Openshaw has revealed changes to its distribution structure as it moves an increasing volume of order processing through its online system.

It has also made two redundancies, losing a sales manager and a business development manager as a result of its earlier rationalisation of its regional order-taking into one central operation.

"Before we centralised order-taking the sales managers controlled it at the local depots," said group director Tony Halker. "We closed the local sales offices over the past year."

It has also re-jigged its regional operations following the move to centralised ordering. It has moved from four to five regions with the addition of a Midlands region to those already in Scotland, the North, the South East and South West.

Openshaw Gold and Phizz, its online and catalogue systems, are also doing well, with 15% of consumables sales now being processed via Gold, up 50% on April.

Halker described the online operations as "a real piece of bright light in the business". He claimed that compared to systems shown in the US at Print 01, Openshaw's e-commerce system was one of the best in the world.

Further developments of both Gold and Phizz are promised in the next few months.