The two businesses completed the deal on 1 June to form a new offering that has combined sales of £300,000 and four staff plus a freelance designer.
Creative Company director Kevan Towning struck up a relationship with Printmarshall director Bill Marshall last December when he outsourced some calendar work to the commercial printer. Towning revealed in January that he was looking for someone to purchase the business following his impending retirement and approached Marshall with the offer.
“He [Towning] asked if I would be interested in purchasing his business, which I hadn’t been looking at but I went over to look at the premises,” said Marshall.
“They were really nice and the more I looked at it and the fact he wanted to retire and I could make it work, we realised we could do a deal because it would work out for both of us. From there it was quite quick.”
Printmarshall, which mainly serves the local B2B market, moved to Creative Company’s premises three miles away in June and brought with it two staff and its Konica Minolta bizhub Pro 951, along with finishing equipment. They joined up with Creative Company’s two graphic designers and its Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press.
After a brief handover period, Towning entered semi-retirement in the summer but will be coming back to provide holiday cover.
“We do general printing but now we’ve really increased our design capability, with two really experienced designers, and increased our printing capability with a bigger digital colour machine,” added Marshall.
“I brought our mono production machine that they didn’t have so together we have a broader offering and for most of our local customers we are offering a really reliable, responsive service.”
Marshall’s wife Tracey Marshall has as also relocated her direct marketing firm Approach Direct Marketing to the premises at the Flag Business Exchange in Peterborough.
Founded as a Prontaprint Peterborough franchise in 1980, Bill and Tracy Marshall acquired the business in 2003 and left the Prontaprint franchise network in 2011, after its owner On Demand Communications went into administration. At this point it was renamed Printmarshall.
