About Us

Three decades ago as a fresh and naïve commerce graduate, a class mate and I stumbled across a new market in barcode graphics and we formed Barcode Technologies Ltd.

Bar coding was a great industry to be involved in – it was in its infancy and we were at the forefront. We had found a niche in the area of making bar code graphics and printing them on to film strips for printing .

Our start up was quickly a success and being young and eager, we started to look for other opportunities within the space . As part of our barcode service we were constantly using pre-press companies to image our film strips so the idea of producing our own and at the same time setting up another business, was something we couldn’t resist. We ventured into the world of image setting, digital scanning and pre-press graphics – forming a pre-press bureau in Grey Lynn called Beyond Imaging (very creative name!!).

The bureau concept suited me – I knew nothing about laying up film or making plates but I could get my head around set delivery times and standardised pricing and products. Luckily so could my customers – who weren’t overly interested in how we got their print film made, as long as they had it within 2hrs!!

It was a good mix – customers who only cared about the service – and me, who understood more about the service side of my business than the technology.

The development of direct-to-plate technology would lead to the inevitable demise of the film image setting industry and over the space of just a couple of years the entire pre-press landscape had changed. A once profitable industry sector had very quickly lost its shine and every market participant was left to reassess business plans. Beyond Imaging was no exception.

The barcode graphics business had remained a standalone business, and after the demise and sale of my now far less lucrative pre-press business, I bought a small one man label printing bureau called LabelShop to help with barcode label printing.

I only knew a little bit about printing but what I found was, most of our customers didn’t know know much either. In fact, I soon discovered was that what my label customers were really interested in was the price and that their labels would delivered on time.

How we did it wasn’t important and so, LabelShop began its journey…