That Mo­tor City is not afraid to go big would be an un­der­state­ment.

Re­cent­ly, the com­pa­ny and its af­fil­i­ate com­pa­ny, Ad­ver­tis­ing and Print­ing Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (APCTT), com­mis­sioned a large roll-to-roll print­er, a state-of-the-art ma­chine ca­pa­ble of print­ing ban­ners as large as 20 feet wide by 250 feet long. Pre­vi­ous­ly, ban­ners of that size would re­quire two print­ed ban­ners to be com­bined. The cus­tom-built print­er can print a 5000 square feet ban­ner in an hour.

The launch of this new print­ing ma­chine co­in­cides with Mo­tor City Lim­it­ed’s 51st an­niver­sary since open­ing its doors to busi­ness in Ch­agua­nas.

Mo­tor City’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Sharona Ab­dul, said the team was ex­cit­ed to re­de­fine the stan­dards for large-for­mat print­ing in the re­gion.

She ad­mit­ted the de­ci­sion to in­vest in such a large print­er was a sig­nif­i­cant gam­ble, as no sup­pli­er had made one be­fore.

“So it was a big gam­ble for us to put out the mon­ey, be­cause they made us sign agree­ments where we paid down 50 per cent and if it works, well, it works hand in hand for both of us. But if it does not work, we would lose 25 per cent of the down pay­ment be­cause it’s some­thing based on our re­quest,’ said Ab­dul.

“The ma­chine was specif­i­cal­ly built for print­ing at 20 feet with­out any joins, and the sup­pli­er had to find man­u­fac­tur­ers ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing the nec­es­sary 20-foot ma­te­r­i­al.”

The com­pa­ny did not di­vulge the over­all cost of se­cur­ing the print­er, or the for­eign sup­ply, but stat­ed it was a size­able in­vest­ment that was al­so chal­lenged by the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.

She ex­plained, “Mo­tor City did face chal­lenges ac­cess­ing the for­eign cur­ren­cy need­ed to pur­chase this state-of-the-art, wide-for­mat print­er. In­deed, our pur­chase was sub­stan­tial­ly de­layed by the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change. We were able to pool for­eign ex­change earned from our re­gion­al cus­tomers to­geth­er with US-dol­lar funds ob­tained from our sis­ter com­pa­ny Ad­ver­tis­ing and Print­ing Com­pa­ny of Trinidad & To­ba­go (APCTT), as well as, to a small­er ex­tent, our bankers.”

The in­vest­ment in such equip­ment may raise ques­tions, giv­en the grow­ing in­flu­ence of so­cial me­dia in the pro­mo­tion of brands as well as the ver­sa­til­i­ty of dig­i­tal sign­boards. Ab­dul ex­plained that de­spite the rise of so­cial me­dia, phys­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing re­mains strong. She told the Busi­ness Guardian that this was es­pe­cial­ly true across the re­gion as she not­ed that her com­pa­ny has re­ceived con­tin­u­ous de­mand for its ban­ner and sign-print­ing ser­vice.

“Every sin­gle per­son, from the dou­bles man to the man who owns a big com­pa­ny, will ad­ver­tise. They buy the ban­ners for the events. They buy their flags for the events, the Face­book and the In­sta­gram could on­ly do so much, be­cause what they will do, they will get the ban­ners and the flags, and they will use (the phys­i­cal flags and signs) on their so­cial me­dia to show this is our com­pa­ny. Ob­vi­ous­ly, you can’t have a com­pa­ny or a prod­uct with­out ad­ver­tis­ing,” she said, adding that the de­mand for stand­still bill­boards and ban­ners has re­mained high, as busi­ness­es pre­ferred vis­i­ble, non-shared ad­ver­tis­ing im­ages as op­posed to shar­ing im­ages on dig­i­tal screens with oth­er com­pa­nies.

She added, “Dig­i­tal print­ing does not re­place wide-for­mat print­ing in Trinidad and the Caribbean; our lo­cal and re­gion­al pub­lic still favour sta­t­ic bill­boards, tran­sit posters, and store­front ban­ners that have be­come a part of our dai­ly lives, of­fer­ing high vis­i­bil­i­ty, lo­cal rel­e­vance, and a sense of per­ma­nence that dig­i­tal screens do not al­ways pro­vide. Un­like mar­kets like Las Ve­gas, where dig­i­tal sig­nage is per­va­sive and of­ten pre­ferred for dy­nam­ic cam­paigns, Caribbean con­di­tions, vary­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty strengths, da­ta costs, and pow­er re­li­a­bil­i­ty, or lack there­of, make sta­t­ic out­door me­dia a re­li­able main­stay.”

As such, Ab­dul said, de­spite the rise in dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing and the in­crease in pro­mo­tion via so­cial me­dia, her com­pa­ny is in high de­mand due to its di­verse client base, which ranges from small busi­ness­es to large cor­po­ra­tions.

“Wide-for­mat print­ing re­mains es­sen­tial for large-scale brand­ing events, de­liv­er­ing bold colour, dura­bil­i­ty and im­me­di­ate im­pact that can be seen from a dis­tance and re­mem­bered over time. Mod­ern  print­ed sig­nage of­fers de­sign qual­i­ty, ma­te­r­i­al longevi­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty and this al­lows print prod­ucts to stay com­pet­i­tive in a mar­ket in­creas­ing­ly shaped by dig­i­tal sig­nage. In short, print and dig­i­tal co­ex­ist, with print main­tain­ing its role as a cru­cial, trust­ed fea­ture in the Caribbean ad­ver­tis­ing space rather than be­ing re­placed by the lat­ter new­er tech­nol­o­gy.”

The de­ci­sion to in­vest in the new tech­nol­o­gy has come dur­ing a high­ly pro­duc­tive time for the com­pa­ny.

This year has been a par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful one for the com­pa­ny, as the ex­tend­ed Car­ni­val sea­son in­to gen­er­al elec­tions meant there was no short­age of busi­ness for the com­pa­ny. But Ab­dul said the Mo­tor City team was not about to rest on its lau­rels, par­tic­u­lar­ly with eyes on re­gion­al ex­pan­sion.

“The com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors de­cid­ed to ex­pand our print­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties by in­vest­ing in the world’s widest print­er be­cause in­creased pro­duc­tion size ca­pac­i­ty opens up new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­hances the qual­i­ty of Mo­tor City’s print op­tions avail­able to our long­stand­ing clien­tele, as well as those new cus­tomers we hope to at­tract both lo­cal­ly and in the wider Caribbean area.

As such, Ab­dul said, de­spite the rise in dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing and the in­crease in pro­mo­tion via so­cial me­dia, her com­pa­ny is in high de­mand due to its di­verse client base, which ranges from small busi­ness­es to large cor­po­ra­tions.

“That at­ten­tion is of­ten re­quired on a large scale, which can com­mand at­ten­tion in the largest of fo­ra, in­clud­ing sta­di­ums, trade show floors, build­ings, stage back­drops and large trans­port ve­hi­cles, you name it. This print­er lets us pro­duce those gi­ant graph­ics in-house, us­ing top-qual­i­ty ul­tra­vi­o­let ink, with top-qual­i­ty colour and us­ing a large se­lec­tion of ma­te­r­i­al types. The print­er al­lows max­i­mum ver­sa­til­i­ty to the cus­tomer.”

Mo­tor City is a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness, Ab­dul stat­ed, as she heads the third gen­er­a­tion cur­rent­ly, with plans to have her daugh­ter as her suc­ces­sor. It has al­so been a com­pa­ny with a lega­cy of chang­ing with the times. As the com­pa­ny’s name sug­gests, Ab­dul ex­plained the busi­ness ini­tial­ly start­ed with a fo­cus on the sale of car parts be­fore her fa­ther not­ed there was an un­tapped in­dus­try for car tint­ing and graph­ics for ve­hi­cles.

This lat­est in­vest­ment, she said, is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the com­pa­ny’s nec­es­sary evo­lu­tion.