Transcript:
Early in the process, I came to understand how difficult it is for new, small, younger brands to get their hands on smaller batches of cans with relatively quick turnarounds. You had to order by the truckload, and the lead times were long. For me, it came down to knowing this just wasn’t a sustainable solution with shrink sleeves or stickers.
So what’s the alternative? I went down the rabbit hole and found there were these digital printers that were relatively new in the world, and very new when it comes to digital printing directly on beverage cans. We bought our first printer, raised money, financed it, and in August of 2021 we got it here in Austin and started printing our first cans. Since then we’ve grown to our second location in San Diego, and we’ll be opening our Atlanta facility in February of next year.
What we do and what we believe in is treating everyone the right way. In our world, that means moving quickly, being very responsive, and being flexible. Things change—artwork changes, timelines change. Maybe you don’t need those cans, then you do. Maybe you need them in two weeks, then four weeks. Cool, no problem. It’s about being flexible and working with people the way they want to be treated.
That starts internally with the culture inside of Can Works, where we win on customer service. That’s something we’re very committed to. SKA’s been very good about holding our hand and being hyper responsive—that’s about 90% of what we need. They were very helpful explaining what printer we’re buying, what line we’ll need, the Depal, the Peter, the conveyance, the twist feeds—all that good stuff.
The field technicians within SKA’s work really hard and are great to work with. They’re very open to communication, explaining what’s going on and why, and just finding solutions as quickly as possible. And what we like about having SKA is that when field technicians come to install something, they’ll also help us solve other little problems we’ve got. It kind of goes back to our culture—it’s flexible, it’s responsiveness, it’s general customer service, and of course hard work.
It’s a team incredibly dedicated to Can Works, which means incredibly dedicated to getting quality to the customers at the end of the day. You kind of see it when you walk around—go from brewery to brewery and you start to see SKA stuff everywhere. They’re kind of the standard in the US.
