(W)rapping on Bus Graphics

Crown Graphics is a small company fulfilling the graphics needs of a big niche: the bus industry (both commercial transit and school). Located in Chino, California, the company was formed in 1991 as a division of West Coach Corporation, an already established California school bus dealership.

West Coach Owner Jerry Hillenbrand created Crown Graphics as an inhouse design department to work on his school bus decal projects. He acquired a small, one-man sign shop and moved its operations into his facility in Chino. Hillenbrand then named his new company (following previous employment at a company called Crown School Bus).

Their first introduction to digital printing was with a Roland PC-60, and later, a Gerber EDGE®. Both machines served them well and allowed them to build a solid customer base in the truck lettering market, says Crown Graphics Manager Brace Evans.

However the company soon realized it had to upgrade its printers. "With the introduction of affordable large format printers, we saw the industry starting to turn towards more digitally printed vehicle wraps," says Evans, "and we knew we had to take the plunge or we would get left behind." Two years ago, the company traded in its PC-60 for a SOLJET PRO II SC-540 EX and purchased a CODA Cold-Mount® laminator.

Today, Crown Graphics employs three installers, one manager, and an outside salesman to serve its main clients (companies with fleets). The business works on vehicle graphics for local radio stations, and does all the graphics for a local bus manufacturer (El Dorado National) and hundreds of buses a year for customers like Hertz, Alamo, National, Thrifty, Budget, and Park-N-Fly. According to Evans, a good percentage of its buses ultimately end up at airports all around the country.

On the school bus end, the company gets a fair amount of referral work. It has a dedicated paint department that specializes in complete bus refurbishments. Incorporating this department ultimately creates graphic work for Crown Graphics, since most buses that corne in need the decals completely redone after they have been painted.

Over the last few years, Crown Graphics, like many other vehicle graphics businesses, has been seeing a trend in requests-jumping from die-cut-type lettering to full-color digital. It has also noticed that almost every company...