Necessity is the Mother of Invention for Louisville Company
One Stroke Inks has been a leader in the screen printing industry for more than 40 years. While they supply machinery and tools, their primary business is mixing inks, often times in unique colors requested by customers. When those inks are mixed, small samples are kept in storage as a “formula reference” for possible future orders. Once that collection reached 16,000 and the jars were spread through multiple buildings, it became apparent that a new storage method needed to be identified. Keeping the collection together, safe and accessible was a priority.
HOW STORAGE MADE THE DIFFERENCE.
Growth is always a good thing. Along with that success, though, occasionally comes unforeseen challenges. For Louisville-based One Stroke Inks, that meant an explosion in the number of 4-oz. sample jars of inks created for thousands of clients. It was taking staff members upwards of an hour to find a single searched-for jar, as they were initially stored on wooden shelving spread across three buildings. A little ingenuity – and a dose of inspiration – led to the creation of “The Color Vault,” a compact shelving unit that perfectly solved the storage crisis… and left room for growth.
A mechanical-assist, high-density compact storage solution made ideal sense for the company. The new unit’s seven carriages – measuring 18’ L x 18” D – easily accommodated the thousands of small samples. One of the company’s do-it-all employees even suggested the addition of a small “lip” at the front of the shelves (to keep them from rolling off) and a tiered design. This “step” strategy today allows staff to easily see and retrieve sample jars three deep.
“The new system is 100% user friendly. We really appreciated that Patterson Pope was able to meet our custom needs.”
— Belinda Lobb, One Stroke Inks
