The history of labelletiquette.fr

It’s January 8, 2011, a rainy Saturday evening, and two men are using Facetime to launch a new deal together…

This was the very beginning and launch of our company etikett.de. Since then, we’ve built up a strong presence in the French, German, Italian, Dutch and English markets, a team of over 80 employees, large premises, plenty of machinery and some fantastic customers.

But what’s behind it all, where did the idea come from, how did the project develop? We put these questions to the company’s two founders, James Nilles and Michael Wey, and invited them to an interview to find out all the little details that made etikett.de a reality and, above all, a success.

James and Michael both come from small towns on the banks of the Moselle. The area is very rural, and here, people know each other! However, the two men never really got to know each other, at least until 2008. In 2008, they were both working in James’ family business, the Nilles printing works in Trittenheim. Michael had already been working there for several years as a media designer, and James joined him just after graduating. At the time, the printing industry, and particularly label production, was very traditional and, especially in the region, highly specialized in the wine industry. This meant printing on high-quality materials with beautiful offset finishes. Michael’s idea was to move into online printing – which was excellent in theory, but never put into practice, as it seemed too complicated at the time. But was it really? Thanks to an internal restructuring, James and Michael got together and the first step towards this online business was taken and an in-house production system created!

Their philosophy was that it should not be a classic sales site, but rather an online calculator. Another technical innovation was the switch from offset to digital printing. The aim was not to open a “cheap print shop” either, but to offer top-quality labels online, and to extend the high quality of wine labels to all sectors, so as to be able to produce quality labels not just seasonally, but all year round.

So, in the spring of 2010, the two went to the IPEX show in Birmingham to see the latest printing machines available on the market. They were aware that HP was a pioneer, but two points made them doubt it at first. HP was a big brand and relatively expensive. What would happen if business didn’t work out? And above all, did HP really make the best machines on the market?

James and Michael understood that they had to test the machines and samples themselves to form their own opinions. It was also important to them that the machines performed at their best under real production conditions, as this was the only way to satisfy their customers. After many tests, the “dreaded” result was there: HP did indeed have the best machines for their project.

Thanks to great support from the family business, James’ father and uncle, the first machine was installed in October 2010. In an “emergency”, if the machine didn’t do the job, it could have been reprogrammed to produce high-quality wine labels. However, this never happened. On January 8, 2011, the company etikett.de was launched, the website went live and, little by little, the first successes began to appear.

The following Monday, James and Michael returned to the office, expecting countless requests and orders. Only a few days later came the long-awaited first request. Then came the excitement, the joy and the proof: it really works! The first e-mail from a potential customer, a large copyshop in Berlin, wanted to place an order. However, this customer required a PE Film (now standard at labelletiquette.fr) which was not available on our online calculator. As the two young men specialized in the production of wine labels, the PE film was not only not in the calculator, it wasn’t even considered a required substrate and was therefore certainly not in stock.

At this very moment in the interview, James and Michael burst out laughing…

Now that the two young men are spending more time together, the subject of an “online print shop” is coming up more and more. They came up with a lot of ideas, but they kept missing our online calculator system: the ability for the customer to immediately see the price of an order without having to send an e-mail first seemed important to them.

The final nudge in the right direction came when Michael, by chance, saw an advert stating that the domain “etikett.de” was for sale. James decided to buy it and see if the business worked, and this was the beginning and birth of etikett.de.

Michael immediately spoke to Jürgen Nilles, head of the Nilles printing works. He told him that he needed the PE Film in stock, as this was the medium ordered by customers. To which Jürgen replied that no customer had ever ordered or requested PE Film, that one customer didn’t represent the great mass, that it would only take up space and would never be ordered again. Thanks to Michael’s charming persuasion to add PE Film to our standard media in the calculator, and thus offer it to all (potential) customers, PE Film finally found its way into the company’s warehouses. And that’s a good thing! Because the quantity required 10 years ago now passes through our machines in an hour!

Of course, not everything goes smoothly when a company is set up and throughout its development. When a machine broke down, labels sometimes had to be delivered personally to customers in order to meet delivery deadlines and, of course, keep customers coming back. Comments such as, “You’re megalomaniacs”, sometimes still echoed in the back of their minds. But the two men never let this discourage them. They had confidence in themselves and their project, and firmly believed in the success of this online printing business. They had to work hard and relentlessly, but what business is wildly successful without diligence and long hours of hard work? The weeks were busy, and the founders worked non-stop. Both had to get down to business and produce large numbers of labels themselves, while juggling the conventional wine trade with the potential success of a digital label printing business.

One aspect has nothing to do with machines, but is even more important than them: employees. Going from 0 to 80 employees represents a great success, but also a great challenge. James Nilles and Michael Wey had to find people who fit in with them, fit in with the company, could be assigned the right tasks and made a good team. Communication and a very friendly complicity should not be affected by this, and despite everything, it naturally happens that a member of staff chooses a new path and bids farewell. For the two founders of the company, the transfer of tasks and responsibilities was also a challenge. If you start small and build everything yourself, at some point you have to learn to trust others and let employees make their own decisions. And you can see that it works, sometimes even better than you imagined.

Project growth is synonymous with change. So there’s no escaping it if you’re pursuing a specific goal. All those little obstacles, the ups and downs that were overcome, are part of the success story. The company’s founders never let themselves be discouraged, and always encouraged each other: “We’re on the right track, let’s keep going! We’ve got a great team! We have the support of CCL, which makes our job so much easier. There are still so many ideas, so many opportunities, so many new countries and markets to exploit.”

And the most motivating part of all is every additional order, big or small! And, of course, the 80 employees, some of whom have helped write the history of etikett.de, labelletiquette.fr, etichetta.it, label.co.uk and unieketiket.nl since their inception.