Established as a party decoration company, Party Decor now also manufactures its own decorations, including balloons, bunting, invitations, and stationery.

The business has a major contract with the online retail giant that sees it manufacture products carrying the Amazon logo. The company also sells its own branded products to its customers via Amazon, as well as via its own website.

As part of a total £400,000 investment programme, around four weeks ago the business took delivery of a Duplo DBM-150 bookletmaker. Replacing an aging hand-fed device, the new machine was supplied by Duplo strategic dealer AfterPrint.

Party Decor owner Jan Jaskowiec told Printweek: “This is a big upgrade for us. It has streamlined the process massively because it counts the pages and puts them together with a cover on its own.

“Previously we were printing, then counting pages, then putting them together with the cover, and finally hand running them through the machine. We now just print a bunch and put them into one stacker, then print a bunch of covers and put those in the other stacker, switch [the machine] on and it’s done. The manpower savings are insane.”

Party Decor also operates digital printers from Konica Minolta and Canon and a raft of finishing kit from manufacturers including Heidelberg and Grafcut.

One of the company’s two Konica Minolta machines, an AccurioPress C4070, was installed three months ago.

“Our Canon is a black and white digital printer so the older Konica Minolta we had was the only colour digital printer that we had,” said Jaskowiec.

“The second Konica Minolta is a newer model, so it works faster, and it also gave us extra security in that if one machine is down, we can still produce what we need to do. There is no downtime because we can just shift production from one machine to the other and continue to go.”

The 10-staff company has recently undergone significant expansion which has included building a second factory for its new business arm that manufactures cardboard products including shipping boxes and decorative boxes.

Specialist kit for the new cardboard venture, including production and cutting machinery, a forklift truck, and a baler, was purchased as part of the company’s £400,000 investment round. Later this year it will install a corrugated packaging printer, with more details to be revealed in due course.

“We are already making about £17,000 a week on the cardboard production alone,” Jaskowiec added.

The business is now based out of five buildings, including a new distribution centre in Doncaster that opened three weeks ago, and its two-storey 1,115sqm headquarters in Stockton-on-Tees, which comprises a 743sqm production space and a 372sqm sales office.

The company has experienced year-on-year growth; in 2019 it recorded sales of £1m, in 2020 this grew to £2m, and it is on target to make £2.5m this year.