Founded by Yvonne Gorman in 2011, the Derby-based firm is now five strong with the recruitment of Fran Ellis, Emma Hough and Stacey Barradell in July.
Working alongside Gorman and two-year employee Kate Aldridge, Ellis will handle business support and accounting, Hough is in charge of dispatch and Barradell oversees artwork. Gorman said her team is known affectionately by clients and local businesses as the “print angels”.
“Our office is very vibrant, colourful and energetic so whoever joins us as we grow has to have a personality compatible with that,” said Gorman. “These three ladies are bringing ideas and creativity to the table and are ideal for creating a great atmosphere.
“It allows a lot of the tasks that myself of Kate were handling to be distributed across a wider team, as well as bringing in-house some work that we previously outsourced.
“Now I can focus on strategy and how to push the business forward – we do everything from the humble business card up, but I am especially passionate about exhibitions and working with an inexperienced SME market. We can provide customers with our own experience and knowledge in order to squeeze an exhibition space for all it is worth.”
The trio’s respective backgrounds in the creative industries, including Hough’s degree from the University of Arts, London, were key to their winning the jobs, according to Gorman, who originally trained as a graphic designer herself.
She founded Essential Print Services on the basis of providing “outstanding quality and amazing customer service” to the market. She has been active in the business community with appearances on ITV Central News and as a Small Business Saturday UK champion.
Essential Print Services will now focus on growing its large-format business, making the most of the increased capacity of a larger workforce to grow to appoint where it is able to reinvest in the next steps.
Key to continued growth will include growing the office size by attaining more space on the same site, as well as attracting even more staff. According to Gorman, work is increasing at such a rate that artwork specialist Barradell could shortly be managing a junior designer.
