Inkmaker Group rebrands as IM Group

On April 22, World Earth Day, Inkmaker Group changed its name to become IM Group. The official launch, which was in the planning stages for approximately two years, was filmed on location at the Group’s headquarters in Turin, Italy.

Inkmaker was founded in 1987 by Carlo Musso, Luciano Longobardi and Giuliano Cigna, focusing on dispensing systems for the paint, coatings and ink industries. Since then, the group has evolved on many fronts – both internally, in terms of its systems and processes, software, technology and global teams around the world, as well as a spate of recent acquisitions that further broadened the Group’s technology and expertise in colour systems.

Following on from these acquisitions, the decision was taken to rebrand this existing Inkmaker Group into IM Group, to create a distinct identity that can better compete in the marketplace as a total-solutions provider.

Christophe Rizzo, CEO EMEA/Americas, IM Group, said of the rebranding strategy: "The decision to rebrand Inkmaker Group as IM Group stems from the group’s vision, which is to evolve our technology to expand in our fields and adapt the advantages of our products to new markets. Since October 2019, Inkmaker has made large investments on the acquisitions of the businesses of Rexson and Valtech, in the UK; Tecnopails, in Italy; and most recently Swesa, in Germany. The driving strategy behind these acquisitions was to create a reliable, complete supply chain – serving predominantly, but not only, the ink, paint and coatings industries, to sustain our core businesses.”

Rebranding a business

The new logo has been designed with a custom-made font and to convey a distinct ‘human identity’, depicting a technological engineering leader with a ‘human touch’. The face is embellished with a crown, representing the Group’s determination to maintain its leading position in the industries it serves, such as paint, coatings, ink, speciality chemicals, adhesives and more.

"The name "IM”, has a historical meaning for us. The ‘I’ and the ‘M’ are acronyms deriving from the name "Inkmaker,” the original of the group. It meant a lot to us to remember those who, in 1987, founded Inkmaker… Carlo Musso, Luciano Longobardi and – especially for me – my father, Giuliano Cigna. He would have been very proud of this moment,” explained Valentina Cigna, Global Director of HR and President of IM Group.

Gianluca Incerti, Global Commercial Director, IM GROUP, commented: "Our strategy is to create ‘areas of excellence’, dedicating each of our brands to a specific expertise, that can come together – like our logo – to form a strong force. Each brand can still work individually with its existing clients in its own markets and when required share their expertise, offering total solutions, for example on large turn-key plant engineering projects. This guarantees resource optimisation and high flexibility to manage projects of all sizes. This was one of the key reasons for forming the holding brand, IM Group, in the first place.

"With the restructure of our brands, Inkmaker will focus on ink dispensing and software design; Rexson will be predominantly for paint, as well as liquid ink; Vale-Tech will focus on narrow-web and paste-ink dispensing, so UV flexo ink and offset inks; Swesa is mainly for food, pharmaceutical, corrugated packaging, cosmetics and more; Teko will remain in POS Tinting and R&D Training; and Tecnopails for filling solutions. We believe this decision makes it clearer for our clients to differentiate our brands and their purposes. Internally for us, we can focus our R&D attentions on developing that brand’s expertise.”