Alexander Virshke: "Ugra Export Support Center" Fund gives us considerable support when entering the international market

The general director of the limited liability company "Virshke" Alexander Virshke spoke about how he started his career, and also announced plans for the near future. - Alexander Evgenievich, tell us about your activities? How did the idea of ​​creating the company come about? - In 2003 I registered as an individual entrepreneur. Initially, being a popular designer in the city, I planned my business as a design studio. But I quickly realized that intellectual work in Russia was not yet paid and changed the type of activity for printing services. Gradually equipped the company with the most modern equipment, and the work went. My printing salon was focused on "festive printing", that is, the main products on which we specialized were postcards, invitations, photo-games, labels. Festive products required additional finishing and one of the types of such finishing is hot foil stamping. For this, a cliche is made and a stamping process takes place on a special press. However, for small print runs, the time and cost of making the cliche become very unprofitable. At that time, an American foil-heater appeared on the market, which, using a special thermal head, made it possible to do stamping directly from the computer. It was no longer necessary to produce a cliche, to adapt it to the press. The process became fast, convenient and intuitive. It was decided to buy American miracle equipment. However, at that time the exchange rate changed and if earlier the price was simply high, now it has become completely unreal. But the need for such a device has remained, not only in my printing salon, but also in many, many others. Estimating the potential volume of the market, I decided that it makes sense to invest in this direction and develop your own device by the American type. At the very beginning of the project, four criteria were defined. We will not copy the American analog, but we will develop everything ourselves. The device should print no worse than the American. It should be accessible to the Russian user. Our goal is not only the Russian, but also the international market. The development of the project began. The first year I frankly spent on "trial and error." I got negative experience and lost some money. However, this did not stop my determination to bring the matter to an end. In addition, at this point the project to some extent began to resemble a "suitcase without a handle", which is hard to drag, but to throw it is already a pity. The second year was more successful. The project was somewhat delayed in terms of time and it was necessary to make some compromises in its functionality, but finally our first production model, which was called simply Foil Print, came out. The main goals were achieved - the device did not print worse, and in some tests it was even better than the American analogue and much better than the Chinese devices that had appeared by that time. Our device was even cheaper than the Chinese. However, due to lack of experience, limited funds and, most importantly, the abundance of Chinese components, the device created could not boast of reliability. The main problem was in the Chinese drivers of stepper motors - they sometimes broke down along the way of the printer to the buyer. In addition, according to our customers, it quickly became clear that the common printing width for such devices - 57 mm is too small for many works. It was necessary to at least 100 mm. I managed to agree with the Japanese manufacturer about jointly developing a new print head of increased width, and such a head was created. By the way, we still have not fully paid the Japanese company for the work done by them, but it was worth it, because at the moment we are the only owners of a print head with similar characteristics. A new printer was developed for the new print head, which embodied all the experience accumulated before and produced a product with unique characteristics, which, in my opinion, seriously bypassed all competitors. In addition, the development of almost completely abandoned the use of foreign components, and their share in the cost does not exceed 22%. In the new device, which received the name FoilPrint 106, the following characteristics were achieved: - print width - 106 mm at a resolution of 600 dpi (for comparison, competitors have a printing width of 57 mm and 300 pdi, or there are heads up to 210 mm, but with a resolution of 200 dpi, which is very low for high-quality printing); - printing length up to 500 mm (from competitors up to 250 mm); - the ability to use a print head of different widths, that is, you can put the same printer as a new print head with a width of 106 mm, and a head from the old model with a width of 57 mm. And the replacement is done in a few seconds by simply replacing the cartridge with the head. As far as I know, there are no analogues of such a solution in the world yet. At FoilPrint