The London-based digital printing company, which is still finishing off the last digital annual reports for LOCOG, is one of a handful of companies that have so far been accredited for supplying print to the Olympics.
The new scheme provides eligible suppliers with a free licence to allow them to promote their work for future tenders and contracts, which was previously unauthorized. It was launched in January following a deal between the government, British Olympic Association and International Olympic Committee, as official London 2012 sponsors had exclusive rights until December of last year.
Rapidity is confident that its Olympic role will boost future revenue for the company.
"The thing with the Olympics is that it is provable, and whenever a tender comes up we can use it as a case study and a brilliant reference. For general commercial work it’s probably not so useful, but for running tenders and government tenders as well, it should work out pretty well," said Rapidity managing director Paul Manning.
Rapidity became involved as a result of LOCOG building a small network of local printers to produce operational print, having not had a printing sponsor affiliation to rely on. "They chose a few companies around them and concentrated on giving them the service rather than spread it thin and not get a good service," said Manning.
Rapidity won the contract with LOCOG last year and supplied operational daily reports, maps and posters for the organisers, as well as newspapers and certificates for athletes.
"The workload was ridiculous, but it gave us a good boost over what is traditionally a quiet period. Across the trade August in particular is not a good time so there was no disruption to our normal clients. If it was on in October or November we could have had a problem," said Manning.
Rapidity has said that the Olympics has given it a little bit of faith in sticking in London, as more and more printers relocating outside London due to increasing rent rates.
"As every company gets squeezed out, for those of us that can stick it out there’s always work there," said Manning.
"All we need is an Olympics every year."
The SME printer was one of the first to branch into digital printing in the early 1990s, and expanded its services to design and cross-media marketing last year.
Rapidity products supplied to LOCOG during the Games:
- Athlete’s Certificates produced through a web-to-print system and delivered overnight to the Olympic Village
- The Athlete Village newspaper produced for every subsequent day of the competition
- Operational print and reports for the Torch Relay including route books and Torch Bearer stickers
- General short run reports and publications
- Confidential media guides produced entirely in digital colour, detailing each part of the Opening and Closing Ceremony’s
- Operational route and bus maps
- Marketing posters distributed to every army base in and around the South East of England
