Printing large format banners could be a smart direction for a printing company looking to diversify. But they can already sell these products without needing to buy the best printing technology, according to trade house Venture Banners.
Venture Banners has two £350,000 3.2 metre wide EFI Vutek machines that are devoted to trade production, so why, it would argue, should any printer looking to offer a banner printing service need to consult the bank manager about investing in equipment. The Witham, Essex firm will even host a large format print website for trade customers to sell through, as well as providing help on marketing materials.
The company was established by Scott Conway, owner and managing director, five years ago. He was not a printer, he was a marketing director for Lookers Motor Group, the car dealers. He noticed something about the printing market though.
‘There was a gap in the market,’ he said. ‘When I used to buy print there was no consistent pricing from one week to the next. When we set this up, the thought was that large format print was very difficult to buy unless you wanted large volumes of it, and there was no clear pricing. We said: we will do large format print but we will do banners at £10.50 per square metre, which printers can sell for £25, and roller banners starting at £35 that they can sell for £70. But keep pricing consistent so they know exactly where they stand.’
For some time, Venture was still outsourcing the production, but in May 2012 it bought its first printing system and brought the printing in-house. It now has 3500 trade customers – often people that have their own small printing concern but who can add large format print to their service offering through using Venture’s resources. The company has a simple remit: to provide other printers with a viable entry into large format print, allowing them to diversify without incurring the costs involved.
It has four Vuteks in fact – the two 3.2 metre wide machines in Witham and a further two five metre wide Vuteks at a sister company. Most of the work is carried out on the 3.2 metre machines, which Mr Conway describes as ‘the Rolls-Royce of large format printing’. It is possible to spend very much less than this on equipment and enter the large format arena yourself, and many firms have, but there is much to think of.
‘If you had an Epson printer, a 54 inch or 60 inch, you could print your own, but it would take you between 20 and 30 minutes to print a roller banner. My kit is very expensive, but it will print at better quality in 90 seconds. We work in huge volumes, we do hundreds of roller banners, and we print 10,000 square feet of material every month. People can concentrate on more profitable areas of the market and sub this work out to us. It gives them access to the best equipment in the world without any outlay at all.
The EFI Vutek machines at Venture’s square metres per hour
‘We can also do anything in finishing – we’re geared up for volume so we’ve got the fastest hemmer you can buy at 30 linear metres per minute, and we have laser guided eyelet machines. ‘If you went out to spend £100,000 on a printer you’re not actually buying that much in terms of kit. You will still have to wait 20 minutes for the roller banner, and you’ve got no way of finishing it. It’s a big commitment in terms of kit. The economies of scale here are massive.’
Venture Banners is also dedicated purely to its trade customers, so there is no question of a job being put to the bottom of the pile while more lucrative work for a direct client goes through. The price is consistent too – it will not fluctuate according to the busyness of the production facility. ‘We were the first in the market to do this. If you are a reseller it doesn’t help if the prices are changing on a weekly basis,’ said Mr Conway.
Because the company is geared up for high volume, it is not the place to go for one-off specialist jobs. The product range is confined to mainstream formats and materials, although the range of materials – 440 and 500 gsm PVC, 340 gsm mesh, 740 gsm double-sided PVC, Foamex board, Correx plastic board, and self-adhesive vinyl – is still quite extensive.
Venture works to a three to four day turnaround and can work faster for a charge. It has plenty of spare capacity, with each of the 3.2 metre wide Vuteks printing up to 233 square metres per hour, giving it 466 square metres per hour capability in theory. In reality, it produces between 500 and 600 square metres of print per day. The business is based on lots and lots of small orders. Mr Conway said that in October 2013 Venture completed more than 1150 orders, covering 3300 different banners and pop-ups, for about 900 customers.
Added to the large format print production is another dimension to Venture Banners’ service though. Venture Banners Media provides website assistance – design, build, hosting – for a small monthly fee. The sites can be populated with a price calculator and Venture’s own product list, plus any other products that the customer desires. Around 60 customers are using this currently. Another aspect of the service is the provision of materials and image packs to help with marketing and selling large format printing. The more successful its customers’ sales efforts are, the more work Venture Banners can look to put through its printing systems.
‘Our consistency is our key,’ said Mr Conway. ‘The quality that we produce for these prices – someone said to me that you can’t be the cheapest and the best, but we are about as close to that as you can get.’
