In 1935 R. Stanton Avery invented the self adhesive label in California and created the adhesive label industry. In 2011 they are opening a Design and Innovation center in Germany.
If you have interest in the packaging and printing industry you might remember the name “Avery Dennison” from those labels you bought from Staples and used for creating sections in your project documents. You don’t realize that this is a 6 Billion $ company with a fascinating history. It includes, creating the pressure adhesive postage stamps, so that you don’t have to lick them!
And here is a company that expanded global manufacturing to China in 1995, India in 2008, Japan distribution center in 2009 and now a Design and Innovation Center for Retail Branding and Information Solutions in Germany. The center will focus on vastly improving the image resolution on apparel printing compared to what we are used to on T-Shirts, on sustainable packaging solutions for apparel and footwear and interestingly on RFID, which can improve accuracy in retail shelf stocking from lows of 65% to highs of upto 99%.
Given the huge reputation of the German Printing Industry, it probably makes sense to base the Design and Innovation Center in Germany. Despite high costs in Germany, the skill levels are probably very high in this industry and will accelerate the innovation efforts of the company in all its global markets.
So does this mean that innovation is leaving America ? Not really, because in a global world, knowledge and expertise matters and if innovation is from Germany in 2011 for Stanton Avery’s company started in 1935 in California, that’s globalization !