Tom Stroud visits a print company producing great results – including the magazine that you’re holding right now…
Crossprint in Newport moves around 700 tons of material through its factory every year. As Managing Director Tim Sell says, that’s “quite a lot of paper.” Tim joined the company in 2003 and has seen the business adapt and evolve, moving from traditional lithographic printing to a four pronged offering in 2014, summed up in their own words as “design, print, web, mailing – a totally integrated marketing support service.”
The company is owned by the Isle of Wight County Press Group and works with around a thousand clients, with mainland companies making up a further 30% of their business. Crossprint employs 19 people including designers, finishers and press operators. Their factory on Newport Business Park runs for 12 hours a day, producing brochures, magazines, leaflets, books and documents in quantities of thousands or, using high quality digital printing, in more personalised short runs.
“People always want print ‘now’,” Tim explains. “Once they’ve ordered it they expect it in a short turnaround time, so we have to be able to react to that. The factory runs as a slick operation from the studio through to the production office. It’s then manufactured in whatever form, it goes through to the bindery and finishing if it needs it, and then out to the customer. Our policy is always ‘quality, effectively and efficiently.’”
The impact of the digital age has been sizable for Crossprint. Technology has changed their means of production and also the expectations of their customers. The recent recession has sped up the rate of change, meaning that run lengths are shrinking, along with the size of some client’s budgets. However, the diversity of what they can now provide is hugely beneficial to the sales and marketing of any business.
“The customer change has been immense,” says Tim. “The recession tells us that people have less to spend on volumes of print. Technology has allowed them to have fewer copies produced, but now with the benefit of personalisation for targeted sales opportunities. We’ve had to embrace the changes and also become more of a media company. We’re now able to produce large format posters, banners and signage. We’re also driving forward digital printing and marketing support services which has now become quite strong for us through Cross4Media, which runs parallel to our printing business. This division provides creative design services and website development. We also have a variable data mailing side where we can post out magazines and brochures direct from our factory. Essentially, we create and manufacture everything under one roof.”
Adapting to the challenges of the marketplace has allowed Crossprint to continue to succeed. Their “web-to-print” system allows clients to order online 24/7 from anywhere in the world. “They enter their personal portal, see their artwork, place the order and send it straight through to manufacture,” Tim explains.
“In 32 years I don’t think I’ve ever seen the industry change so dramatically. Back in the 60s people were still printing with wooden blocks and now we’re printing with computer technology and everything is a dynamic transferrable digital image. The speed of change has been rapid and very, very costly. When the recession kicked in, that change was accelerated at a faster rate than anyone ever imagined. 10 years ago the UK printing industry employed 386,000 people, the sixth-largest industry in the country. Today I believe there’s around 120,000 people within the industry. And that tells you a lot.”
New technology and digital printing brought efficiencies, a reduction in workload and also some tough decisions. In 2011 Crossprint reduced their factory dayshift from 16 to 12 hours a day and had to let three employees go. A difficult moment for a company that is keen to keep work on the Island.
“We believe that we need to retain employment on the Isle of Wight,” says Tim. “Our people get a decent wage and I’m very passionate about ‘trading the Island pound’ here because it’s worth so much more to us. Other print companies tend to take work in and send it off to the mainland, which isn’t a good thing. We have the total integrated service right here, now.”
Today Tim is firmly focused on the future, with a closely guarded document setting out his vision for the company in 2021.
“Anyone in the industry who says ‘we’ve always been a printer we always will be a printer’ won’t be in business much longer. You have to physically change and go with the flow and react to customer’s needs in an ever changing competitive marketplace. You have to have a vision. If you’re passionate then change becomes natural.”
Back in 2002 Tim had never been to the Isle of Wight before. He was working in London for a company who used Crossprint. A chance conversation led to what Tim describes as “a nine month interview”, culminating in a new job for him and a new approach to business.
“Crossprint was in a state of change at that time,” he says. “The County Press were deciding whether they were going to invest more money into the business, or to sell it on. They asked me to put a proposal together, which took nine months and they accepted it. I saw it as a challenge – I had the backing to do it and my heart was in manufacturing so I knew where to buy the latest equipment.”
The team has won many awards for lithographic printing and is now being nominated for digital work too. In 2012 Tim took the “People In Print” award at the UK Print & Design Awards, where Crossprint was also named “Best Use Of Recycled Papers.” Their environmental ethos has seen them be the first company in the South of England to be accredited by the World Land Trust.
“There is a Crossprint environmental ethos but it happened totally by accident,” Tim reveals. “We invested in more efficient machines and embraced a new environmental commitment into the company. Today the company is completely ecological, with solar panels providing 90% of our power. Everything we do limits the amount of pollution we put out there and we are literally printing from the sun.”
With the company in good shape for the future Tim says “we’re bouncing along at the moment.” He doesn’t see the Isle of Wight market as any more challenging than anywhere else, although he notes that the cost of shipping materials does present an additional overhead.
“Business is business at the end of the day. You’re either good at it or bad at it, and we’re good at it. Like any reputable printing company our challenge is maintaining a sales price. UK printers are killing themselves in a price war for some reason but there has to be a balance between cost, quality, service and value. As an example our technological investment means customers can have one or two documents printed rather than units of 1000 or 10,000 so there’s a big disparity, which we’re now levelling out. We will only go in one direction now and that’s up.”
First published in the October 2014 issue of Island Business magazine.
