Ticketmedia is a printer with a difference. While some companies are increasingly offering print at cost and cross selling added-value services, this Hove-based company has gone one step further, offering clients rebates on the cost of print.
The company is a printer at heart, but could also be classified as an advertising agency. If you've used public transport over the past five years, you would have carried in your hand an advert supplied by Ticketmedia. It prints rail, bus and tube tickets, as well as EPOS till receipts. Its business model, and ability to offer a rebate on the cost of print, is centered on selling advertising on the back of the tickets. 

The business is run by Jeremy Burbidge, a former engineer with two obsessions: time and engineering. The two are interlinked and his engineering skills enable the business to realise his passion for speed.

However, it is not simply good timekeeping that forms the basis of his obsession with the clock, time forms the basis of how the company is run from top to bottom, most of all through the productivity of the machines of which Burbidge is obviously proud.

He spends his weekends in the on-site workshop tinkering with the machines in order to get the best out of them. He has also teamed up with an OEM to design a new slitting machine, and is helping E-dale develop the productivity of its presses.

The results speak for themselves. Ticketmedia is currently running 200m a minute on its flexo presses. "I look at printing presses from an engineering point of view," says Burbidge. With that ethos the company is always making its kit faster and saving money by retrofitting parts where possible.

Fulfilling potential
Burbidge began life working for a friend's paper converting business, converting paper for till receipts and bus tickets. "I kept thinking that we could print on the rolls," he says. "I saw how much potential tickets could have as an advertising vehicle. However, the salesman we had just saw it as a commodity."

The company recruited a new salesman and hit upon the model of offering free rolls to a bus company if it was allowed to sell the advertising on the back. Signing a deal with a small bus company, it signed up a local fast food chain and the business was born. Within four months, the salesman had sold a national campaign with KFC, offering free rolls to bus companies across the UK. The business had no where near the capacity to produce the order - 275m vouchers had to be designed and printed in six weeks - so it invested in new machines and operated 24 hours a day to complete the job.
However, the road ahead was not to be as successful. The advent of media buyers into the advertising market was a "brick wall" for the business. "None of us knew anything about how to deal with agencies," says Burbidge. The company recruited his future wife Suzanna to break the agency market and soon the business moved into train tickets.

The business traded successfully for a number of years, but in the mid-noughties it ran into trouble. One of the directors of the business died and the company collapsed and looked set for liquidation. Burbidge stepped in and acquired the business with a friend. "If it was to be a success, we had to be more automated and efficient," he says.

Two years on and Burbidge's business model is paying dividends. The company counts KFC, the NHS, Easyjet and Odeon among its clients and is thriving in the recession, with turnover growing by 50% to £2.5m over the past year. The company's success is down to its position in a niche market offering a product that works. A campaign it ran for Burger King in Merseyside printed 350,000 ‘buy one, get one free' offers, distributed over a 14-day period. Within 12 weeks, just shy of 7,000 had been redeemed.

Whether the longer term trend towards electronic ticketing will harm profits remains to be seen. The company shrugs off the threat and also supplies receipts for electronic tickets. In addition, Burbidge says the EPOS market is currently 8,000 tonnes per year, compared with just 100 tonnes in the bus ticket market. He is positioning the company to capitalise on that market.

As for digital, he says the company will consider it, although he says the current click charge is too high and, in a market of anonymous consumers, there is little data for personalisation.

The road to where the company is now has not been the smoothest, but it is positioned and prepared for success and growth and will no doubt continue its adaptation of machines and focus on time in order to realise that growth.

Ticketmedia factile
Managing director Jeremy Burbidge
Based Hove
Turnover £2.5m
Markets public transport tickets, EPOS market, car park receipts
Clients include the NHS, KFC, Odeon and Easyjet