Alasdair Browne, director, Abbot Print
"We are not diversifying at present, but I feel we may well end up being new boys in another market that is equally saturated. However, since we print on behalf of other printers, much of our business comes from those companies that have themselves diversified from printing continuous forms, NCR stationery books and pads. By outsourcing to us, they have, at a stroke, reduced part of their manufacturing capacity, but diversified and increased their sales capability. We have just got to concentrate our resources on doing what we are doing now, but better. Anything beyond that, I would divert resources into innovation."
Ian Whitfield, managing director, Alpha Media Solutions
We already have diversified, we have tried to concentrate on areas such as our contract with Z-Cards. But as far as diversification going forward goes, we are always looking at ways of enhancing the business. However, in the current financial climate, we are actually more likely to be more cautious about diversifying. It has to make sense, you can’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none. I guess our next step would be to bring something else in-house. But you have to get the balance right. You don’t want to be generating lots of work just to stand still.
Lesley Keating, communications director, Key2 Group
We’ve always embraced the values of diversifying - even before the recession began, so we’ve not needed to change specifically to accommodate the current economic downturn. We’ve historically reacted quickly to market trends and customer demands and, being consciously reactive rather than deliberative proactive, we’ve managed to add new capabilities and disciplines as and when. As well as print, we offer bespoke display, acrylics fabrication, graphics and signage so we are able to supply a wide and diverse customer base. In view of this, we’ve found the recession has affected us less negatively than many others.
Nick Finegold, business development director, Altaimage
The past 12 months have actually been very positive for us. We have continued to grow. We put in a new Screen TruePress in January to increase our digital print capacity and we’ve also moved to larger premises that enable us to offer a broader range of services to our customers. You cannot resist change. Our customers are wanting us to do different things, some things they want to take in-house, and that’s fine, we can help them with that, especially with things such as colour management, which is an area we have a great deal of real-world experience in.
