Wristbands are made by the millions at Artemax
Wristbands are everywhere.
You strap the colored bands around your wrist at concerts, festivals and sporting events. It’s a product you wear but never think about, except when the adhesive sticks to your arm.
Turns out, the second-largest producer of wristbands in the world is in New Berlin. Who knew?
Bryan Waltersdorf started Artemax Inc. in 1995 from a friend’s house in Milwaukee on North Cambridge Avenue, just off East Brady Street. The company has since grown to 125 employees and sells wristbands across the globe under its subsidiaries: Wristband Resources, Advance ID, Wristband Express, Wristco.com, Paperwristbands.com, Identiplus and JetBands.
Artemax is one of just a handful of companies worldwide whose main business is wristbands. The company’s largest competitor is California-based Precision Dynamics Corp.
On any given day, the New Berlin plant pumps out 5 million to 6 million wristbands in its 80,000-square-foot, temperature-controlled facility. In all,
Artemax estimates it will sell more than 1 billion wristbands this year.
Artemax uses eight press lines running two shifts a day to keep up with demand. The company’s highly automated, proprietary machinery processes 200 feet of material per minute. The main 60-foot-long machine adds colors, applies adhesive, makes die cuts, prints security numbers and attaches holographs.
When Waltersdorf, president of Artemax, started the company, he subcontracted for the wristband production.
Waltersdorf said he realized pretty quickly that he would need to bring production in-house.
“People wanted so many different things that I needed more control about what we could produce and how we would produce it,” he said.
At the New Berlin production center, Artemax makes three types of wristband — Tyvek, plastic and vinyl — configured with different features such as snaps and holographs in an unlimited selection of colors to create hundreds of styles.
The biggest seller
Artemax sells around half a million of its most popular wristband every day. Waltersdorf said they keep 10 million to 15 million on hand to keep pace with demand.
The most popular: a 3/4-inch Tyvek wristband in neon green.
The neon green bands are now in nearly 3,000 retail locations. Artemax signed a deal with Walmart this year to sell packs of the eternally popular bands in stores. Artemax’s print-athome Tyvek wristbands, JetBands, also are on Walmart shelves. The company is also the top seller of wristbands on Amazon.
That takes a lot of Tyvek.
The basic wristband made out of untearable, water-resistant Tyvek is similar to the material used on buildings. The synthetic material is flash spun high-density polyethylene fibers.
Artemax buys Tyvek by the semitruck load — about four or five a month. Stacked in its warehouse are enough 15,000-foot-long rolls of Tyvek to cover more than 200 football fields.
You’ve for sure worn one
Artemax’s wristbands are everywhere around Milwaukee — Summerfest, the Milwaukee County Zoo, Wisconsin State Fair, Discovery World, Milwaukee Public Museum and Milwaukee Art Museum. The Milwaukee Brewers, Admirals and Bucks are customers. The Green Bay Packers are, too.
Artemax focuses on entertainment markets, selling to amusement parks, concert venues and sports teams. It also sells to health care providers.
Six Flags, the U.S. Open, the Super Bowl, the World Series, Anheuser Busch, South by Southwest and Tough Mudder all buy wristbands from Artemax.
Artemax is global, shipping product to customers in more than 60 countries last year. International orders count for about 40 percent of the company’s business.
“We blanket the globe with our product,” said Nate Olson, who works in the company’s sales department. “Where there’s people, there’s wrists, there’s wristbands and there’s a good chance they came from us. Not many people make them.”