Tag: Borrowing Machinery

Take a Telescopic Approach

Written on by frain-sales

The packaging industry often revolves around uncertain futures. New products and packaging ideas come and go with new ideas constantly filling the project queue.

A companies ability to extend new offers, innovate thru testing and new ideas quickly, while maintaining core focus or retracting project load is essential.

Through a vast equipment inventory and flexible payment terms, including rental and lease, we offer companies a way to taste test equipment necessary to execute on new and incremental work, while adding insurance to projects which may need to be canceled or discontinued for whatever reason.

Moving forward is often the best way to get to a point where you can see progress is being made (or not). With Frain, you have the flexibility to get moving and return the equipment if needed based on marketplace performance.

By enabling you to make your first move sooner, we bring an iterative approach to packaging by delivering a minimalistic approach sooner while the bigger picture becomes more clear.

Frain has evolved over 35-plus years in business. From the purchase of our first machine to now having thousands of machines in inventory – we’ve wrapped our certified pre-owned machinery with integration, engineering, and technical services to customize new and used equipment alike for our customer’s applications.

With over 100 years of combined packaging engineering experience, we deliver peace of mind to your project, in addition, flexible pricing and speed to market.

Whether your running just several projects over a years time or hundreds – you can likely benefit from our experience, inventory, and services.

Let us help you extend and contract your packaging needs within a rapidly changing and demanding marketplace.

Call us today to discuss some of the projects on your horizon and how we can uniquely help deliver on them.

Which Came First?  The Machine or The Price?

Written on by frain-sales

When buying, renting, or leasing machinery – start-ups or well-established companies will want a quick take on the price of the machinery.

Even if equipment buyers are in the early stages of understanding what they need, they will want to lock down some semblance of investment early on within their project.

It’s a chicken and egg scenario.  The answer to the question –  “How much will this machine or equipment line cost me?” –  is found only by knowing what exactly you want and what you ‘re willing to invest right now.

You can get a machine that is guaranteed not to work for very little cost.

You can also buy a brand new machine that is overkill for what you really need.  You end up buying too much machine.

 

The devil is in the details.  Here are some key questions to have answered before you shop your next machine:

  • What product are you running?
  • What size of your package or container?
  • What volumes/speed?  (10 per minute = 4,000+ units/day)
  • When do you need to have the machine or line up and running?

Additional questions:

  • How long will you need the machine?
  • Do you have any space / footprint limitations?
  • How are you handling this now / reason for change / people involved and level of experience?
  • What are your main questions / concerns / goals in deciding on the machinery?

 

Once you contact our engineers with the answers to these questions – we can comb our inventory of 9,000 machines and provide you options for one machine or entire packaging lines to best fit your specifications.  We can also provide you terms (rental, lease, purchase) and services (training, start-up) that put you in position to succeed.

 

Stand-Out Packaging

Written on by frain-sales

Media consumption and exposure continues to climb at an ever-increasing rate.  It’s estimated that U.S. adults are exposed to approximately 10 hours, 39 minutes of media per day.

The same fight for attention happens in retail and e-tail with merchants carrying tens of thousands of items or in the case of Amazon, more than 500 million.  Think about that for a minute.

So, how do brands develop innovative and attention-grabbing products, packaging, etc. that stand out?

Just like media headlines, e-commerce websites are able to simultaneously test messaging and imagery to understand what offers, packages, colors, words work best.

Data then points to which package or collection of words, images, etc. will offer the largest return on eyeballs.

The key for brand companies becomes not over-analyzing what to launch but launching variety efficiently and while mitigating or removing risk altogether.

Frain has worked on dozens of large brand projects over the past couple years.  From these projects, we’ve seen a shift in the way projects run.  Companies are now more nimble than ever, getting to market faster by renting resources and equipment and shutting down or ramping up production based on the data.

The focus used to be on trying to launch the perfect project, inexpensively – which may have included finding a machine at a lower cost.

But, now, realizing that days or even minutes of a successfully running project can pay for the machine or at least for the price to rent, and ability for equipment customers to rent – we’re seeing multiple product packaging launch ideas come thru all at once to increase speed to market, data, and revenue.

As we know the insatiable market demand for more variety exists, as does the opportunity to seize this demand quickly to maximize revenue.  The difference between winning and losing today is the ability to act and act again based on data.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

Disrupting the Mold

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You’re probably heard the saying that you can have two of the following – fast, good, and cheap – but not all three.

After posting Price Deal or Cost, we were reminded by our customer Thomas Ball that “Frain still doesn’t market its strongest concept…the three aspects of deal Cost, Delivery Time, and Quality.  You usually can have two of the three, but Frain can provide all three:  Lower Cost, High Quality Solutions, and Quick Delivery.”

More specifically, Frain provides equipment that’s fast, good, and cheap when compared to the price of new equipment.  Here’s more:

Fast – We inventory approximately 9,000 machines supported by a staff of over 40 technicians.  Our engineers will help match you to the best machine and our technicians will get it to you much faster than traditional methods.  We find that most companies are able to benefit from this speed in terms of revenue.

Cheap – With certified pre-owned equipment you get like new equipment at a discount from new.  Side by side, they work all the same for your job – only one doesn’t cost as much.

Quality –  Our machines leave the building fully addressed by our technicians and backed by parts warranty and the Frain guarantee. If you’re not 100% satisfied, you may return it within the first two weeks – no questions asked.

 

 

3 Reasons Our Customers Rent Machinery

Written on by frain-sales

With so many projects coming and going thru Frain, we’ve seen more and more of our customers renting and leasing machines lately.

Like a skier, flying into Colorado and checking out the most ideal pair of skis for the weekend, our customers are constantly refining their equipment needs based on their own needs, conditions, and the shifts being made by an ever-evolving consumer.

Like anything that’s lasted over 35 years, Frain has evolved with customer needs and demands.

This has enabled us to not only see sustainable growth over the years, but to become more and more valuable to our customers with a focus on improving the value we bring.

After seeing thousands of project ship under eco-friendly, rental terms, we’ve come across the three most common trends among our rental customers and insight as to why they choose to rent.

1. Flexibility

Like new, or many times brand new, rental equipment gives our customers the flexibility to respond to the unknown future.

They may order machinery based upon increased demand, business, new retail distributor deals / relationships or they are testing something new, such as a new product or packaging.

rent-packaging-machinery

In either case, many times the future may be unknown in terms of how long the machine will be needed and renting provides the flexibility of returning if or when its no longer needed.

2. Budget

While every company may have enough money, they may not have budgeted for a particular equipment purchase.

Being able to rent machinery enables companies to get what they need for an item, which may not have been included in the original forecast, but will allow them to reach new heights.[kkstarratings][kkstarratings]

Companies like Mars, Clorox, and Meijer have worked with Frain to get to market months sooner and see positive ROI within literally minutes of running the machine under rental terms.

3. Footprint

With machinery and projects constantly evolving, our customers can optimize use of their floor space by returning equipment after renting from us and leverage the freed up space for another project.

Frain helps its customers reach peak performance by delivery quality packaging, processing machinery and complete packaging lines sooner than traditional channels, while offering the flexibility to rent and return the equipment as needed.

Borrowed Assets

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If you’ve been to Chicago before, you realize there’s more to the city than Wrigely Field, deep dish pizza and shopping.  Sitting aside Lake Michigan, Chicago offers a beautiful view or a chance to work off some pizza with a lakeside walk or bike ride.

Recently,  I took advantage of this and biked along the lake shore with my family.  After bringing our own bikes for this trip we came across a Divvy bike rental station and made a mental note to leave our bikes at home next time.

The concept of renting instead of owning has been around for a while, but is catching in popularity as people realize more and more the true convenience, time and money save of borrowing assets brings over owning.

The same holds true for the CPG industry and with packaging and processing machinery.

Having convenient or immediate access to assets can be a premium option of projects in tight time frames or insurance for projects that have unknown outcomes or lifespans.

With an unknown destination for a new line of product or packaging – borrowing or renting machinery allows companies to get it faster and return machinery at a timeline that makes sense for them.

Our clients have witnessed tremendous revenue increases, convenience and peace of mind when taking advantage of this new model of procuring packaging equipment.

It opens new lines of revenue that would not have otherwise been available, as both machines and revenue arrive months sooner than traditional methods.

Like a bag of chips or cereal offering 50% – 100% more – our customers are getting a huge chunk of revenue that wasn’t initially outlined in revenue forecasts for a fraction of the cost of ownership.

Make a mental note for your next project – budget in revenue increase from borrowing equipment instead of owning.

 

Borrowing Machinery

Written on by frain-sales

During the recent Uber Revolution Packaging Summit at the Frain headquarters, speakers weighed in on trends, including the “shared” economic model within CPG industry.  Company models mentioned included Uber and Airbnb.

In the new Shared Economy, access trumps ownership.  As the saying goes, “Why buy the cow?”  Today people have access to cars / rides and dwellings on an interim, more flexible basis without the worry of having to own and maintain these assets.

Divvy is Chicago-based company or service that allows tourists and locals to borrow bikes and return them to a number of different locations across the city.  The combination of convenience and access make for an excellent service to align with commuter goals – getting from point A to point B as easy as possible.

More and more services have adopted this model – and so has Frain.

We have over 9,000 machines that appear on Google in ~50 different ways – wrapper, stretch wrapper, flow wrapper, shrink wrapper, pallet wrapper, flow wrapper and so on.

Ultimately, when people contact us regarding a machine they find on Google we offer them to borrow or buy the equipment.  But, why buy the cow?  Why justify or sell internally the entire expense.

Rental or borrowing allows for the unknown future to be less scary.  Many of our customers do not know how long they’ll need the machine or how quickly they will be able to turn a profit.  Getting the machine quickly and affordably lowers the hurdle for getting from point A to point B.

Having a variety of inventory means we’ll have the machine you need access quickly and temporarily.  Our customers borrow machinery when they need it, for as long as they need it and benefit from doing so over traditional methods.