Lindsey Pearson, Whitmar Publications’ managing director, commented, ‘I’d like to thank Michael for his hard work and dedication on Digital Printer over these years. He has been responsible for taking the title to new levels, and I’m sure all our readers and partners would wish him well for the next stage in his career.

‘At the same time, I am delighted to welcome Paul to the business. He is a highly experienced publishing and editorial professional, who has successfully run his own media agency for more than a decade. I know that Paul will be a huge asset to the magazine, applying his skills and personality to represent Digital Printer and keep it at the forefront of the industry.’

Mr Sander has more than 20 years of experience in the publishing industry and since 2009 was the proprietor of Panda Media, managing a wealth of content, production and design across a range of B2B publications.

‘I look forward to taking over from where Michael has positioned the magazine, and will continue to deliver the high-quality editorial our readers have become accustomed to. Of course, with all new tenures there will be an element of cross-over, but also a fresh set of eyes and ideas. Getting out and meeting many of you is high on my agenda,’ commented Mr Sander.

You can contact Paul Sander regarding digital printing industry news, Digital Printer magazine, or the Digital Printer Awards at Paul.S@whitmar.co.uk.

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Held for the second year at the InterContinental on London’s Park Lane, the event was hosted by TV actor and presenter Alexis Conran, with opening remarks from Digital Printer editor Michael Walker, and was a welcome get-together for the industry to meet, network and celebrate success in challenging times.

Digital Printer sales director Kelly Morris commented, ‘This was our most successful awards event to date, even better than last year’s and shows a renewed appetite for in-person meetings and events after the restrictions of the last few years. We are very grateful to all our sponsors for helping us stage this fantastic day and look forward to even greater things next year’.

Print4UK’s winning entry was the Sammy Satsuma series of personalised recipe books for children that are designed to encourage healthy eating habits. The child’s name and other attributes are incorporated into a personalised book, ordered online and composed using Infigo software, before being printed on an HP Indigo sheet-fed press.

Full details of all the winners will be presented online shortly; the full set of nominees was published in the September/October issue of Digital Printer, which is available to view online here.

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The only comprehensive awards in the digital printing sector, the Digital Printer Awards are your chance to confirm your status as a leader in this exciting and innovative industry. There are 14 categories to enter, one of which is new for 2022, as well as an overall Supreme Award.

The winners will be recognised during a lunchtime celebration at the InterContinental Park Lane Hotel in London on 23 November, 2022. The event and the awards get bigger and better every year, so don’t miss your chance to celebrate in style and put your very best work up against the rest of the industry.

The awards are free to enter, and the full list of categories is:

• Adding value
• Books
• Closing the skills gap – NEW FOR 2022
• Creative use of substrates
• Designed for digital print and finishing
• Digitally printed labels and packaging
• Digitally printed textiles
• Finishing and embellishment
• Innovation
• Marketing collateral
• Sustainability
• Transactional print and variable data campaigns
• Web-to-print
• Wide and super wide-format

The deadline for sending in entries is 2 September, 2022, so showcase your creativity in concept and design, as well as quality, innovation and impact by entering today.

For more information and to download an entry form please visit the website, or if you have any questions contact kathryn.r@whitmar.co.uk. 

The post Deadline extended for Digital Printer Awards 2022 appeared first on Digital Printer.

Entitled The Future of the Connected Print Shop, the one-hour webinar is free to join and begins at 11:00 BST on Wednesday 27 April 2022. It will be hosted by Digital Printer editor Michael Walker and will include presentations from sponsor Zaikio’s Partner Success director Karl Ciz and Keith McMurtrie, managing director of MIS developer Tharstern, which will explain how Zaikio Procurement software can link paper suppliers such as Premier, and other consumables suppliers of products ranging from plates and chemistry to inks and laminating films, with the Tharstern MIS to enable live pricing and availability information for estimating and ordering.

These will be followed by a wide-ranging discussion of the broader issues raised in digitalisation of the businesses of print service providers, with outlines of further plans from the presenters and the opportunity for attendees to ask their own questions directly. The webinar will examine trends in software integration and automation as well as provide valuable insight into the way in which software and communications technology will form the basis for the next step in the evolution of connected companies in both digital and analogue print

Registration for the webinar is free and is open now.

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It’s widely accepted that selling on price alone quickly becomes a destructive race to the bottom. Although most printers attempt to bring quality and service into the equation, their claims about those parameters aren’t really verifiable before the order is placed, while the price is, so that usually clinches the deal – especially online – even if the subsequent experience for the customer is a disappointment. With some exceptions, this applies equally to digital print as it does to offset. It’s no surprise then that competitor pricing remains a persistent concern in the BPIF’s quarterly Printing Outlook reports (see page 4 for the latest).

So what to do about it?

Digital Printer and Ricoh UK convened a panel of UK printers to share experiences and discuss ways that printers can change their behaviour to become a value-based industry rather than a commodity-based one. With a brief to demonstrate the value and strength of print by better educating customers and increasing the range of applications that are supported, the aim of the day was to agree a statement that can act as a touchstone to guide all printers’ business development.

The starting point for the conversation was to assess the extent to which the panel felt these pressures and how they avoided or resisted them. Company size clearly gives some protection, as attested by Alan Rigglesford of Kingswood iOptus, which was bought out of administration by Paragon in May. Aron Priest, co-founder of Solopress, which was bought by German e-commerce group Onlineprinters in April 2017, agreed, saying, ‘Being part of a group gives you time to take decisions on capex in a more structured way,’ though he also admitted that prior to the acquisition Solopress had been able to respond faster to changes in the e-commerce environment.

Paul Manning of digital production house Rapidity (and a Solopress customer for some work) said, ‘We trade on quick turnaround and location and haven’t seen productisation; the litho act coming together [in terms of faster makeready and UV drying] has impacted us more.’ Not only did he feel immune from the wider trend, in some ways it had helped Rapidity’s business: ‘The perceived value in value-added work has gone up , commoditisation has done us a favour.’

Nick Murray of family owned business Wellington Press averred that the only value in litho work is now in two-colour and for everything else, ‘Finishing is now the battle; it doesn’t matter what’s inside, it’s the first impression that counts – bad finishing kills anything.’

This was enthusiastically agreed by Maz Keogh of Clifton Print Finishers, who being further down the chain from the print customer argued, ‘We need more printers to “back sell” so we can show what we can do. People love to see the examples.’

The panel agreed that service is key when things go wrong. Mr Priest commented, ‘If you give that service, you’ve got the customer for life’, and explained that online reviews are crucial and not just an online complaints magnet: ‘We do get five-star reviews, people realise that it matters,’ he said. The approaches to handling complaints vary widely – Solopress will only review a job over a certain value, otherwise it’s just reprinted without challenge; Mr Murray prefers to visit the customer in person and suggested that asking if the client had seen the job is an effective way of dealing with frivolous complaints.

(L-R) Adrian Stark, Ricoh UK, Paul Manning of Rapidity, Solopress’s Aron Priest and Alan Rigglesford, Kingswood iOptus

Wider still and wider

Expanding the range of products or applications is another strategy to keep ahead of the crowd, though one obvious way to do it is to keep an eye on what your competitors are offering. ‘Keep your ear to the ground. If they’re selling roller banners, why not you too?’, said Mr Priest, suggesting that partnerships are a good way to test a new market before making an investment in new equipment.

Mr Murray added that there was job satisfaction to be had for the printer too: ‘We enjoy taking new stuff on, it’s fun to do,’ he said, but he also had a cautionary tale involving inserting video screens into flyers printed for a major automotive brand. ‘Someone folded one, not realising the screen was in there and binned it. It caught fire! We’d sent hundreds of them to the Far East but it turned out that it was down to mistreatment.’

Other avenues of opportunity can open because of wider public trends. In response to the anti-plastics backlash, Clifton had just installed equipment to produce paper straws which can be personalised and was seeking a partner to move into production of folded cartons as well. For Mr Rigglesford, expansion into new areas meant that ‘Paragon will acquire a company’ rather than a change of practice at Kingswood.

Turning to the question of letting customers know about the printer’s capabilities, it seems that the personal touch is still preferred where possible. Because of the nature of her company’s relationship to the end customer, Ms Keogh said that Clifton can’t send samples – a problem shared by Mr Murray who observed that a lot of expensive pitch work also couldn’t be shared – but that ‘people do love to look around – they think you just press a button’. She also reported that Clifton had won work via an Instagram post of a job.

Attitudes to the value of social media varied considerably around the table, with Mr Priest saying Solopress works on its SEO rankings and analytics continuously and uses as many platforms ‘as can be done’, plus carefully timed e-mail shots; Mr Rigglesford reported that regularly putting case studies on LinkedIn and Twitter had in one case led to winning a £10,000-a-year client, though the deal was closed in person via sales follow-up. Mr Murray by comparison didn’t use social media at all and advocated ‘getting in front of the customer’ with samples to build trust. Mr Manning agreed that testimonials are effective but had found that production of samples for sales use just got held up in the factory in favour of paid work, adding, ‘Customers don’t care if we actually print their work’.

Whichever channels are used to win clients, to take orders or deal with complaints, it is clear that building and maintaining trust at each step is key to winning and retaining business; from this trust comes the perception of value that makes a print service provider stand out from the rest. To encapsulate this idea in a short memorable form the panel agreed that ‘when considering any new job, customer or investment, printers should ask themselves ‘where is the value – for me, for my client, for their customer?’

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