(L-R) Ian Douglas with two of his wide format team, Adrian Slater and Alex Gardiner
Creative Bee is the wide format arm of Staffordshire printing company Creative Copy n Colour. It made the move into wide format three years ago, and this now accounts for about a quarter of its business.
Ian Douglass has seen the good times and the bad times in print, but few things have got him as enthused as the change he made to his litho printing company three years ago. Creative Copy n Colour in Eccleshall, Staffordshire, was struggling, like many, to get through the recession of recent memory, and it became apparent that something extra was needed. That something extra was a move into digital wide format printing, and Mr Douglass is now able to say that the decision was ‘the best thing we ever did’.
‘I think we did it at the right time as well,’ he told Digital Printer, ‘although it was difficult starting at the height of the recession. It is beginning to move now. We would have gone bust as a litho printer and this kept us going through the bad time.’
The wide format side of the business is called Creative Bee, and accounts for around 25% of the overall business now. The company invested in Mimaki roll to roll devices and an Océ Arizona flatbed that prints up to two metres wide, alongside a Seal laminator and a Kingcut guillotine, and these are the foundations for a service offering that now incorporates large format posters, banners, vehicle livery, and signage, alongside the bread and butter commercial print work of brochures, leaflets and stationery.
Mr Douglass started the business in 1979 with his late wife, and the couple’s two daughters, Anne and Eloise, are among the 19 employees at the firm. Mr Douglass himself began in the print industry as a letterpress operator before learning four-colour litho at former Stoke printing company Rushton & Turner (coincidentally owned by the father of Digital Printer’s sales & development manager Chris Rushton).
Wide format was therefore quite a step into the unknown, and he freely admits to a steep learning curve having to be negotiated, especially in regards to the number and variety of vinyls that can be printed upon.
He continued: ‘It has opened up a lot more doors for us. Instead of just print on paper, it’s a totally new concept. We can now say to a customer: everything you want, we do. From their business cards to the corporate identity on their shop front, we can take ownership of the whole concept of how they show their business. That gives you a loyal customer. When they ask for 1000 leaflets they are not going to say we are £20 too dear.’
Another part of the learning curve is getting used to different invoice values. Whereas an average litho invoice might be £10,000, the average for wide format work might be just £400.
‘The most difficult thing is deciding what price to charge for fitting a sign,’ he said. ‘Every time you go to a job there is something that you’ve not taken into account. The cost of having to get a scissor lift could kill a job. There are lots of ways could lose a job just like that, but we are learning.’
Indeed, the company has learned that there is a good deal of red tape and hidden cost in a move into wide format. Initially, it offered the printing service without installation, but found that it was losing out to a competitor. Employees have therefore had to become qualified to work up ladders and must undergo another qualification for scissor lifts.
‘Just getting another machine like a flatbed is the small part, but you need space to finish that work. Service charges on the machines – the flatbed is £800 a month just for the service contract, and without that you get no help. You’ve got to do a lot of work to pay that on top of the finance, although the quality of the Océ is superb. So there are pitfalls in wide format and people should be aware of that.’
Next on the agenda for Creative Bee is investment in a new cutting table, possibly a Zund, later this year, and also a potential move into garment printing, which it is researching due to customers asking for sports shirts.
Mr Douglass says he is doing things he has never done before and is enjoying it. The company used to get so much trade work that it never needed a salesman, never had to knock on doors. Now, Mr Douglass has joined the local Chamber of Commerce and is putting himself in front of potential new customers. ‘Wide format is a great thing to do,’ he said. ‘It’s different to what we’re all used to and it’s interesting. The more the guys do it, the better they get.’
