Perverse it might be, but this philosophy has accounted for the firm’s rise from start-up to a turnover of just under £1m in three years. His approach is based on the facilities afforded by his two Xerox DocuColor 5252s and his wide-format Xerox 8265: digital print, he says, revolutionises the sales model. It’s an assertion he illustrates with the story of a recent deal, “a car leasing company that was sending out a brochure every six months. They’d print 10,000, but the offers in the brochure would soon be out of date. We persuaded them to send out 500 targeted personalised copies each month, so the offers are all up to date and they’re having more frequent contact with their customers.”
The same little-and-often contact model that works for Everydayprint’s clients and their customers also works for the printer itself, as Walker points out: “We’re building up a dialogue with our customers, just as they are with theirs.”
As a sales model, the little-and-often model has its flaws, chief among which is probably the administration overhead associated with frequent, low-value invoices. But that’s just where Everydayprint’s secret weapon comes in: its own web-to-print front-end, developed “by accident, almost” four years ago, that includes automation of all back-office functionality. In fact, as Walker explains, the entire company has emerged from a process of putting the cart firmly before the horse.
“We began life as Everydayoffice, a web developer, back in 2001,” he explains. “We were working on an online contact management package and, as part of designing it, we put in a web-to-print application for producing mailshots.” Digital printers gave the system a warm reception and Walker decided to market the web-to-print functions as a standalone application. In support of that decision, he set up a working version of the web-to-print package, “purely to prove it worked – but on our first day we took a few hundred pounds’ worth of orders”. When, three months later, the business was still rolling in, Walker decided to stop outsourcing the work, bought himself a Xerox DocuColor 12, and renamed the firm Everydayprint.
Everydayprint’s most recent move sees it going back to its roots as a web developer. Walker has set up a separate arm, Everydayweb, that adds website design and set-up, e-commerce, and even online/email marketing campaigns to the Everyday portfolio. It gives Walker an even freer hand to re-educate his customers about what they really need.
“Take one client, a furniture firm. They produce a 100-page catalogue each year, and every time they do it, it costs them £50,000. So we suggested, put it on the web, and mail small numbers, selectively and in a personalised way, a few times a year.” The result, he says, is that the customer sells more, “and doesn’t spend anywhere near as much on their print. They’re happier, we’re happier.”
For the future, Walker plans a relocation, to allow for growth, and an investment in a litho press, “another backwards-way-round decision,” as he puts it. “Most litho printers are adding digital. We began with digital and are adding litho to handle the bigger runs. We like working backwards,” he adds. “It seems to propel us further forwards.”
EVERYDAYPRINT AT A GLANCE
Established 2003
Located Adlington, Macclesfield
Staff 14
Turnover £1m
Sectors general commercial and promotional work
