Since 1967, Adwel Art’s founder Om Parkash has stressed quality in every aspect of his business operations. Centrally located in the State of Haryana (Kundli & Bawal), facilities encompassing 40,000 square feet are furnished with the highest-quality equipment and some of the most advanced technologies in the industry, enabling the design and production teams to handle projects of any size with the minimum overhead costs and the least turn-around time.
Furthering the tradition of excellence, the company provides complete, turn-key solutions to its growing client base across the world. “We handle every aspect of any sign project, including conceptual design, engineering, manufacturing, handling of permits, project management, installation & maintenance. Our team of experts is efficient, well-trained and is ready to help our clients with the creative design of any signage product concept, bringing their business’ image and message to life,” asserts Vimal Kishore of Adwel Art while he was detailing on the Journey so far in the Indian Signage Industry with Sign & POP World.
A Legacy of 5 Decades
Adwel Art has earned reputation because of its quality workmanship, which is infused in the blood. It’s his family business wherein the skill of creating/painting hoardings has been transferred through ancestors, making Adwel Art stand apart in the crowd, which has been entering its fifth decade as a striving leader in the country’s Sign Industry. The state-of-the-art infrastructure backed by the experience and strength gained over time, allow it to meet its clients’ needs exceeding their expectations, regardless of the size of the project.
A Brief History
A Native of Bharatpur in Rajasthan, his grand father started this trend of signage/hoarding, which the family continues as its traditional occupation. It was then, there lived painters, but no printers. These painters were of two types – one, painting pictures and banners with images, while another used to write on the wall or cloth to be termed hoardings which the Adwel family took forward. His father was then an employee with Indian railways, which he left in between and joined his grand father to assist him in marketing. Then after, there’s no looking back.
It was the era of publicity entrepreneurship and the heavyweights were Hindustan Publicity, Pioneer Publicity, Vasudeva Publicity, etc., to which the contracts were coming from companies like IOC. At that time, two hoardings measuring 20×10 feet and one measuring 40×10 feet were painted on daily-basis. Gradually, Adwel Art started diversifying to wooden work and scaled up the skills of creating stalls in exhibitions. This was in parallel to the signboard business.
Slowly, his contacts grew in the industry one of which was Pradeep Sarkar – the Parineeta & Mardani-fame director, who was instrumental in bringing quite a few big projects to Adwel Art. One of those projects was a set for NDTV’s weekly program ‘The World This Week’. Later, got a few projects from Siddarth Basu of ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’-fame for whom Adwel created sets for his TV serials. He also made the set for a Chat Show christened as ‘Eye Witness’ for Hindustan TV, which was then staged by Sharmila Tagore & Karan Thapar.
Contribution to Indian Signage Industry
Kishore has been instrumental in introducing Vinyl to Indian signage industry in 1993-94 when he imported his first plotter for vinyl cutting. Going forward, he helped establishing many entrepreneurs in to Indian signage market. It was in 1996, he came in contact with some Japanese brands that he invited to do business in India. It was a time when the Indian flex market was mostly covered by 3M at a very high rate, he invited LG which had flex to offer at considerably low rate. The same year, he imported digital inkjet printing machine, the first ever, to the Indian signage industry.
Setting-up the Facility – Starting with Power
He keeps traveling across the globe in the look out for what better he can bring for the Indian market. He is pretty much influenced by the Europeans way of presentation where he found quality as the supreme – be it for setting up a facility or manufacturing process. He tried imbibing the same in India while setting up his own factory.
For any industry to be initiated, the first and foremost thing that is needed after land & premises is power. He only had 11kW power for his factory building while the need actually was of 200 kW to run the facility. He applied for the same. It took him more than 8 months to get the power approved and installed. The government made him spend 1.25 crore to get the basics – water, power and air to the premises.
Security & Lighting
For any premises – be it factory or office, security closely follows power & water in the list of basic infrastructure. And it was no different at Adwel. He follows systematically and opted for the best fire-safety measures so that people employed there in the premises must feel safe. He selected the best possible equipment and instruments and get that installed ensuring a fail-proof operation at the time when it is needed the most. The equipment are from Legris – the French technology major.
He takes the credit to invent the country’s first of its kind LED panel lighting system measuring 3×3 feet for his factory premises so as to maintain proper illumination to help feel the employees and workers fresh and fatigue-free.
Addition to Signage
For a glimpse of how Adwel Art executes concepts into reality has been kept accumulated in a room within the factory premises. Located in the basement, the room has been developed as an experience center where signage with varied attributes have been put on display for clients to walk in, spend some time to explore and choose according to his/her specific requirements. He believes that signboard is not simply a signage but it’s the brand image.
In most of the signboards, a combination of metal (mostly SS304), acrylic, flex and LEDs have been used to master the overall effects. For some, it was Vinyl pasted on Acrylic to shape a thermoforming signage, while another featured colour-changing Trans-LED adding beauty to the printed flex signage. There were a few lettered signage illuminated with colour-changing LEDs bringing a different feel altogether where brands like Vivo and Oppo were in prominence. For all these, the power supply used is from MeanWel brand. He believes in quality, and hence, the acrylic that goes with his signboards, promises more than 93% transparency to give full bloom to signage especially in the night.
The Show Stealer
The best among the displayed ones was screw-less signboard, developed with a unique clip-on system to make a joint-free signage box facilitating ease of installation as well as operation without creating much of the wire mesh inside the box. Another attraction was solid 3D letters made of 25mm acrylic with LED module fitted in the groove especially created for its illumination, which became the cynosure of corporate giants like Domino’s, Dunkins and JCB.
Unlike the trendy alluminium, the letters here are made of SS304 grade which then are covered with acrylic to provide beauty & aesthetics. The letters so prepared are water-proof and dust-proof. The company provides replacement guarantee of five years irrespective of the nature or the extent of complaint in the system. One of the signboards was made incorporating AC in it, which adds another feather to its cap of innovation.
Kishore informed that it’s because of the outstanding design backed by the flair of innovation in every next project, Adwel was given the responsibility to mark Domino’s 1000th Store in Unity Mall at Janakpuri West and 1200th Store in Sector 16, Noida Metro Station. The signage so developed are made so smooth that neither any screw nor a joint mark on any of the corners or the walls is visible.
For all this, it uses imported acrylic with thickness varying from 2mm to 40mm, while the profiles are sourced from renowned brands like Jindal and Hindalco, made exclusively on order. Adding longevity, he replaced the trendy MS with Alluminium in all the signboards for making the box.
Dedicated Design Department
It helps formulise the concept in to design, developed according to the specifications provided by the client to meet their specific requirements. The team is in direct contact with the clients mostly online. Once a concept takes the form of design, it is sent to the clients for approval and if any changes are to be made it can be done then and there. It also helps improving the designs based on the clients’ specific feedback. Recently, it has developed Canopy for Domino’s soon to be placed on the railway stations & malls. Besides, there is one more innovation i.e. the extreme modular solid acrylic letters with changing/replacing options for the customers as per requirements.
The Infrastructure
Adwel boasts of all the quality machines imported from renowned brands from across the world for cutting, bending and joining purposes. Initially there was a Hitachi machine then he moved on to Dewalt but the needed satisfaction keeping in view the parameters provided by the client was not there which made him switch over to another German giant Elumatech – a fully computerised machine and guarantees 100% accuracy. He purchased two machines – one each for length and corner for flawless output. The CNC router is from FlexiCAM GmbH – another technology major from Germany. Together, these high-tech equipment enable the Team Adwel to produce the best quality with maximum efficiency for minimal overhead.
Till date, the company has invested Rs. 12 crore for all this while there are plans to further expand the capacity. Accordingly, more machines are to be installed in time to come encompassing applications like vacuum forming, digital printing and powder coating. Meanwhile, surrounding plots have already been purchased for backward bending to bring the solution under one roof, which will take another six months or a year at the most.