More and more often I am receiving print projects that require GMI certification. GMI stands for Graphic Measures International which was founded in 2009 when it began to develop the process that many of the top retailers utilize to maintain quality and consistency of print across all the different products that are sold in their stores today. But if I am being honest, GMI was not on my radar until the last handful of years when GMI became a division of SGS. Since then, it has become quite common for print jobs that we are producing for our clients to require the steps and approval of the GMI certification process.
When we think of large retailer such as Target, CVS, Walgreens, and many more….all of these retailers have house brands that are on the shelves right next to the “name branded” products. House branded products are manufactured by vendors, and it is the vendor’s responsibility to create the house branded packaging for the product as well. With the thousands and thousands of vendors that supply products to these large retailers to be sold as their house branded items, it is easy to understand why the retailers need some structure to be in place to ensure that the packaging accurately represents the retailer’s brand across every SKU, no matter what vendor is supplying the product to them.
So how does the GMI process work? When a packaging project is initiated for an item that will require GMI certification, the Product Vendor will nominate a certified packaging/print supplier, such as Huston Patterson, in the GMI portal and that supplier will be linked to the project. Once we, as a printer, are linked to the project we will have access to the pertinent details related to not only the specific print job but the also the standards that the specific retailer has in place for house branded items in their locations. After the job is printed, we send the required number of samples to GMI to be reviewed. When that approval is given, we can then ship the job out to our client to begin production of the corrugated packaging and/or display(s) that they need the litho sheets for. At the end of the day, what GMI brings to the table for the large retailer is centralized control of the branding and appearance of packaging for the products being supplied to them for sale as their house brands. You could imagine if there was not a focus on maintaining consistency and accuracy then there would most certainly be a visual contrast and inconsistency with the packaging for their products, across the board. GMI ensures that the vendors are consistent with their brand by monitoring and by approving each project before the packaging is ever shipped to the product vendor.
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