Kalie Sutton is Marketing Services Manager at Lakeview Farms, LLC, a manufacturer of fresh and convenient dips, desserts, and specialty products with brand names like Señor Rico, Winky, Luisa’s, Rojo’s and Smilin’ Bob’s.
In this role, Kalie manages a team that handles product labeling and artwork across more than 1,000 product SKUs. In May 2021 alone, they worked on 134 branded and 86 private-label SKUs. “We’re continually rolling out new items,” says Kalie, “and also trying to clean up SKUs that aren’t profitable or whose volumes don’t justify production and shipping.”
Once managed using Excel spreadsheets and paper files stored in cabinets, Lakeview Farms’ Artwork Management was turbo-charged when the company began using Loftware’s Smartflow automated packaging artwork solution.
Operating in a dynamic industry where the rules and requirements are constantly changing, food companies need robust technology solutions that help them improve time to market for product releases, sustain compliance, improve traceability, and reduce costs. Getting bogged down by time-consuming processes, spreadsheets, and paper files isn’t an option for organizations like Lakeview Farms, which want to maintain a competitive edge.
The company is constantly working to develop new products that appeal to the “foodie” in everyone, with on-trend and timely innovation across its portfolio of brands and product lines.
This innovation pulses through the company’s headquarters in Delphos, Ohio, which manages all research and development (R&D), purchasing, sales, marketing, and other activities for all plant locations.
Lakeview Farms combines creative product development, innovative packaging, quality assurance protocols, and modern production facilities. Here’s how that worked before Smartflow: one marketing services department associate gathered all of the information about a new product — including the artwork, pallet patterns, and other details — and handed it off to the project coordinator. Then, an email would be sent to R&D requesting the Nutritional Information (NI) and an Excel form completed for a new item or the artwork change.
After filling out an artwork project data form in Excel and generating an annotated PDF in Adobe, the PDF would be emailed to the label printer and yet another spreadsheet used to track when the materials were sent to the printer — just in case it was needed for follow-up. “If the artwork didn’t show up within 3–4 days, we would have to send them a follow-up email,” Kalie says.
