You may be so used to seeing them you hardly notice them, but if you’ve ever tried to remove a security label, you know they’re here to stay.
Over the last few decades, security labels and seals have quietly grown into a billion-plus dollar industry. Should security labels be on your sales radar? Plain and simple: YES.
Today, we’ll hear from Discount Labels staff and customers about our huge range of security labels, and how we can make a difference to your business.
As demand for security labels has grown, labels have become increasingly sophisticated: Foil. Holograms. Lamination. Numbering. Barcoding. Die-cutting. From asset and inventory control labels to equipment-safety warning labels, from “Void if removed” labels to “self-destructing” parking permits, security labels are BIG business.
Account Manager Mabel Landon describes the three main security label types Discount Labels offers, “We have what's called a ‘destructible’ … a label that, when you try to remove it, it just shreds and falls apart. There’s no way that label can be used again. We also have two other labels, both called ‘tamper-evident’. One leaves behind a checkerboard pattern when you remove it. The other leaves behind a pattern displaying the word ‘Void’. If someone tries to remove one of these, you’ll know it.”
Discount Labels Security Labels are available in a range of materials and formats. Special copy, four-color printing, die-cutting, and lamination (for damp conditions or outdoor use) are also options. Landon says, “We can meet most every need. We can also do barcodes, consecutive-number/variable image and variable data. It doesn’t have to be sequential. You supply us with an Excel file of the data that needs to go on the labels, and we can do it.”
Landon says police departments are frequent Security Labels users. They apply our destructible labels to bags containing items and evidence from various crimes. “You have this label, you put it on the evidence bag, you get all your information on it. But if somebody tries to open that bag, they won’t be able to reseal it, because the label just shreds. That’s how officials can tell if anybody’s tampered with the chain of evidence.”
“… As for checkerboard or void patterns, I've seen them used in several different ways. Some are very popular with school systems for equipment and asset management. Schools affix these labels to school computers, laptops, iPads, cameras, monitors, whatever … nowadays kids take these home for their classwork, and anything can happen. An iPad could be left on a city bus, stolen from a backpack, all kinds of scenarios. If anybody tries to take the equipment and remove that label, you’re going to see something left behind that lets you know someone peeled off the label.”
And believe us, school equipment can add up to a lot of labels. Case in point: A Discount Labels customer at a large trade printer on the West Coast told us about one of their customers; a manufacturer who provides equipment to a entire state school system. This manufacturer produces and requires security labels for more than 400,000 pieces of equipment each year. Discount Labels runs 200,000 labels per order for this customer.
Another opportunity? Healthcare. Our West Coast customer says her clients also use our vinyl Security Labels for hospital equipment or other situations that require sterilizing or cleaning with detergents. “Just walk into any doctor’s office and look at the equipment. There are five or six labels on everything!”
Then there are badges, IDs, and parking decals. Another Discount Labels customer is one of America’s largest parking-permit vendors, supplying millions of these, along with IDs, forms, and other items to schools and universities. He says, “Schools have long had problems with parking management. They used to use rearview-mirror hang tags, but those were too easy to steal or share.” When his company began printing destructible decals, business took off. The numbers and specialized demands grew so much, however, that his company turned to Discount Labels. We now cost-effectively print millions of numbered parking decals and barcoded library labels for his many education and university customers in about every format you can imagine.
He says “Sometimes you’re dealing with 50, 60, 70 versions of information … it's not that easy to do. Overall, Discount Labels is an excellent source for parking labels and everything else you need.Their parking permits are an excellent product as they’re using top-notch material. And, their self-destruct features are the best we’ve found.”
Discount Labels’ Landon says security labels can help with asset control in other industries, too, especially when they’re laminated. “Like construction companies and others who have big equipment and stuff sitting around outdoors. Or electrical and gas meters that are outside in all weather. I've also had some people order them for things like state-auditor certification seals on gas pumps.”
So if you haven’t been offering your customers Security Labels, let’s brainstorm some new-business options. Just give us a call or send us an email! We’ll be happy to show you how our huge range of Security Labels and services can help you help existing customers, and perhaps secure some lucrative new business, too.