Matthew Kingsford, manging director
Investing in a new Epson SureColor printer has allowed Bedfordshire company Silver Bullet to add a quick turnaround large format walk-in service to its existing trade work.
Opening the doors to the outside world for the first time can be a daunting thought, but previously trade-only event and retail graphics specialist Silver Bullet is making a success of it after establishing a new walk-in service point for local businesses at its facility in Sandy, Bedfordshire, last summer. To put the plan in motion, it invested in a 64 inch wide Epson SureColor SC-30600 inkjet printer to join cutting and laminating kit and a Summa contour cutting plotter.
‘It’s always been our ambition to open a chain of print shops and take control of digital print services in-house,’ said managing director Matthew Kingsford. ‘We want the best of both worlds: the ability to produce some fast turnaround, high-quality signage products in-house, while still working with our partners to supply litho and screen print. In addition to servicing major retail clients with European-wide projects, we can now also provide a service to smaller local companies on a walk-in basis.’
The Epson was supplied by reseller Spandex, which also dealt with installation, training and after care and consumables supply. Silver Bullet has been so impressed that it has just taken a second Epson inkjet, this one an aqueous device. Mr Kingsford continued: ‘Spandex strongly recommended the Epson SureColor SC-S30600 for its versatility, reliability, productivity and quality. These criteria are essential to the walk-in concept. We often don’t know what the next job is until the customer comes through the door, so we need a printer we can rely on to produce high-quality work, quickly, on a wide range of media.’
He has also been hugely impressed with the Summa plotter, saying: ‘It has been a godsend. It has allowed us to do lots of weird and wonderful things – bespoke window graphics, and contour cutting. It has saved time and opened up new avenues for us. It’s really an efficient bit of kit for a small amount of money.’
With the walk-in concept potentially challenging high street printers in the area, he believes that Silver Bullet will have an advantage due to its trade contacts, which allow it to take on almost any request that a local business might have. Although Sandy is not a big town, there is a significant local business community, and many of the companies that belong to it require things such as exhibition graphics and promotional items. ‘Even the small companies can spend a lot of money going to an exhibition. We can capitalise on the local business market more than a franchise, which might say: we just do print. We don’t have to say no to a customer because we can provide regular print shop products and a lot more. We’ve provided giant inflatables and rig hire for example. We’ve got a database of different suppliers that we can use.’
The plan is to open further walk-in centres, initially at least in the Bedfordshire area, to really start to build this new element of the business up. Before that though, Silver Bullet has another idea up its sleeve, which is to open a similar service for vehicle livery – a ‘drive-in’ centre, perhaps. It already does a fair degree of this kind of work, so has the skills and equipment, but it feels there is an opportunity to maximise this area.
The opening of the walk-in large format service raised a previously unconsidered issue for the company however: that of marketing. As a trade supplier, it had relied on word of mouth. To engage with this new audience, clearly something extra was going to be needed. It has therefore invested in Google AdWords and SEO, while also producing flyers that have gone out to businesses in the town, and through the local newspaper, all of which has produced a good return.
Word of mouth in the Sandy business community has then helped spread the message further. ‘The walk-in centre has been successful,’ Mr Kingsford continued. ‘It has been a very good exercise and I’m glad we did it – to the point of wanting to open another one. There were no real dramas involved – we were quite lucky in doing things right first time. If there’s one thing I would do differently, it would be to hold an open day to launch it and market that. That would have generated a lot of interest.’ He added that the different mentality required with serving walk-in clients and the versatility of the equipment being deployed was also helping to speed up Silver Bullet’s trade work.
