Kall Kwik UK managing director Nigel Toplis hailed the firm’s lasting success at the event, held at the Blue Boar Restaurant in Westminster last Thursday (1 November).
“We are very responsive, very good with customers and very focused on our marketing, which is B2B – we don’t get distracted,” he said.
“In the last few years we have had a very ‘family’ attitude, we are all working together and there is great pride in the business. I think that being around for 40 years also helps as we have that credibility.”
Established in the UK in 1978 by Moshe Gerstenharber, Kall Kwik identified a gap in the market for print-on-demand, offering its customers quantities from one upwards with quick delivery.
The company said its ability to produce marketing and communication literature in smaller quantities, to time critical deadlines and at realistic prices on a local level, opened up the print market to everyone for the first time.
As technology progressed, the business was one of the first to adopt and promote colour printing and digital production, and it was also an early adopter of large-format technology.
Kall Kwik currently has 43 branches and has been headed up since late 2011 by Toplis, its former boss who returned to acquire the brand after the fall of venture capitalist owner On Demand Communications (ODC).
Though the number of branches has barely changed in the seven years since Toplis returned to the helm, at its peak the business, along with fellow ODC-owned Prontaprint, ran a combined total of around 550 outlets in the UK.
Today’s Kall Kwik centres serve clients including major multinational companies, educational establishments, hotel chains, car dealerships, SMEs and start-ups.
“It is fantastic that our brand has kept going for 40 years and continues to be strong and we’ve been going through a process, certainly over the last two to three years and going forwards, of bringing new franchisees in,” said Toplis.
“The reason that people think print may or may not work in a franchise marketplace today is not because of franchising, it’s because the masses have a view that printing is old and staid – it’s not, our franchisees are doing fantastically well.”
