These new Shooting Star Acrylic awards feature a bold shooting star graphic in gold creating a stunning complement to the rich marbleized pattern blue, red or green. Photo courtesy of JDS, Industries, Sioux Falls, SD.

    Customer #1: The head of a local nonprofit organization needs your help. She needs half a dozen awards to recognize their outstanding volunteers of the year. She wants something classy and different from a traditional plaque. The hitch, however, is her super-tight budget. She doesn’t have much to spend, but still wants something nice and unique. Can you help her?
    Customer #2: An investment-banking firm is looking to honor their top producers of the year. They need ten awards and, like Customer #1, they want something elegant, attractive and unique. Unlike Customer #1, though, money isn’t so much of an issue – they have a bigger budget and are willing to spend more for a high-end, sophisticated award. What can you suggest?
    Interestingly, you can offer both of these customers the same type of award and satisfy all of their needs and budget concerns. How? With acrylic awards.
    “I think the inexpensive acrylics are (in some cases) taking the place of the little trophy. But then there are some very classy, very high end corporate awards that are being done out of acrylic,” says Margaret Johnson of Johnson Plastics, Minneapolis, MN. “I think it’s a general spectrum. They’ve (manufacturers) tried to create products for just about every avenue and every price break.”
    Michael Hicks of Plastic-Plus Awards, Charlotte, NC, agrees that there is something for just about every award buyer when it comes to acrylic. He says that there are some customers looking for awards well under the $50 price range, while others don’t bat an eye at spending $300 per piece. “You’ve got a pretty broad spectrum of people in terms of what they want,” he explains.
What is acrylic?
    Acrylic is a resin-based thermoplastic made by different manufacturers under common brand names such as Plexiglas and Lucite. The makeup of a certain brand of acrylic varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, depending on the intended market for it. Acrylic, in general, has a number of appealing characteristics. Being a thermoplastic, it can be heated and formed into all kinds of different shapes. It is also a very “hardy” material; it’s resistant to sunlight, rain, snow, pollutants and many chemicals.
    Acrylic is also characterized by strength, optical clarity, beauty and versatility. It looks like glass (it’s easy to mistake a piece of jade colored acrylic for glass), but is half the weight and it actually has better optical clarity. For award applications, acrylic is available in clear (the most popular), opaque colors (white, black, brown, blue, red, etc.) and translucent colors (jade and blue are favorites).
    “We find that acrylic is a very user-friendly substrate,” says Eric Wald of Acrylic Idea Factory, Norcross, GA, a major innovator and manufacturer of acrylic awards. “It is easily engravable by both laser and rotary engravers as well as by sandblasting. Acrylic is also easily screen-printable, which allows for a great variety of designs and colors to be used in making unique recognition products. Another distinctive difference is that because of its exceptional manufacturing process, acrylic can be easily transformed into a wide variety of custom-made shapes, sizes and colors.”
    Most of the award products manufactured for the recognition and identification industry are made from cast acrylic sheets. When laser engraved, cast acrylic turns a frosty white color which is often desired for attractiveness and contrast. Cast acrylic sheets are made from a liquid acrylic monomer that is poured into a large mold to create the desired sheet size (up to 4' x 8') and thickness (e.g. 1/16" to 2" thick). Manufacturers cut awards from these sheets using saws or high powered lasers and then finish the awards with an intensive series of sanding and polishing, and sometimes adding special touches such as beveling and screen printing. Wald explains how Acrylic Idea Factory turns ordinary sheets of acrylic into virtual works of art. “At Acrylic Idea Factory we have the most state-of-the-art acrylic production facility in the world. With over 50 years experience in acrylic production, we utilize specialized cutting, finishing and laser systems designed by our engineers. This is why we can produce thousands of custom ordered parts within days, not weeks, with the highest quality. In addition, all of our award blanks are individually hand-buff-polished and inspected,” he says.
    Extruded acrylic, the other popular type of acrylic used in this industry, is manufactured using a large machine that forms the liquid plastic into continuous sheets of material. This is a less expensive manufacturing process, but it also involves using a base material that engraves “clear.” Although this isn’t a desired trait for surface engraving since there is little or no contrast between the engraved areas and the rest of the award, it is an excellent quality for cutting. When cut with a laser, extruded acrylic produces an extremely clean, smooth, glass-like edge finish.

What’s available?
    Today, there are several major suppliers of acrylic award products (see sidebar) offering an incredible selection of great looking prefabricated merchandise that is ready to engrave. Products are available in a variety of different shapes and colors, mounted on different bases and highlighted with special effects.
    “Currently we stock over 650 styles of acrylic awards, plaques, paperweights, deskplates and certificate covers in our warehouses,” explains Eric Wald. “These are just the products in our catalog! In addition to stock items, every year we create thousands of custom awards.”
    Michael Hicks of Plastic-Plus Awards says that acrylic has become a big part of his product mix, taking up the first 15 pages of their catalog, and that the selection from major manufacturers such as Acrylic Idea Factory, PDU and Victory is enormous. “What we’re really good at is distributing products,” he says. “Our goal is to pick high quality items and provide the service that customers need. They want to be able to pick up the phone at 4 o’clock or 5 o’clock and place an order and get it the next day.” Hicks says that retailers don’t want to stock products, so he functions as their warehouse. “That’s the niche that I’m able to fill because we stock all of these products,” he explains.
    Peter E. Ilaria of Tropar Mfg. Co., Florham Park, NJ, says that their acrylic award sales have grown every year. “In terms of our business, it grew from a sideline to a very important product segment for the company,” he states. “It’s something that really rounds out our product offering, particularly among quality and design-conscious corporate buyers. We’re not just a plaque company or a clock company. We’re really in the recognition awards business.”

Acrylic Award Products –What’s New, What’s Hot
    Michael Hicks says that he sees a lot, in fact a majority, of customers who are very traditional award buyers. “They want the same thing they’ve been getting for the last five years,” he says. But there’s also those customers who want something new, different and unique. With acrylic, you can meet the needs of both of these types of buyers.
    For those customers interested in something new, the acrylic market is not, at least in recent years, a disappointment. For example, last year’s highlight for Plastic-Plus Awards was the “Diamond Tower” awards manufactured by Acrylic Idea Factory (above), a striking piece made of four or six diamond-shaped acrylic posts with gold or blue mirror reflective bases. Hicks says that this type of award is something he is seeing more and more. “The clear acrylic has been around so long and it’s still a very, very good seller. It sells by far more than anything else,” he said but, the new reflective pieces represent a new trend in the market and one that is catching on. Hicks says that these awards are extremely popular among the higher-end customers looking for a quantity of awards in the $25-$75 range.
    Scott Sletten from JDS Industries, Sioux Falls, SD, and Wald both mention the new “StarDome” award created by Acrylic Idea Factory as being a major new product introduction for 2004. This striking new piece has a three-dimensional gold “shooting star” bursting from the background and curving around the piece, creating an award that could easily fit into a wide variety of corporate award programs. “We’re also excited about our new Star Tower Awards,” says Wald. “These are unique to the industry in that we’ve created a beautiful, gold-mirrored, reflective star design in a tall free-standing award that includes a spacious engravable area.”
    Another popular trend in new acrylic looks is “corporate marble,” which is essentially a clear acrylic piece screen printed on the back with a marble-like pattern. The piece can be customized by reverse engraving through the screened design. “It gives it a little bit of color where normally you may not get that color,” says Plastic-Plus’s Hicks.
    JDS has seen similar trends in colored acrylic. “One thing you are seeing a lot more of in acrylic is colors, screening and mixed medium products, which means combining acrylic with Corian or combining acrylic with glass or piano wood,” explains Sletten. “We’re doing a lot more colored parts with screened patterns on them, things of that nature.” Sletten adds that he is also seeing more options in thicker acrylic pieces, which eliminates the need for a base and also eliminates assembly time on the dealer’s part.
    Another popular trend is combining high-end media to create a unique look. This year Tropar introduced a line of awards featuring an acrylic plaque mounted on a piano finish base. “Those have gone over extremely well in the marketplace,” Tropar’s Ilaria says. “The line we came out with uses the piano finish wood which has been very hot in the industry for a few years. We just thought it would be a good thing to add to the acrylic line and still keep the line in a price range that wouldn’t scare away the market.”
    In an effort to add more value to their products, Tropar has also started including a gift presentation box with its new line of acrylic awards. This, Ilaria explains, makes it easier for retailers to reach out to corporate customers. An award in a classy presentation box has a great deal more appeal – especially to high-end customers – than a plain, open cardboard carton.

Personalizing Acrylic Awards
    Laser Engraving is the major method for personalizing acrylic today. It’s easy, fast and nearly foolproof. “As more of our clients get laser engravers, this product line allows them to sell to corporate clients relatively easily,” says Hicks. “As the use of lasers continues to increase, we’ll see a lot more acrylic merchandise in the marketplace.”
    Other experts in the industry agree with this, including Sletten and Wald. “Since the introduction of inexpensive desktop lasers to our industry, acrylic award product sales have increased,” explains Wald. “I believe this is due to the ease with which acrylic can be engraved and the nice profit acrylic provides dealers. Even though acrylic is rotary engravable, as more and more dealers purchase lasers, acrylic sales will maintain an upward trend.”
    Most of the acrylic awards manufactured for this industry are made from cast acrylic that, as explained earlier, laser engraves “white,” which is normally the desired effect. You can also laser engrave on the surface of a cast acrylic award and paint fill the characters. However, if you plan to reverse engrave and paint fill, you will want an extruded acrylic piece. On a cast acrylic piece, the frosted engraved area will show through, muting the paint color.
    Other than the physical differences between the two types of acrylic (check with your supplier to be sure of what you’re buying), laser engraving acrylic is quite straightforward. Specific machine adjustments will depend on your laser and, as Mike Fruciano, owner of LaserBits, Inc., Phoenix, AZ, points out, as manufacturers have added more variables to their equipment, offering general laser engraving guidelines for certain materials has become more difficult.
    In general, though, keep the power low. “Basically what we recommend to customers is that they use very low power settings and typically you need to engrave about .015"-.020" depth to get good to excellent results,” Fruciano advises. “If you’re going to color fill it, you want to go to about .035" or .040" in depth.”
    Fruciano says that if you are surface engraving acrylic, in most cases, there is no need to mask the acrylic prior to engraving. However, if you will be paint filling, then he suggests using a paper mask to make cleanup after paint filling a breeze. (Don’t forget to raise your power setting a little bit higher to accommodate the thickness of the paper mask.)
    For odd-shaped acrylic awards, i.e. those that won’t lay flat on your laser’s table, you can purchase or make fixturing devices to help hold the piece. LaserBits, for example, sells a device that uses a hinge system to tilt a piece to allow you to laser it with compound angles. You can also make your own. “Most people keep some modeling clay available to fixture awards,” Fruciano says.
    Fruciano offers a few more tips for laser engraving acrylic: “Typically I find that customers use too much power and this can really scorch the acrylic. You also generate a lot more smoke residue because you’re engraving too deeply, so then you have to clean off the smoke residue.” He also says to pay attention to the acrylic itself. “You get what you pay for. You can buy low-cost products but they aren’t going to engrave as well as a more expensive piece. Manufacturers try to have products from both price points and on their higher-end pieces they use a better grade of acrylic and it makes a big difference in the engraving.”
    Fruciano’s other tips have to do with after laser engraving. “There are some special polishes and cleaning rags that are available for acrylic and I don’t think that most people use them. They think it isn’t worth the expense, but using the right type of acrylic polish afterwards is like night and day,” he says. “And the right type of cloth will eliminate scratching. It’s really worth the extra time and expense to put acrylic polish on when you’re done. It brightens up the whole piece.”
    Laser engraving, of course, isn’t the only marking method being used to personalize acrylic awards. Some retailers have great success with their rotary engraving machine. For standard engraving, you can use the same tooling and engraving techniques that you would use on conventional plastic engraving stock. Be aware, though, that this method is much more involved than laser engraving and takes a lot more patience and time.
    Sandblasting can be used to create white, frosted lettering and designs, similar to the look achieved with laser engraving. Other personalization options include hot stamping, screen printing and pad printing.

The look of an acrylic award can change dramatically by simply changing out the base. Choose bases made from gold glitter to smooth white marble to elegant rosewood or walnut. Photo courtesy of Plastic-Plus Awards.		The Marble Series contains 5" freestanding circular awards with the look of marble. Photo courtesy of Gravograh-New Hermes, Duluth, GA.

The Acrylic Market – Today & In The Future
    “I think customers are purchasing more acrylic products because there are more appealing options. I think it’s becoming a larger part of the awards market,” says Margaret Johnson of Johnson Plastics. The market for acrylic products in this industry is definitely dominated by awards, in particular corporate awards, although that certainly doesn’t mean it’s limited to these types of customers.
    “You get large orders for paperweight type items,” Plastic-Plus Awards’ Hicks says, “but I think the strength of the acrylic market is going to be the nicer corporate awards, the ones that are in that $20-$50 range (wholesale).”
    There’s no question that acrylic attracts high-end customers. “Acrylic is still a very popular medium for corporate awards,” says Sletten, “particularly those that don’t balk at spending more money. We’re selling a lot more pieces that cost more than we used to. A lot of acrylics that we sold five years ago were the simple blanks that you put together yourself – you only spent $6 or $7. Now we’re selling a lot of the $15 to $30 price range items,” he says.
    Wald adds that the types of customers who purchase awards varies a great deal and includes both high- and low-end customers. “The customers that buy acrylic products include banks, corporations, schools, the insurance industry, real estate companies, associations, car dealerships and many other end users that find a certain quality and uniqueness about acrylic.”
    And there’s crossover, too. Ilaria says that Tropar’s line of acrylic awards with piano finish bases starts at around $12 up to around $24 (wholesale), which, along with the attractive appeal of the awards, has made them popular among a wide range of customers. “I’ve seen them used for sporting events and for corporate recognition. So there is a wide range in which they can be used,” he says.
    As with every other industry, the economy has had an affect on the strength of the acrylic awards market as well. A market that is centered around high-end corporate accounts is, as we have all seen, one of the first to be affected by a sluggish economy. Hicks says that when the economy went down in 2001, the acrylic market was hard hit and hit instantly, but as the economy has rebounded, so too have acrylic sales. “I don’t believe that they’ve (acrylic customers) gone away, I think that when the economy drops they switch from (acrylic) to plaques, which are typically less expensive,” he says.
    JDS’ Scott Sletten agrees. “The corporate side of the business is relatively strong. It was kind of weak last year with the economy the way it was. A lot people cut back – let’s say if they spent $50 on a corporate award last year, maybe they tried to cut back to $30 or $35 this year,” he says.
    Everyone agrees that, today, the acrylic market is strong and thriving. “The viability of acrylic products is very good. It’s very strong and I think it continues to grow,” says Hicks. “I do believe that when the economy is strong, the perceived value of acrylic is really good and that’s why we do so well with it.”
    Acrylic has a lot of inherent advantages, making it something that will naturally draw attention. Peter Ilaria explains, “A lot of people will look at a piece and not be sure if it’s glass or acrylic because of the jade color and I think that captures the eye of a lot of people – the fact that it’s not glass and it’s not that expensive and it’s not that hard to work with as far as engraving. I think that attracts people, especially if they’re looking for something different from the old awards that they had been giving out.”
    Scott Sletten agrees that acrylic is unique, different and something that people want. “Acrylic becomes a very beautiful finished product when you laser engrave it,” he says. “A lot of these new colors and shapes coming out give a very different look. Acrylic has really found its own market over the past several years and it has become extremely popular.”
    Eric Wald sums it up this way. “One of the great advantages we have had in the past is a great sense for the market and its trends. We maintain a tight rope on our marketing strategies but one thing that’s certain is that acrylic is becoming a standard in many industries including, but not limited to, the awards and recognition industry, so there will always be demand in all areas such as the corporate sector as well as sports awards and any other type of situations that call for the recognition of an outstanding performance.”
    It’s clear that acrylic has a lot to offer and the market for this popular product is not going anywhere but up. If you haven’t considered adding acrylic products to your award line, take some time to look at your options. You and your customers will be glad you did.