The London-headquartered firm has won a competitive tender that will see it deliver BT’s iconic Phone Book to some 11m households across the country, understood to be more than half of the total distribution of the book.
The two-year deal starts this week when the Distribution Team will begin deliveries in the High Peak region.
Steve Arnold, operational consultant at the Color Company, has spearheaded the move. He joined the business a year ago after working for many years in the directories business, most recently as director of operations at Thomson Directories.
Arnold said the BT contract represented a major vote of confidence in the new offering: “This is a big win for us and a great start for the business. We’ve got to be able to go anywhere in the country and deliver door-to-door. This contract allowed us to create something of this scale.”
BT Phone Book: delivered to majority of UK households
The new service represents a six-figure investment for the Color Company. It has set up a Heathrow hub and regional offices in the north and midlands.
Some 20 new jobs will be created as a result to handle planning and organisation of complex delivery requirements involving mapping, delivery instructions and lists, and quality control checks.
The Distribution Team will work with a network of sub-contractors for each area.
“The infrastructure we’re putting in place will mean we have a database of 60,000-70,000 people able to deliver anything locally,” Arnold added.
“We’ll be able to offer this as a value-added service to our existing customers, and we know a number are already interested in it. In addition there are other big tenders out there for companies such as supermarkets that use targeted door drops.
“It’s good news for our industry because it’s all printed matter.”
Arnold said that part of the Distribution Team’s setup involves using a call centre to carry out random back checks on deliveries. Sub-contractors are not paid until there has been a successful audit.
“Quality and delivery of the final product is imperative,” he stated.
Although the size and pagination of the BT Phone Book has reduced enormously over the past decade, it remains a major brand-building asset for the company.
The new edition features a large promo for its BT Sport service on the cover, and includes a new listing for pubs that have BT Sport. It lays claim to being the only three-in-one directory as it contains business and residential listings and a classified ads section.
Spanish firm Einsa Print has printed it since 2006, when BT controversially moved the contract out of the UK, causing a major upheaval at its then-printer Goodhead Group.
The Color Company had sales of £6.9m in 2012. It has nine locations in London, and expanded into the USA last year when it bought the assets of Service Point's former business in the US.
