Blog

New Virtuoso Print Manager

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 12:03:00 +0200

UPGRADE TO VIRTUOSO PRINT MANAGER TODAY!

If you currently use CreativeStudio, please visit the Sawgrass website to learn how to replace CS Print Manager with the Virtuoso Print Manager, so that you can take advantage of the most-up-to-date printing features CreativeStudio has to offer. The update option is available once you have logged in and selected the CreativeStudio option.

This free upgrade of the print manager replaces the PowerDriver and is available for Windows operating systems for all printer sizes (A4, A3 and 25"), there is not currently a MAC option for the 25" VJ628 printer.

Virtuoso Print Manager also now enables VJ 628 users to access and print with CreativeStudio (Windows operating systems only).

OVERVIEW OF VIRTUOSO PRINT MANAGER

Print from CreativeStudio online designer
Though tablets and mobile devices can be used to create designs via CreativeStudio Online Designer, your creations need to print from a computer running Virtuoso Print Manager.

We have always sold Sawgrass inks for dye sublimation for two reasons - the quality of the inks and the excellent support that Sawgrass offer to their customers for all their products.

If you are already a Sawgrass user, or if you are thinking of starting in dye sublimation, this is a quick overview of the regular updates and improvements you get when you buy Sawgrass dye sublimation inks from us.

Webinars
Sawgrass regularly run webinars, for example this month they are offering -

Colour Management Solutions - CSPCM

6/8 at 4pm EDT - CSPCM – Creative Studio Print & Colour Manager is a program you install on your computer that enables your Virtuoso printer to receive and manage CreativeStudio files for print. Easily apply settings optimal for graphic images and colour/ or black-and-white photos. Adjust the hue, contrast, brightness and saturation to meet the needs of even your most selective customers. Streamline repeat orders with custom pre-sets and hot folders.

We expect them all to be available by mid-September in really good time for Christmas and they’ll be at a really competitive price point with the aim that you’ll be able to sell them personalised at very realistic prices (we reckon you’ll be able to make a very decent profit selling the small ones at £10 and the larger at £15 – though frankly I think they could sell for more in the right place).

It's almost that time again ....

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:23:00 +0200

I hate to mention the C… word – but it’s the 25th June and we’re halfway between last Christmas and the next one! I’m sure in only a matter of days someone will appear on television telling us we should be getting to work preparing our yule log and making paper chains and checking our on-line address books to see which of our 400 nearest and dearest have changed their address since last year so that they can receive the annual round-robin about little Johnny coming 5th in the under-9 sack race and that funny story about Kylie and her tooth.

But here at TTP towers we are concentrating on more important matters – buying stock to keep our customers happy for Christmas. With a number of our products coming from China – on ships which take six weeks – stock for Christmas has to be on the water by the middle of August – which means it has to be ordered by mid July – and our suppliers are starting to ask (politely) if we have planned our requirements yet.

Our problem is every year we are selling a lot more which of course is great for you and for us – but the real peak of sales is getting later and later. Only a few years ago the first Monday in November was manic Monday – all you guys realised Christmas was coming and orders flooded in and by the 3rd week of November all the big orders had gone and by mid-December all we saw were top-ups of 3 of this and 3 of that "just to make sure I’ve got enough for the last minute customers”. However, last year we were amazed when a customer ordered a pallet of mugs on December 18th and assured us he was going to print and despatch them for Christmas!

We reckon we’re fairly good at predicting our sales – and every year we get better – though there will always be one or two products which surprise us and become the "hot item” of the year. I still have minor nightmares about "the glass coaster shortage of 2012” and "the missing pallet of...

A bright new thing!

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 12:38:00 +0200

Regular visitors to our site will soon see that our web site has a new look and feel. So why have we done it?

It's no secret that many more of us are now using mobile devices to surf the web and our old site, while being usable on mobile devices, was beginning to creak a little under the new technology. We know that many of our customers place orders using mobile devices, so the time was right to update our site so that all our visitors, whatever devices they are using, can easily access the site to place orders even when they are on the move.

Like many companies considering a website update we had two ways forward - either upgrading to a responsive site or going the route of a site designed for those using laptops and desktop with a separate version optimised for mobile devices.

Responsive websites are very much in vogue at present. A responsive style website that 'responds' to the visitor and offers up the best version based on the how they are viewing the site sounds a good solution but like many 'one size fits all' solutions it works but does not always look pretty. It often creates pages with a lot of wasted space and uncomfortable formatting because it's hard to design pages that will look equally good on a small iPhone and on a 17", or larger, computer screen.

BBC News and The Guardian have recently moved to responsive sites albeit the new designs have not exactly been very popular, particularly the BBC redesign which has resulted in disjointed looking pages with large amounts of white space and badly rendered images when viewed on a standard sized screen. We trialled our site in a responsive layout and were not at all impressed with the results.

So we have decided to go the route of designing a new site for those using desktop and laptop computers and offering an optimised version of the site for our mobile visitors to facilitate quick and easy mobile navigation and ordering. The mobile version will...

Blog

New Virtuoso Print Manager

It's almost *that* time again ....

A bright new thing!

It's almost that time again ....