Bishops Printers, a commercial print and direct mail business based in Portsmouth, recently made industry headlines by investing over £5million in new equipment including two Muller Martini saddle stitchers. But over the last couple of weeks the company has turned its attention to putting in place a series of Coronavirus measures….
The company’s statement read:
‘Clear and frequent communication with staff and customers is essential right now. We’ve instigated daily senior management meetings and twice daily briefings with commercial staff. To facilitate social distancing, these are run in small groups rather than getting everyone together at one time.
‘We have instigated a ‘COVID-19’ sales & marketing campaign to contact and update our customer base, stressing that it is ‘business as usual’ as far as they are concerned. Our MD is very visible on the factory floor, especially at the change-over of shifts to provide reassurance where needed, and lead from the front.
‘Recognising that many of our customers will now be working from home, we have made produced and emailed out a digital brochure – not something we usually do as we naturally favour demonstrating our print and mailing capability in the flesh. We’re also upping our output on social media as a means of staying in touch.
‘We’re fortunate that our factory and commercial offices are quite spacious, so we have been able to move desks and people to maximise the physical distance between work stations to minimise the rise of infection. We still increased the space available though by asking our estimating team, to work from home, moving quickly with our Technical Team to make laptops and secure access available.
‘Cashflow is critical, so our Finance Team are front and centre of the business at this point. Right now, even businesses with good credit ratings don’t know what the future holds. We began tightening our credit control a couple of weeks ago and using proforma invoicing more widely. Whatever we do, we have to make sure our staff are paid. Their well-being is our top priority in all this.
‘Staff have adopted a ‘war footing’ mentality with everyone rolling up their sleeves and adjusting priorities to drive in immediate business. Everyone is now a sales person. Everything is about the short-term right now. All activity associated with medium to long term strategies are on hold.
‘We’ve changed our customer and product targeting to sectors and businesses most likely to require print during the pandemic. These aren’t necessarily profitable customers for us, and we’re adjusting our pricing to be as supportive as we can afford to be, but ultimately this is about survival, not just for us, but our customers of tomorrow and we’re all in it together.
‘All recruitment has been paused – no surprise there!
‘All non-essential expenditure has been banned. All non-essential contracts/services that can be cancelled, have been, or notice given.’
