"All of Dubai are our customers", says Alexander Plastinin, production manager at Sun Studio Dubai. IQDEMY's extraordinary business proposal enables the company to strive in hard times. IQDEMY, a group of leading companies uniting the world's best practices and expertise in the digital large format marketplace, offers its printers a unique concept, thus enabling printers to cater to market niches.
The company offers a fully worked up franchise proposal to print service providers comprising of not only the actual large or very large format printers but also a manifold support and maintenance system as well as access to IQDEMY's vast R&D center and knowledge base. The company has established not only fully conceptual businesses but also sells and establishes ideas in and within their franchise network as well as in its clientele.
Situated in the Al Tayer Building on Sheik Zayed Road, one of the busiest and best known roads in Dubai, Sun Studio Dubai is one of the busiest printers in the United Arab Emirates when it comes to printing on glass, ceramics, stone and many more rigid substrates that not every large or very large format machine can accommodate.
Their clientele comprises all kinds of customers, from architects to building companies, from designers to hotels as well as other printers that cannot accommodate the substrates that the SWS and Maglev printers from IQDEMY can print upon.
"A lot of our business has to do with decoration, indoor and outdoor", explains Alexander Plastinin, production manager at Sun Studio Dubai. "Whenever a designer or architect has an unusual idea, they first of come to us, talk about it and together we find solutions to realize yet another unique and unusual project for their clients."
IQDEMY and its franchise system offers Sun Studio Dubai a full solution and access to know how, including material knowledge that, according to Alexander Plastinin, he or his employees would otherwise have no access to. "It includes a 24-hour technical support, an image library and the Moscow and Novosibirsk design centers. Whenever we don't have the resources to do something, IQDEMY springs to our help – whether it is in terms of graphic design or that we receive an order to print on some material that hitherto we have not come across. Within a short time span IQDEMY's personnel comes back to us and exactly tells us how to print on such and such substrate or even does the graphic design for us. This support is highly valuable for us and offers us a great way of doing business."
In addition Sun Studio Dubai, like all other franchisees receives commercial support from the company. This comprises of market research, strategies for entering certain market segments as well as business planning or how to organize production and much more at each of the Sun Studios. "Specialists helped us with the setup and gave us feedback and support. In addition, we got trained as to which skills and performance to look for at potential employees and how best to hire staff that would fit into our company", says an excited Alexander Plastinin. "We got full and extensive training from IQDEMY at their learning center on what is possible and how to do things. These two to three weeks that we and some of our employees spent at the center was fully worth it and we learned a lot."
"Our business is about selling ideas, giving our clients the possibility to realize all and every idea and concept they have. Not only here in Dubai but in the whole of the Middle East individuality is a big topic when it comes to interior and exterior design. We are one of the only printers in the vicinity that can print on glass, marble, aluminum, limestone and many other materials. This means that not only architects and designers are our clientele, but also other print service providers, that are getting jobs that they themselves cannot execute. One could say that the whole of Dubai are our customers", states Alexander Plastinin. "Examples of our works can be found all over Dubai including all Jungle Juice, Potato Hut and New York Fries shops in town (including Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates), as well as Dunkin Donuts in Mirdif City Center, to name just a few."
In addition, Sun Studio Dubai prints on furniture such as tables or kitchen fronts. "Simple tables are upgraded by for example a glass plate with a chess board on top or individual designs. The same goes for all kinds of furniture fronts whose value increases manifold when imprinted with individual designs according to the owners taste and the style of the house", explains Alexander Plastinin. "We have even printed marble designs on glass so that indirect lightning could be installed attracting lots of interest by visitors." Increasingly smaller gift items are being printed on the UV LED inkjet printers at Sun Studio Dubai. "One of our biggest projects has been the printing of a glass ceiling for a mosque in Iraq."
"Without the UV LED technology employed in the Swiss and Maglev printers it would not be possible to print on many sensitive substrates. The heat that usual metal halide UV lamps emit is fully eliminated and as there are no VOCs present in UV LED curing, it is a very environmentally friendly print process", states Alexader Plastinin. "IQDEMY's inkjet technology even allows us to print on stainless steel and do acrylic die-cuts. The output quality of the printers is stunningly and satisfies even the most critical of our clients."
Sun Studio Dubai is just one of the more than 90 Sun Studios that have been established around the world and several locations are still scheduled to open within this year. "We call our franchise business "ready-made" as all service and maintenance support we are offering is targeted at the business success of our franchisees", explains Vlad Mirchev, founder of IQDEMY. "We have several different kinds of franchisees, starting with printers that want to start up their own businesses to printers that want to extend and enlarge their own business proposals in markets they do not serve yet to investors; some of our franchisees even come from the advertising, interior and exterior decoration industry. IQDEMY's value proposal does not stop half way down the road, we accompany our customers the whole way."
