How did the Wrap Industry Start?

The industry started to develop with branding and advertising on taxis in the early 90’s. Vinyl installation was a great alternative to painting vehicles, then stripping them back and re-painting. These branding activities were carried out only by large firms, whom could afford to spend significant sums of money on large format printers, plotters, cutters and laminators.

Eventually, the industry started to get more recognition and branding/advertising rolled over to cosmetic vinyl enhancements.

Cheaper and easier access for companies

As you can imagine, over time, more and more companies started to get involved. Technology became more proficient, mass produced, therefore cheaper and easier to access. Eventually the large firms had competition, because the smaller private companies started performing the works.

Spark in Automotive Restyling

This lead to a spark in the industry, all of the sudden we didn’t have small and simple cosmetic stickers/stripes on vehicles. We had a complete creation of  “automotive restyling” such as colour changing wraps and eventually other useful film ideas such as paint protection – self healing films.

Mass production & Access to public

As the technology continued to improve and become more accessible, the films and materials started reaching the general public via mass sales.

This allowed people to start wrapping their own cars and objects, without the need to pay a professional. Let’s face it, if they made a mistake, it didn’t matter, they could simply remove the wrap and start again. It was a no-risk learning pathway.

The trends grew, this lead to people basically offering vehicle wraps and paint protection out of their own garage as a 1 man owner-operator.

Rise in these owner operators were a “cheap” solution.

A lot of people used the services and eventually found many issues long term.

We’ve tested cheap wraps…

So you don’t have to!

Side effects of a ‘cheap’ installation

These are the sorts of results you can expect to see… 

And yes, these are ‘cheap wrap installers’ we have personally tested in our workshop.

There are many reasons for this such as;

No long term experience or quality control

Many of the people in the industry have only been around for 1 to 3 years or at best 5 years. They do not understand the trends and behaviours of wraps long term. Even the simplest of tasks such as post heating will not get carried out. You will pay the price long term.

Warranty issues

If something goes wrong, they are often too busy or inaccessible to address warranty recalls with the wrap. Therefore you often have NO WARRANTY.

Lack of formal training

Many of these people are self taught, smart ones will continually self educate and improve their skills. However, it will be limited to basic automotive wrap use, difficult projects will blow out of time frame or budget. If they do not, you will sacrifice quality.

Further to this, a cheap solution will fail on the following points;

No project co-ordination

There won’t be someone who can handle your project and discuss everything with you in an open organized format. Then, ensure it is all carried out appropriately.

No design capacity

They will not be able to handle design work proficiently, or if at all. There is often a lack of creativity amongst the community.

Unable to handle large scale work fleet works

They will not have the capacity to handle multiple vehicles for fleet work or large scale projects.

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