Many printers claim that the industry is in the blood, but for Optichrome chairman Ted Stephens it may well be true. The company was started by his father in the 1960s, meaning he was helping out long before he left school.

At age 12, his cousin started a business selling high-profile football programmes. Stephens would be given a stack of sought-after brochures from big clashes, such as Tottenham Hotspur’s 1962 European Cup semi-final with Benfica, and sent to sites including south London grounds Craven Cottage and Selhurst Park to flog them to collectors – and the skills he picked up helped him no end when it came to selling print later in life.

"I learned not to be embarrassed," he says. "The only problem was, I never got to see a full game. I would sell before one match, watch a bit of the action, then we would jump in a van and head to another game."

In his early twenties, Stephens became heavily involved with the BPIF, an association that continued for many years, particularly in the area of apprentice recruitment and consultative committees. 

It is no surprise, then, to find him, now in his 60s, still immersed in the industry. The family business has been through many changes over the past 50 years. Starting life as a repro house, it has developed through B1 litho before moving into digital printing 20 years ago.

"Over the years, Optichrome has evolved," he says. "The industry is made of niches, every market has its day, and we are always looking for that next niche because once you find one everyone else chases you and kills it. We are always on the lookout for anything that puts added value into the business."

Optichrome’s latest niche is mailing and personalisation, allied with data management, although the company also continues to provide commercial print to its many litho customers. "One thing we don’t do is chase volume at any price," says Stephens.

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The company has scaled back during the recession, with turnover slightly down on recent years, but Stephens is a firm believer in the old adage that "turnover is vanity, profit is sanity" and he stresses that Optichrome has maintained its profit margins.

"If I am asked what the next investment is, I always say: something better. Not something that keeps the status quo; it has to be something that both improves the offering to customers and productivity."

But you won’t find Stephens boasting about the firm’s new machines; instead, he would rather talk about what the latest investment can do for his customers – something he thinks more printers should do.

"When you are asked what you make, you should say: profit," he says. "This industry is still obsessed with machines; going out and saying, ‘I bought this, I bought that’. They should be selling the benefits of the equipment."

As a man that has seen his fair share of recessions, Stephens is well placed to speak about the current state of the industry, and his views, while incisive, might make for worrying reading. "Usually there is always somebody bucking
the trend," he says. "You could point at a number of companies during recessions and say they aren’t feeling the effects.

What surprises me about this recession is how few have bucked the trend; there don’t seem to be many doing exceptionally well." However, it’s not all doom and gloom. "My definition of print is putting a mark on a substrate," he says.

"If you look at it that way, there is more print now than there has ever been. When you press print on a computer at work you are producing better quality print than was produced in the 1960s. There is still a lot of print about. We have to accept that it has moved on – a lot of people are printers and they don’t even know it."

On the subject of where Optichrome goes next, Stephens seems confident but remains somewhat tight-lipped. "Niches are getting smaller and smaller and harder to find," Stephens says. "We have some ideas".

Whatever those ideas might be it seems that, if history does repeat itself, there is every possibility that the rest of the industry will be following shortly afterwards.

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OPTICHROME
Formed 1963
Chairman Ted Stephens
Turnover £4.5m
Staff around 40
Services mailing and fulfilment, personalised communications, security printing, data management and general commercial litho printing