The challenge

Traffic cones mysteriously appearing on statues and rocketing sales of Carling. It must be freshers’ season.

Of course, for some there are definite silver linings to the invasion of otherwise peaceful town centres by fancy-dress clad youths. With a significantly expanded town or city population comes the opportunity for money making. And printers with the right kind of location and offering can certainly cash in.

But how do you ensure these new prospective customers know you exist? This was the challenge facing the team at Gloucester-based KM Reprographics at the start of this year when they decided it might be a good idea to bolster the business’s turnover by attracting more off-the-street, copyshop jobs.

The company started life 32 years ago as a branch of a photocopying kit supplier, selling photocopies but then soon branching into wide-format work, chiefly printing building plans for architects. In recent years, however, the company has started to feel the pinch. Architects are increasingly supplying builders with plans digitally as PDFs, and so KM was seeing a slight downward turn in work coming its way.

KM already had a high-street presence, with the business split between the downstairs commercial print shopfront and the upstairs wide-format area. But managing director Iain Morris felt a greater to push was needed to really draw in the high-street hordes.

The method

Morris decided the best way of creating this push was signing up to be part of print shop franchise scheme PrintCafé, launched the end of last year. The GDL-owned scheme had already been rolled out at three other shops in Nottingham, Leicester and Derby, all owned by GDL member John E Wright. (There are now 15 PrintCafé sites in total, all GDL members, with 11 non-GDL members apparently in the pipeline.)

"I looked at it and thought the shop area lent itself to being a PrintCafé without having to do much to it. We’ve always been a walk-in shop downstairs," says Morris.

Also making this a bit of no-brainer was the fact that, as a GDL member, KM Reprographics could become a PrintCafé for free. (Non-members pay £400 a month and a £1,000 sign-up fee, but managing director of GDL Graham Baulch says this sign-up fee is negotiable.)

So Morris received expert advice about how to turn his high-street premises into a more enticing and easy-to-use space without it costing him anything.

Most significantly this involved revamping the shop’s exterior. Yes, Morris could have done this unaided, he concedes, but he says he would probably have struggled to get around to it and to execute such a slick finish.

"GDL’s graphics designers designed the shopfront for us so that was a great help," says Morris. "We’ve got a very big glass frontage in the premises and now the bottom of the glass has got the logo all across. In the window we put a wire system with A2 pockets so we’re displaying posters of the sort of services we offer. That’s been good – the number of people who wander past and stop and read it is great."

"It probably still wouldn’t be done if we were dragging our heels trying to do it," adds Morris. "We needed to tidy up the outside of the shop and the car park needed a sign. It was just silly little things, but you forget to do them because you’re too busy on customer stuff."

In terms of feng shui-ing the inside of the shop, there wasn’t too much to be done. GDL estimates most will spend in the region of £6,000 to £10,000 overhauling their shops to fit with PrintCafé styling, but Morris reports his company spent much less.

"GDL was prepared to give me help organising inside, but I didn’t need that really, partly because we had limited space anyway," he says. "We just changed an area of the shop where there used to be displays for the sake of having displays. Now we’ve put two PCs and a worktop in for people to use to print their work."

He adds: "We’ve moved a couple of the machines so that customers have got a colour printer they can print to directly behind them," he continues. Morris adds that the company also upgraded one of the copyshop area’s two Ricoh 7500s to a 75ppm 7501 to ensure service speedy enough for any last-minute dissertation dramas.  

As pleased as he is with his new look, Morris has been careful to retain KM Reprographics branding alongside PrintCafe’s, however. This ensures that KM’s relationship with existing B2B customers continues business as usual.

"What I didn’t want to do was lose the identity of KM Reprographics," says Morris. "We’re better known as KM Reprographics to our architect clients and if I’d stripped out the name and just put PrintCafé, they’d think we’d gone out of business and started again. So if you look at the signage, KM Reprographics is still prominent and PrintCafé goes either side of it."

The result

Having rebranded in April at the end of the spring term, KM hasn’t quite had a chance to fully test out whether the PrintCafé brand will attract lots of student custom. But there are promising signs.

Morris is thrilled with the amount of advice received from fellow members about how best to court the student pound (or rather penny). He reports that John E Wright has been very forthcoming with advice, and that GDL holds regular workshops for sharing ideas.

"We’re always getting suggestions on what products might work well," reports Morris, citing the examples of mouse mats and of A4 and A5 plastic bags and folders for protecting art students’ work and presentations, which can be cost-effectively personalised by slipping a sheet of bespoke-printed A4 paper in the front.

"The one tip I picked up on very quickly was the passing out of flyers," says Morris. "It’s simple things – as soon as a student comes in we explain to them that they’re getting cracking prices because they’re a student and in return we’d like them to take the price list to distribute round the rest of their classmates and housemates. It’s just an easy, quick way of spreading the word."

He adds: "The other thing John E Wright is very proactive at is using Facebook and Twitter with the students. We don’t do that enough yet, but it’s something I’ve started to put in place."

Morris still feels word is starting to spread now though, with student business picking up nicely. But he’s realistic that the student population in Gloucester is nowhere near as large as elsewhere.  

A nice surprise, then, has been how much general off-the-street trade the new branding has generated. "What we found over the summer was that a lot of customers, the one-man bands, were coming in, attracted by the branding," reports Morris. "I think it’s a really good name because it explains exactly what it is: you walk in with your memory stick and print it. We’ve had lots of people coming in whose first language isn’t English who have obviously understood what we’re about."

The overall result, then, has been keeping KM’s turnover of £200,000 on a nice even keel in slightly tough times. "I think it’s mitigated the loss of some business for now, and we’re hoping now the students are back we’ll grow a bit," says Morris.

With freshers’ season soon to give way to deadline season, KM is hoping that the make-over will soon start really coming into its own. As students race frantically to get work printed, clear branding could after all be just the thing to cut through the Red Bull-fuelled frenzy.

KM REPROGRAPHICS

VITAL STATISTICS

Location Gloucester

Established 32 years ago, just months after KM Business Equipment was established. The team realised the printing offshoot of this photocopying kit supplier business was turning over enough to be a business in its own right

Products A range of commercial and wide-format print products with building and engineering plans historically a staple job

Kit Mono Ricoh NP 7500, Ricoh NP 7501 SP, Ricoh NP C6000, HP 6000 plotter, HP 6100, Kip 5000 mono plan printer, a large industrial Vivid laminator and smaller Peak PP450 laminator for A2 and A4 work

Inspection focus

Becoming a PrintCafé franchisee

DO IT YOURSELF

Following suit

Becoming a high-street franchisee obviously isn’t going to work for everybody. Morris feels that having a large student population on your doorstep is a key consideration. "We’re really on the cusp of that. We haven’t really got a huge university population here," says Morris, explaining that, though he certainly feels the scheme would be worth the sign-up fee if Gloucester was a bigger university town, this means he might have thought twice about joining had this not come free with GDL membership.

Potential pitfalls

Inhabiting such a different location to the likes John E Wright, in Nottingham, Morris says he has been sure to approach the venture in a different way. "I don’t want to go about this in quite the way John E Wright has because their Nottinghamshire premises is huge. Nottingham’s got something like 25,000 students so if I was there I’d be looking at the student population as my prime customer and the general public as the rest. It’s totally the other way around here in Gloucester," says Morris, reporting that this informs the way he applies PrintCafé branding and advice to his business.

Top tips

Consider retaining your original branding. Otherwise there’s a risk of confusing existing customers.

Take advantage of the chance to smarten up. "You’re promoting a shop rather than an industrial unit, so it’s got to be the same experience of walking into M&S," says Morris.

Ensure the sales experience is similarly sharp. "Your sales staff  have got to be pleasant, there’s no point having anyone who’s grumpy," says Morris.  

Morris’ top tip

"Get known. You’ve got to get it publicised and out there."

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