O’Connor has joined the Southend-on-Sea printer from fellow web-based printer Helloprint, where he spent four years as commercial director, following previous roles heading up sales and commercial teams at Printing.com and its parent company Grafenia.
Working alongside Phil Foster, Solopress’ head of business development appointed in August 2022, O’Connor will report directly to MD Simon Cooper.
The 5th July appointment follows two other hires from Printed.com, Jack Hughes and Peter Story, who joined Solopress in late 2022 as product manager and workflow specialist respectively.
O’Connor’s new role will focus largely on the north of the UK, with emphasis on onboarding, developing and maintaining client relationships.
MD Simon Cooper said: “Paul’s immense knowledge and experience will be valuable assets as Solopress continues to grow.
“The fact that leading lights in our industry like Paul are seeing Solopress as a great place to develop their careers is really encouraging. I think that’s a reflection of our ambition, our vision and our values.”
O’Connor said he was thrilled to join the company.
He said: “It’s a fantastic time to be joining the company, with so much ongoing investment and some major projects in development.
“Personally, it’s exciting for me to be joining a business with such comprehensive production facilities. It gives my role the agility to respond to customer demand with a great degree of speed and confidence.”
Solopress, which has invested over £5.5m in plant and equipment in the past 12 months, has also recently added carbon offsetting to its most popular products.
Following the lead of its Solopress Green range of reduced-emission and recycled stock products, which has now sold more than £1m of goods, the printer has added a carbon offset option at checkout for its most popular products, including flyers, leaflets, business cards, brochures and booklets.
The option, which claims to make the orders “carbon neutral”, allows customers to choose between projects for woodland protection and tree planting in the UK, helping develop clean water projects in Eritrea, or contributing to projects cleaning up plastic from the ocean.
The scheme is in partnership with environmental consultant ClimatePartner, with which Solopress worked to set up its Green range.
Separately, Helloprint CEO Hans Scheffer told Printweek that following O'Connor's departure head of marketing Sebastiaan Ram, who helmed its UK business from 2015-2016, would take up that responsibility again.
“Former CM and founder of Helloprint UK, Sebastiaan Ram is taking over country management for the UK again and we’re expanding the team further,” he said.
“The UK is one of our most important markets, and we believe the Helloprint offering is ready for further scaling. In the next couple of months, we’re rolling out many new features and products, including our new Helloprint Enterprise and API offering.”
