Features

Ink makers pledge: you can have it all

The favourite phrase of mums everywhere: ‘you can’t have everything’. Or sometimes: ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it.’ Until recently this was also a favourite of wide-format kit vendors, in...

Q&A: Doug Nelson, managing director, NB Colour Print

Doug has been in print for 32 years, so he must have started in the business at a formative age. And even before that he spent his school holidays working on a Rotaprint. Ink runs in the veins of the...

Q&A: Nick Loaring Printer, The Print Project Shipley

Nick has been in around printing since he first got his hands on a photocopier at the age of 13. He still hasn’t grown out of his fascination, and admits he may just have developed an addiction to the...

Q&A: Emma Moore, client services director, Print Monkey

Emma has spent 18 years in print, including a four-year spell as Nick Dixon’s PA. As well as being a director at Leicestershire print and marketing solutions company Print Monkey she also has two...

Q&A: Tony Bates, managing director, Fast Graphics

Tony has been in the business for 15 years and says his job title is “managing director and chief grump”. He also describes himself as “grumpy”... We are beginning to see a theme here. He’s an...

Q&A: Jon Lancaster, managing director, Falkland Press

Hatfield-based Falkland Press was established 35 years ago, so it’s been around for five years longer than Jon himself. He joined the family-owned printing company eight years ago, a process that...

Printers profit from the time of the signs

Big data is big business. And it plays a big role in modern society. Algorithms that analyse this data run our everyday lives, helping us to make decisions and sometimes making decisions for us.

Business inspection: A fresher look draws in the student body

PrintCaf's student-friendly branding also helped KM Reprographics attract other new business.

Banks battle to tear up knock-off notes

An official-looking serial number, distinctive green hues and an intricately rendered and suitably regal Queen. Even scrutinising this 1990 £5 note far more closely than I would normally, I can't see...

Fair play takes the guess work out of staff advancement

Blue-eyed boy syndrome' - not the condition endured, or rather enjoyed, by Bake Off heart-throb Paul Hollywood. Rather this is a term all print bosses should consider carefully when it comes to...

Light heavyweights carve out a niche in finishing depts

It is arguably the second-most famous scene in Goldfinger. James Bond is strapped to something not dissimilar to a present-day graphics cutting table, albeit one made of gold. Auric Goldfinger gives...

First steps to help expand your finishing capabilities

To outsource or not to outsource? That, when it comes to print finishing, is very much the question. The affordability of initial capital investment is obviously the first consideration which needs to...

Business inspection: Alternative strategies for sales success

A sales team might seem like an essential part of any business, but that's not always true

Clearer contracts will oil the wheels for trade suppliers

Print outsourcing is a bit like Strictly Come Dancing - no one will admit to being partial to it, and yet levels of outsourcing, like ratings for Bruce and Tess, are tellingly high.

Interview: 'Whatever it takes to do the job well'

There probably aren't many people that would contemplate starting a business in the print industry at 21, but that's exactly what First 4 Print Finishing managing director David Nestor did. And, as if...