Rocket Graphics: vital statistics
Location Watford, Hertfordshire
Inspection host David Wicks, business development director
Size £3.2m turnover. 32 staff
Established 1996 as an artworking and design company
Products Flooring, structure wraps, portable displays and fabric signage
Kit HP Scitex L1500, Vutek QS 3200, Mimaki JV3 250, two Vutek PV 600/200s, Mimaki JV5, HP 5000/5500, Graphtec Cutting Pro FC7000-160, Mutoh FCR1700, Zünd G3
Key dates 2006: Exhibition graphics design house Rocket Graphics merged with small printer Positive Visual Communications. 2007: The two companies moved into a single unit to bring design and production under one roof. 2012: Rocket took on additional factory unit, doubling floor space
Inspection focus Recruiting expert help to formulate and implement a growth strategy
The challenge…
Even before deciding to ring the changes, Hertfordshire-based Rocket Graphics could hardly be called an ailing business. The wide-format printer was established originally as an exhibition graphics design company in 1996, but branched into printing with a merger with Positive Visual Communications in 2006. In the four years prior to 2012, it had posted turnovers in the region of £2.5m-£2.8m and had a stable of loyal exhibition, signage and structure wrap clients.
To hear that the management team, consisting of founding director Tim Porter and director Oliver Bridgeman, were feeling slightly frustrated with the way things were going, might, then, seem strange.
And yet Porter and Bridgeman were aware of the importance for any business of continual evolution, and where appropriate, growth. And, an ambitious pair, they were hungry to break through that seemingly impenetrable £3m-turnover barrier.
But they were unsure of exactly how to go about this. Knowing that investing too much too fast can be the undoing of a business, the duo were wary of disrupting what was undeniably a steady, sustainable business.
The method…
The conclusion the pair came to when scratching their heads about how best to drive the business forward, was: why struggle alone into unknown territory when you can ask an expert? More specifically, they decided, in May last year, to get the advice of former Service Graphics financial director David Wicks.
After nine years with Service Graphics, Wicks had left in February and was looking for a new challenge. "When I left, I wanted to get back into working with SME businesses and to move away from the larger entities that I had been more recently involved with," says Wicks, reporting that to start with he was also working with another SME but has since dedicated himself solely to Rocket.
"My background is typically entrepreneurial SMEs, looking at how to grow them and how to finance and support that growth. I am an accountant, I am an experienced finance director and I am also someone who has a background in developing businesses and planning for growth," he adds.
Wicks is keen to stress that his relationship with Rocket is not really as a consultant, although he doesn’t have an equity stake. Loosely titled as business development director, he is rather a much more embedded and permanent fixture within the team. "I don’t classify myself as a consultant – I’m very hands on," he says. "I don’t come in and make directives and statements."
So what exactly, then, did this "hands-on" assistance entail? First on Wicks’ hit-list was to rejig the sales team to enable and inspire them to go after new business.
"Rocket is not an untypical SME in that they have a core of good clients, which is often how a business like this starts out," says Wicks. "I think it is fair to say they didn’t have much in the way of sales targets, it just happened and they weren’t really actively chasing new business."
Wicks’ solution was to implement such targets and free up sales staff for new business generation by transferring account management responsibilities elsewhere. "When I started we had two project managers, and we’ve added two more to give sales a chance to forage for new work," he says. "Then it was a case of giving sales a bit of clear guidance and setting targets."
In bringing in new work, it was key that the company branched into new areas, the most notable being retail. And key to this, was bringing in other new faces. "We needed to recruit people who had experience in those new areas," says Wicks, reporting that the most notable appointments have been Steven Silverton, who now heads up Rocket’s newly created retail division; production manager Gary Egan; project manager Andy Webb; and commercial director Anthony Ryder.
Not that existing clients are overlooked in this quest for growth. Wicks says: "Part of the process of growth is obviously generating more work from your existing client-base; uplifting sales from some of your lower and middle spenders."
Wicks stresses that all of these steps were underpinned by careful planning of what, sensibly, the company should be achieving at what point. "What the business lacked, I felt, was a clear direction and a plan, a set of targets underpinning that plan and having a proper financing platform in place," he says. "The thing I did last May when I joined was sit down and put together three- and five-year plans and a budget for the current year. What we now have is a platform that we can use to understand how the business is performing, and making sure we grow in a controlled fashion," he adds.
The result…
It doesn’t take a genius to work out the upbeat outcome of this story. Happily for Wicks and the Rocket team, they broke through the pesky £3m barrier in the fourth quarter of 2012, achieving a turnover of £3.2m for the year.
"We continued to develop our relationships with our existing client-base, some of whom were going through a good time, as well as winning new business and this saw us push past that £3m barrier," reports Wicks.
This growth can now fuel further expansion and is already doing so. Following such a successful fourth quarter, Rocket had the confidence to invest in a second factory unit over Christmas 2012. Here it installed a raft of refurbished kit, including a 3.2m-wide EFI Vutek QS3200 UV flatbed, two Mimaki JV5 series roll-to-roll printers, and a Zünd G3 digital cutter.
Keen not to get stuck this time in a £3m turnover rut, the company now has its eye firmly on further future growth. The business is on track to achieve £4.2m in sales this year and is targeting £5m next year.
And so Rocket is a great lesson in questioning the wisdom of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Just because a company’s doing quite well already, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be doing better.
DO IT YOURSELF
Following suit
Realising your ambitions for growth takes incredibly detailed planning and having a clear vision of what it is the company intends to grow into, says Wicks. "It’s important the business has clarity about what it wants to be, has a clear plan of how to realise those ambitions and has a management team that has bought into the strategy," he says.
"The quality, strength and capability of the management team is important and it does need someone who can pull together and communicate those plans, manage the commercial and financial implications and set the required targets and actions to deliver on the plan," he adds.
Potential pitfalls
Wicks says bringing the right person onboard to shake up the business, if going down this route, is key. "You’ve got to be careful about the person you’re bringing in. In my case I really care about the business – I enjoy working with the team here, I like the people, I like the ethos, I like the culture," he says. "So I think the marriage is quite good. If you get somebody coming in who doesn’t have that empathetic feel, it can sometimes lead to some wild ambitions that aren’t really achievable or you find yourself over-stretched."
And whether bringing in help to do this or whether going it alone, this is really the main thing to avoid when targeting growth, says Wicks. "You need to be realistic about the targets you’re setting yourself. You need someone who won’t be ‘gung ho’ about it," he says.
Top tips for success
Finding the right person for the job of helping to restructure for growth is a delicate business, with unfortunately no straightforward recipe for sourcing such an individual. Wicks recommends: "Preferably you need to look for people from similar industries and with similar kinds of business styles who understand the typical challenges facing your industry and the typical challenges facing an SME." This person doesn’t necessarily need to come from a finance background, as Wicks does, he adds.
Detailed targets and strategies for achieving these, are your friend. "I am a stickler for cashflow and sales forecasts, supported by strong credit control, cash management and timely P&Ls," says Wicks.
Motivate sales teams to find new business by transferring account management to project managers. Then set clear targets, formulated in conjunction with sales staff. Wicks says: "Since I’ve been here, we have started having sales and marketing meetings, where I’m very open about each sales rep’s particular target, for the month and for the year, how each one’s performing so they can compare. The sales reps enjoy the competition."
Wicks’ top tip
"Be very clear about what it is you are trying to achieve. Having robust forecasts that you spend time properly addressing is quite fundamental. It tells you where you’re going and how you’re going to achieve it and you can identify any pitfalls you may fall into if you don’t do certain things."
