Written by Sidney Bobb | 05 January 2012

Last year was certainly a memorable year but unfortunately for the graphic arts industry it was not one covered in glory and success. The economic climate has had a major impact on the sector and the cultural change within general business has contributed to a downturn. BAPC Chairman Sidney Bobb explains why and looks forward to what 2012 might bring.

The main thrust over the last year has been on saving money and cutting back on expenditure and this has had an impact on advertising, marketing and sales spend, all of which affects our industry. We have seen businesses close down, firms contracting in size and the impact of the loss of government business which has, in the main, gone to a print management company. This in itself affects large and small firms operating in our sector.

It seems strange that at a time when business is slow, companies abandon their entrepreneurial spirit by simply consolidating and not increasing their efforts to attract new business. There are basically two ways to ensure survival. The easiest is obviously to cut costs but that, if history is anything to go by, is a short term strategy as there comes a point when having reduced expenditure the question is asked “Where do we go from here?”

The other method is to look at attracting new business by increasing advertising, marketing and sales activities. It is, in the short term, more costly but there are long term advantages. There is a famous old saying “speculate to accumulate” and it is certainly true. One only has to look at the financial results of companies who have adopted this strategy.

Banks have been held responsible for the situation we are in and suppliers complain that prospective buyers don’t buy new technology because they lack credit worthiness. Their inability to fund or borrow capital for equipment is simply a result of a lack of business and if they don’t try they won’t get!

Companies say that they regularly send out e-mails to customers and prospects in order to entice them to do business but these organisations should remember what they themselves do when they receive such sales messages. Certainly if they are not in a position to react immediately the e-mail is inevitably dumped. However, when they receive hard copy sales literature it is usually kept for a period of time and is an obvious reminder of services available. What is no doubt needed is a combination of both systems accompanied by personal contact from the sales organisation. The likes of Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media outlets are effective but certainly do not succeed on their own.

Regrettably the industry is paying the price of over capacity and many old established businesses have shut their doors. Recently On Demand Communications went into administration. ODC was the franchisor of both Kall Kwik and Prontaprint, two super brands well known to almost everyone in the country and synonymous with print. Before this occurred, ODC faced troubled times with disputes with franchisees who, in the main complained about the lack of support. Of course if the businesses had been doing a high level of business the royalties they have to pay to the franchisor would have been greater as would have been their own profit.

It is obvious that ODC, as a result of financial restraints could not provide the full level of support needed by franchisees who themselves, at a time when they needed more business, were finding things tough.

However, there does appear to be light at the end of this tunnel as it is understood that Sara Jamieson, former head of ODC has acquired the Prontaprint side of the business and Nigel Toplis, a past MD of ODC has picked up Kall Kwik. These are two talented individuals Sara with her immediate experience of running that business should be able to improve matters. Nigel is well respected not only in the print industry but as a former Chairman of the British Franchise Association has the ability to create success and re-establish the brand as an influential player in the market place.

It is good that as we enter the New Year with some optimism and despite all the doom and gloom there is hope for the graphic arts companies who really want to do business. A focussed strategy, a determination to succeed and real sales activities should bring success moving forwards. Remember, where there is change there is opportunity - and the world is certainly changing.

So don’t wait for business to come. Go out there and bring it in – you can because you know you can!

Let’s hope that 2012 brings peace and prosperity to all those in this wonderful industry.

Sidney Bobb

sidney.bobb@bapc.co.uk

Written by Mark Rowland | 12 December 2011

Mark Rowland, country manager, UK & Ireland, HP Scitex Wide Format Industrial Printing Business provides some illuminating food for thought for the year ahead.

Making a major capital investment takes a good deal of thought in the best of times, but present conditions mean that choices are harder to make, and the danger is that no investment is made even when the evidence suggests that it would be prudent.

If your company has already identified the need for another printer to capture new business by entering a new market or offering more services, there is little reason not to proceed if your financial analysis and projections are favourable.

The challenge becomes what to invest in? Flat-bed or roll-to-roll? UV-curable, solvent, water-based? A super-wide printer that can print multiple rolls simultaneously and super-wide format applications, or a smaller one to take a more modest step?

Your existing customers may be the source of your best intelligence for some of these decisions because they will be closer to the end-use of the application and will be responding to fashion trends, commercial demands and other factors that impact on their businesses. These may include cost reduction, increased turnaround speed requirements, shorter signage life-spans, demands for colourful, printed interior décor for retail outlets and demonstrable signs of environmental initiatives.

Understanding what customers need will inform the definition of what you need; these pressures will not be unique to your customers, so use them as commercial barometers and compasses.

Today’s digital inkjet printers offer quality, reliability, versatility and productivity, so those factors no longer play the deciding role they once did. The more critical questions relate to what applications you see demand for and what your projected print volumes are.

Once you have sound answers to these questions, the selection process can become easier. Deciding whether your market is more in the flexible or rigid substrate sector will determine your next decision. You may find that a hybrid printer – one that can handle both flexible and rigid substrates – is the best choice for you, enabling applications from self-adhesive vehicle graphics to POP/POS displays to be printed on the same machine.

The following can help you to minimise risk when making buying decisions that will determine your success in the coming years, and as such here’s a short questionnaire that can help you to start thinking more objectively about your business’ future:

1. Are you keeping up with industry trends by reading the trade press, visiting exhibitions and following developments online? Services like YouTube and Linked-In provide opportunities to see new equipment and engage in conversations with other print service providers (PSPs) in similar circumstances, share best practice and test ideas.

2. Are you engaging with your customers to see what their strategies are? Do they present opportunities for you? Try writing down the top three business goals of your biggest customer. What does that tell you?

3. Are you talking to the people whom you would like to be your customers? How can you attract them without understanding them and the issues they face?

4. What are your markets like: The market you’re in and the market you’d like to be in?

5. Consider your competencies. What skills do you need to become more competitive, or enter new markets?

6. Are your technologies ones that are part of a growing or declining trend? For example, the demand for solvent-based prints is declining while customers increasingly have a “green” agenda. How can you make the most of this trend?

7. Where are your revenues coming from? Surprisingly, few companies do a thorough analysis of what products and printers are generating the most revenue. Does your analysis tell you anything about needing to replace or acquire supplemental printers? What applications are delivering the best margins?

8. Have you explored web-to-print, or variable data printing services? If you have digital printers, then you are already on the way to offer them. It can add new revenue streams and attract new customers. If you aren’t a digital PSP, looking at digital printers and web-based workflows and print could be an important move for you.

9. Are you talking regularly to your suppliers to learn from them? They may be well placed to offer you a broader picture of the markets, and can tell you what other innovative and successful PSPs are doing.

10. Are you ready now to build your future?

If the answer to the last question is yes, digital wide and super-wide printers have places within the product portfolios of all leading graphic arts suppliers, demonstrating the collective belief in the future of digital as a technology that offers distinct advantages.

Mark Rowland
mark.rowland@hp.com

Written by Seán Brickell | 25 November 2011

If you were at the recent BAPC Conference you would know that 9 out of 10 people are missing out on making a better impression, improving their business prospects and even getting people to find them more attractive because of one simple communication flaw that has been programmed into us, often unwittingly.

The good news is that confidence expert Seán Brickell can show you how easy it is to re-programme this bit so you can communicate more effectively in every aspect of your life for your benefit and the benefit of others.

When we meet someone, certainly for the first time, whether in a professional or personal capacity, what we tend to do is start thinking and then acting as most of us do. The thinking can involve the following thoughts:

•    How does my voice sound?
•    How do I come across – happy, sad, tense, clueless, competent, unintelligent, confident, nervous, angry, disinterested, interested?
•    Are my clothes alright?
•    Do they like me as a person?
•    Is my attitude appealing?
•    What will happen and where will this go or not go? And why?
•    What can I do about it if none of the above is right?
•    Does the Queen have moments like this?
•    Should men cleanse tone and moisturize?

Depending on what your answers are – unless of course you’re the Queen or, as a man, a steadfast metrosexual – you can then act in some of the following ways:

•    Sound unsure of yourself
•    Appear tense, clueless, unintelligent, disinterested and nervous
•    Fidget with and adjust different parts of your clothing
•    Call the Queen
•    As a man, inexplicably apply some face cream

This happens (well, the first three points) all the time because 9 out of 10 people are simply wrapped up in themselves when they communicate. And that comes across unconsciously to the person or people they’re addressing and undermines your communication. The clever and effective 1 out of 10 think the following about the other person:

•    What is THEIR voice conveying?
•    What is THEIR body language saying about them and how THEY feel?
•    How do THEY come across – happy, sad, tense, clueless, competent, unintelligent, confident, nervous, angry, disinterested, interested?
•    Are THEY comfortable with their attire?
•    Do THEY like themselves as a person?
•    Is THEIR attitude appealing to them and others?
•    What do THEY want to happen and where do THEY want this to go? And why?
•    Do I know someone who knows the Queen’s mobile number?
•    Why is that man wearing foundation and too much rouge?

Depending on what your answers are to these questions, you can then adapt your verbal and non-verbal communications to make them feel better about themselves by listening to what they say and how they say it as well as how they act. This will make them feel special and engaged and engaging and make them feel connected to you.

The highly successful man behind X-Factor, Simon Cowell, reputedly said that when he was a boy his father told him that whenever he met someone that he was to imagine they had a big neon sign lit up above their head which read “MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT!” It’s true. Make the other person feel important – but not sycophantically.

Too often, people are wrapped up in themselves for a variety of reasons. This could be to do with the pressures of work, the need to feel like you can mix it socially with the In Crowd, you’re having a bad hair or even no hair day or even the fact that your waistline seems to resemble a weather balloon in a strong breeze. By just focusing on you and how you come across – as 9 out of 10 people tend to personally and even professionally – then you’re more likely to draw the other person’s or people’s attention to your not so well hidden stress as well as that weather balloon midriff you may or may not have.

But if you focus on the other person, you will not only make them feel great, meaning they like you more, but then they are also even less likely to notice that your stomach could read weather conditions at high altitude and actually feel instead that you seem a more contented person – a much more attractive state than that stressed out weather balloon look.

To find out more about gaining confidence for when you really need it, Seán Brickell’s excellent book ‘Don’t Shoot Me I’m Not Well’ is available on Amazon. It is great read and would make the perfect Christmas present for the mouse in your life.
www.seanbrickell.com

Written by Neil Felton | 07 November 2011

Neil Felton joined FESPA in May 2011 as managing director, Exhibitions and Events. Now, some five months into his new role we asked him to share his views on how he thinks FESPA is shaping up for the future.

Think of FESPA and your first thought is probably of the market-leading exhibitions that are staged around Europe and the rest of the world, attracting wide-format print service providers in their thousands to check out the latest innovations in printers, software, inks and substrates.

There’s no doubt that the FESPA brand dominates the calendar of wide-format exhibitions, and most printers in our sector will have visited a FESPA show somewhere on the circuit, which in recent years has taken FESPA to Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin, Geneva, Hamburg and now Barcelona, as well as Bangkok, Delhi, Orlando, Mexico City and Singapore!

But in many ways, the runaway growth and success of FESPA’s exhibitions has eclipsed the true soul of FESPA, which is that of a not-for-profit ‘umbrella’ federation of national trade associations. FESPA - which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2012 - was founded to promote knowledge-sharing and best practice among screen printers in a small cluster of European countries. This at a time before digital printing had even entered into the marketplace.

Over the years, the founding members embraced new associations from other countries, including associate members from outside Europe. Membership now stands at 26 associations in Europe, and 10 associate members from Asia and the Americas. And now FESPA engages with a combined global community of over 200,000 print service providers.

To connect and support that community is the central mission of modern-day FESPA.

And, the success of the exhibitions has been an enabler of another, arguably more praiseworthy mission. FESPA’s principle is one of ‘profit with a purpose’. Surplus revenues from FESPA shows are ‘reinvested’ for the good of FESPA’s global community, rather than being distributed to shareholders.

This was something which intrigued me when I joined FESPA earlier this year. I believe this differentiates FESPA very clearly from any other exhibition organiser in our industry and makes it a very special organisation to work for.

Here’s what this means in practice. Some of this reinvestment occurs directly via FESPA, for example in the form of educational publications such as FESPA Sensations and the Planet Friendly Guide, and through the creation of valuable community platforms such as the FESPA Wide Network.

Some is channelled into developing cross–border market intelligence through initiatives such as the Worldwide Survey, the regular FESPA Economy Survey and the recent Print Evolution Study.

Some of the funds are used to enable FESPA to deliver world-class educational content at our global events at no charge to visitors, as well as staging regional thought-leadership Summits, knowledge-sharing events such as conferences, congresses and seminars or webinars.

Much of FESPA’s reinvestment is managed through the projects committee, which receives applications for financial support or subsidy from FESPA’s member associations, including Prism in the UK. These applications might be – for example - to request support with the development of a new website or other member collateral, to stage a local networking event, round table or technical seminar for members, to engage with students of screen or digital printing at a local university, to translate a piece of training material, or to develop a new service of value to local members. In the last seven years, FESPA has reinvested a staggering three million Euros back into the global community.

So when you pack your bags for a trip to FESPA Digital 2012 in Barcelona, not only are you going to explore the world of positive opportunities that exist for your wide-format business. You’re also part of a vital and interconnected 200,000-strong global FESPA community. And your participation is part of a virtuous circle, the fruits of which could ultimately end up benefitting you.

Neil Felton, managing director

FESPA

www.fespa.com