Moving site on 28 March, the firm has transferred work just a stone’s throw from its previous 185sqm facility to a 325sqm building on a new industrial development on the outskirts of Lincoln.
Moving the print workshop and offices into the site’s ground floor, the firm has set aside the new building’s mezzanine floor as a showroom for merchandise print, a sector that Visual Print and Design has identified for growth.
“A lot of my customers who order general print, will want merchandise as well, but they find it hard to get a good view on screen: they want to see samples,” explained Graham Hunstone, Visual Print and Design managing director.
He told Printweek: “I’ll be kitting out [the mezzanine] and will have specific areas for each category of branded merchandise, so when people come in and feel and touch it, they’ll see it as a sort of exhibition.”
The eight-person team currently prints a mix of work, with digital sheetfed work run through a Xerox Versant 180, and wide-format through a Mutoh VJ-1624 eco-solvent printer; merchandise is currently printed on the firm’s Mutoh VJ-626UF UV-cure object printer.
Over the next 12-18 months, Hunstone plans for a significant expansion in merchandise work, enough to drive the majority of a planned 70% growth in turnover in that time.
“Branded merchandise used to be 3-4% of the business, and now it’s up to 10-15%: we’re going to have a big push on it,” he said.
“We have a 92% customer retention rate, and a really good customer base, so we’re just going to try and show them more of what we can do to help their businesses.”
The new leased site, built by Sterlin Developments, may itself be joined by another, Hunstone added.
“We’re looking at possibly adding another unit next year. We specifically came to this site because there are units going up all the time around here, and there are plenty available – so we have plenty of options.”
The commercial push down south will be joined by Visual Print and Design’s Glasgow team, made up of a pair of sales staff, which will look to win work for the firm north of the border.
“We’ll do quite a bit of the production here, but we have a lot of print partners where we outsource the larger print runs,” explained Hunstone.
To furnish the firm’s anticipated growth, Hunstone has planned for some capital expenditure, though has not yet decided on specific machines.
“In the next few months once we’re settled in, we’ll be investing in larger promotional merchandise machines. I have a few machines in my head, but we still need to do some more research,” he said.
