For more than three decades, Contact Originators has cemented its position as a trusted prepress partner to packaging printers across the UK and beyond. However, there’s another side to the story – one that’s already reshaping packaging workflows, cutting waste, and bringing clarity to brand operations every day.
It’s the work Contact is doing directly with brands. This is about strengthening every link in the packaging chain – helping brand owners, designers and printers work together with fewer delays, fewer errors, and greater consistency at every stage.
Why brand collaboration matters
Many packaging delays and print issues don’t start at the press – they begin much earlier. It could be fractured approval workflows, inconsistent artwork files, unclear content ownership, or teams juggling spreadsheets and email chains to keep projects moving.
Sound familiar? Without the right structure up front, printers get lumped with the clean-up, such as reworks, last-minute amends and files that were never press-ready to begin with.
That’s why Contact works directly with brands – not to bypass printers, but to set everyone up for success before the artwork ever reaches the plate room.
Centralised artwork management
At the core of Contact’s brand support is a customised, collaborative platform built on Esko’s renowned and globally trusted WebCenter technology, which is tailored precisely to the needs of our customers. With Automation Engine powering the back end, every system Contact delivers is matched to the brand, with integrated approval flows, content control, and end-to-end transparency.
It means no more searching through inboxes for the “latest” artwork, no more manually updated Excel trackers, and no more mismatched specs between packaging types or print methods. Instead, everything lives in one place – a single source of truth for packaging artwork, accessible across stakeholders. That includes the printer, the brand, the design agency, and the Contact team.
Crucially, these platforms aren’t locked inside a service contract. Contact builds each one as a standalone system for the brand – meaning they can own it, develop it and control it.
Faster to market. Fewer mistakes. Less waste.
For brands, the benefits are immediate:
- Shorter time to shelf with streamlined approvals
- Fewer amends, reworks, and production delays
- Clear visibility on bottlenecks and content gaps
For printers, it’s even more powerful. When Contact works with a brand directly, printers receive artwork that’s consistent, complete, and colour-managed from the start. That means:
- Less time lost to technical reviews
- Fewer unexpected file issues
- Easier setup, better print performance, and smoother collaboration
Everyone wins, especially when the pressure’s on.
Human expertise + Smart systems = Real impact
Technology alone doesn’t solve today’s more pressing print problems. What makes Contact different is the mix of platform expertise, deep prepress knowledge, and real-world print experience – from managing colour consistency across multiple substrates, to automating content changes and approvals for global SKUs.
The result of this combination is less stress for everyone involved. More predictability and more control. Whether it’s supporting a leading retailer with their own tailored WebCenter, or helping a printer deliver brand colour integrity across a multi-process campaign, Contact acts as the strategic glue between every party.
Contact’s work with brands is all about setting printers and brands up to succeed together.
When Contact supports a brand, it reduces rework, eliminates bottlenecks, and brings a level of control that lifts the entire supply chain. And, when a printer wants Contact to manage a brand relationship on their behalf, that’s an option too.
At every stage, the goal is the same: right-first-time packaging, delivered faster, with less waste and less chaos.
Want to make your brand packaging process less chaotic and more controlled? Let’s talk. Whether you’re a brand looking for more structure, or a printer seeking greater artwork support, Contact Originators can help.
Smart systems. Print expertise. Seamless collaboration. That’s the Contact difference.
