You've taken an outstanding digital photograph of the wife and kids, and you want to send a fine-art-quality print to the grandparents. You load some 100-percent cotton-fiber, inkjet paper into your new Epson, and print the image onto the artsy, felt-textured side. Then, after placing the framed print into a cushioned shipping pouch, you peel the release liner off to expose an adhesive strip and seal the pouch for mailing.

You've also just been using a handful of products converted by Rayven, Inc., but you'd never know it. The St. Paul, MN-based specialty converter coats, laminates, prints and slits a broad range of materials that make their way into an even broader range of everyday products.

Founded in the mid-1950s by the late Gerry Ingalls, Rayven was one of the pioneering converters of pressure-sensitive label constructions. It initially sold plain and metallized p-s Mylar® labels—a fairly unusual product at the time—to local screen and letterpress printers.

Within a few years, Rayven debuted the product that would put it on solid footing for decades. ReproFilm, a thin adhesive-backed film for use in various types of copiers, transfers repetitive images to architectural or mechanical drawings. Sold into the global reprographics market, ReproFilm once made up 80 percent of Rayven's sales and dominated production throughout the 1970s, 80s and early 90s.

But as computers and CAD systems began to largely replace manual drafting, the writing was on the wall. "Many companies, if they exist only to make one product and that product goes away, the companies typically go away, too," says Rayven's current president Joe Heinemann. "We didn't want to do that; we kind of like staying in business."

Today, Rayven's production is roughly 40 percent silicone-coated and other release liners; 30 percent p-s films, foils and papers; and another 30 percent imaging media. ReproFilm is still around—a popular product in Europe—but now accounts for only about 15 percent of sales.

The converter's raw substrate range has widened as well. From two kinds of Mylar, common materials currently coated include biaxially oriented and cast polypropylene, high- and low-density polyethylene, papers and polystyrene.

Heinemann has been with Rayven since 1986. With a background in mechanical engineering, he started out in technical sales, and worked in the laboratory before moving over to manufacturing, and becoming president in 2000.

"The challenge we've had over the past 10 years is to, sort of, remake the company," Heinemann says. Not necessarily an extreme makeover, "We've built on what we know and diversified into other areas," he says.

It's exactly that diversity that makes Rayven unusual for a company its size, Heinemann explains. "We do more things in this one plant than anybody else does. We have six slitters—all different types doing different things. The same with our coaters—they all have different capabilities and the flexibility for quick turnarounds on short- to mid-size runs."

Rayven will typically process only a few hundred thousand sq ft of material before changing over to something completely different. "That's our market niche, our advantage," Heinemann says.

Custom capabilities are another factor in Rayven's successful makeover, according to Rick Mercado, director of sales and marketing. Everything the converter does now is custom-tailored to specific buyer demands. "We do a lot of private-label coated products," Mercado says. "You don't see the Rayven name out there, but we make a lot of that product."

Depending on the product (or the location of the distributor), Rayven's international sales tend to fluctuate. Exports made up only about 5 percent last year in terms of its purely direct ReproFilm business in Europe, but overall exports should be 15–20 percent this year, Mercado says. That shift is coming particularly from some new projects in which Rayven's materials move to Canada before the finished product is sold back into the US.

And while total sales ($10 million in 2004) have been consistently up over the past few years, Mercado says, "They've not grown by something that excites Joe or me. We're not yet where we need to be."

Achieving that goal will be easier with the installation last spring of Rayven's fifth coating line. The proprietary 72-in.-wide system, designed to run up to 800 fpm, has the width and high speed to allow Rayven to economically produce larger volumes of UV-cured, silicone release liner (See Coater Closeup).

Rayven has selected GE Silicones (Waterford, NY) to be their primary supplier for UV chemistries. GE has an unmatched technical support team, personified by Tom Ray, says Mercado. Ray was instrumental, along with GE senior account manager Krzysztof Hansdorfer, in offering expertise during the start-up phase of the new UV-coating line, the converter says.

The capital investment, now running at about 50-percent capacity, underscores the converter's commitment to a product segment that helped reshape its business. "The specialty release-liner market, especially films, has been very good to us, and continues to be a strong area for growth," says Heinemann.

Flexible-packaging converters are key—now and in the future, adds Mercado. "We supply millions of linear ft of narrow-slit release liner to go over the adhesive strip on plastic pouches." The application is typically untouched by the household names of the industry because Rayven's bagmaking customers want the liners custom-printed and pre-slit.

Long established in p-s films, of course, Rayven is also starting to see new business through several transfer-adhesive products introduced last year. Specialty-label converters, diecutters and screen printers are the initial markets. Used to affix printed, metal nameplates to multiple-CD books is one end-use for the transfer adhesives in the recording industry. Automotive speedometers are another. "The screen printed speedometers are actually stuck into place," explains Mercado. "Those have our transfer adhesive on one side and our release liner on the other."

A third hot-growth area for Rayven is the result of the nearly 180-deg shift from film to digital photography. Sales of imaging media, especially for the inkjet market, have exploded as consumers learn how more and more can be done with their home PCs and printers. "People get bored pretty quickly printing at home on lower-quality paper," Heinemann says. "Our coated, cotton, inkjet paper is phenomenal for high-quality portraits."

With the company's makeover complete, sales clearly focused on specific targets, and new production capacity at the ready, Rayven appears prepared for what lies ahead. "We're really excited about the next five years," Heinemann says. "We hope we can handle all the business."