About the Company
Alliance Entertainment, a wholesaler and direct-to-consumer e-commerce seller of music, movies and consumer electronics, is saving about $80,000 a year on printheads for barcode shipping label printers since it became a customer of Columbia, MD-based Zebra® Technologies partner Peak Technologies. Under a single-source printing solution, Peak Technologies provides labels, printhead replacement and onsite printer technical support to Alliance’s 660,000-square-foot distribution center operations in Shepherdsville, KY.
Business Challenge
Alliance previously did its own printer maintenance. Insourcing this task and foregoing the use of Zebra® Certified Supplies with the printers had two negative financial impacts, according to Sandy Marsans, Alliance’s senior information technology manager.
First, using supplies that were not pre-tested for image quality, durability and premature printhead failure within Zebra® printers reduced printhead operating life and some printheads had to be replaced soon after going into service. Marsans estimates that about 120 printheads were replaced on the Shepherdsville facility’s printers every year at a cost between $80,000 and $90,000.
Second, for a business that ships items to more than 2,000 independent music and video retailers and more than 21 million items directly to consumers, time is money. Due to its limited Zebra® printer maintenance expertise, Alliance often experienced printer downtime of a week or two. According to Marsans, getting the printers up and running again was often costly and the need to work around idle printers to get shipments out often caused inefficiencies.
The Solution
Peak Technologies, an end-to-end enterprise mobility, managed services, printing and mobile data capture supply chain solutions provider, approached Alliance—which had several vendors supplying direct thermal shipping labels—with a single-source label supply solution back in 2014. Under Zebra’s ZipShip program, Alliance would get rapid delivery of 4-by-8-inch, 4-by-6-inch and 4-by-2-inch shipping labels it commonly uses from Zebra’s Flowery Branch, GA label converting plant. The labels are tested, manufactured and certified by Zebra®, an ISO 9001-compliant label converter, for use in its printers.
Download the PDF Version
Click the download button below to download the PDF version of this case study to save or share.
Industry:
Distribution
Business Challenge:
Reduce expense as result of printer downtime and cost of replacement printheads for thermal label printers
Solution:
- Certified Zebra Supplies
- In-stock labels from ZipShip
- Free printhead replacement
- Service and support:
- On-site printer tech support from partner
Results:
- Significantly reduced printer downtime
- Optimized printer performance
- Savings over $80,000 in annual printhead cost
- Reduced freight with planned volume purchases
"I asked myself, ‘How do we not jump into this right away?’”
- Sandy Marsans, Senior Information Technology Manager
As part of the solution, Alliance also would get onsite printer tech support and Zebra’s Printhead Protection Program, which offers customers unlimited printhead replacement when they purchase Zebra® Certified Supplies. Peak-Ryzek’s Barry Alves, the Alliance account manager, says the customer found printhead protection a particularly attractive aspect of the single-source solution.
Marsans was working on the budget for the next fiscal year and noted how much printhead replacements had cost the previous year when Peak Technologies proposed the solution. “I asked myself, ‘How do we not jump into this right away?’” Marsans says
