined number of years.
Instead, his philosophy is to trust the process.
Show up every day.
Treat employees well.
Treat customers like royalty.
Stay creative, humble, disciplined, and willing to adapt — and allow the opportunities that follow to determine where the company goes next.
It’s also a philosophy Adam tries to apply beyond work. Despite the demands of building Label King, he remains active with his podcast, LinkedIn, basketball, and — most importantly — his wife and five children.
In this INKISH film, Morten talks with Adam about becoming a label converter, CERM, automation, variable QR codes, customer service, entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and why building a successful company doesn’t necessarily start with deciding how big you want it to become.
Sometimes it starts with simply getting the process right.
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Thu September 17th
Why Run Your Dryer at 100% If You Don’t Nee...
Walk into many printing plants, and there is a simple approach to curing: Turn the dryer up to 100%. It works. Nobody wants to risk insufficient curing. But it isn't necessarily the smartest or most energy-efficient way to produce. At LOUPE Americas in Chicago, Wayne Beckett meets Anne from IST METZ to talk about the company's new SwapCure platform — shown publicly for the first time at the event — and several technologies that could change how converters think about curing. Flexibility is central to SwapCure. The platform is designed to enable converters to switch between different curing technologies, including infrared, LED, and conventional UV, depending on the application and production requirements. But perhaps one of the most interesting developments is FreeCure. Developed in collaboration with BASF, FreeCure enables UV curing without conventional photoinitiators, addressing a challenge that has traditionally limited UV technology in sensitive applications such as food packaging. IST METZ already has installations operating with the technology in flexible packaging, where reducing concerns around migration and odor can open opportunities for UV in applications where converters may previously have been reluctant to use it. Then there is SmartCure. Rather than simply setting every dryer to maximum power, SmartCure uses production information to predict the curing energy required for a particular job. Job parameters can be used to establish the dryer settings before production begins, and those settings can subsequently be stored and reused when the same work returns. That potentially means lower energy consumption, more repeatable production and — particularly for companies operating multiple sites — a more standardized approach to curing. It is another example of how AI can play a very practical role in print production: not generating content, but using production data to make equipment operate more intelligently. In this INKISH film, Wayne talks with Anne about SwapCure, FreeCure, SmartCure, LED, conventional UV, food packaging, energy consumption, and why curing technology is becoming considerably more flexible — and considerably smarter. Because sometimes improving production isn't about adding more power. It's about knowing exactly how much power you actually need.