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PrintWeek invited a clutch of heavyweights from different sized firms to share their insights into what adding value means to their businesses and how it could help the industry in the long term

What does added value mean to you?
Blackwell In its simplest terms, added value is what makes us money. We define it as the value of the order, minus the materials and outwork and what you’re left with is the added value. Clients look at added value completely differently, they see it as something that is an additional service.

Spence As far as we’re concerned, it is a way of embracing the client. If you’re adding value to them you’re getting closer to them, you’re getting your USPs across and that’s something we really all have got to do more of as an industry.

Jones I think added value is simply a point of difference.
It’s about offering something slightly different from your competi­tors and that could be a whole range of things that are developed from the culture and ethos of the business, whether it be technology, training support or service or product related.

Stagg End users crave innovation, and ultimately that’s what can separate one firm from another. New ideas are the obvious source of innovation, but another is training – and by that I mean training the client’s staff. It’s a given that most of us can all print a good job, so we have to look elsewhere for added value, whether it be creative, IT solutions or fulfilment. We are not just printers anymore, we can’t afford to be.

Crozier I agree, but in our industry being innovative and leading the way is one thing, but rivals will catch up. We all do very similar things and we all have similar offerings but what makes your offering unique is the people. They’re the ones that actually work with your customers and they can add value by the way they treat your client, by finding out what they want and working best with them.

Print managers are sometimes accused of being obstacles to adding value, is that fair?
Ruck When I first started we were working with creatives and we could always steer them to produce something that was really different, that could inspire. But now we’re dealing with middleman a lot of the time, we’re not really talking to people that we can stimulate – so yes, print managers or print brokers are a kind of barrier in the industry.

Crozier I tend to disagree, I think one of the reasons why print managers grew in this country [compared to the rest of Europe] is because printers weren’t offering added value, they were too used to earning too much money. I know that’s a sweeping generalisation, but I believe that print managers got a foothold because they did offer value to the customer by working with them. Of course I agree that a print manager tends to be driven by price, but I think printers have woken up a bit more and are starting to offer the services that print managers do.

Patterson Funnily enough, I’m finding that we’re being hammered by print management companies to actually give them innovation, whereas a few years ago I agree it was just ‘give us better prices’. They’ve finally realised that they can’t get any more out of the price, so instead they’re asking us to show them different ideas and add value.

But do clients see adding value as simply a way of taking cost out for them?
Patterson They take a much more holistic view. Something we often explain to clients is that we can save them more costs on things like artwork, packaging or logistics than we ever could on print.

Stagg I think they do, because costs are a large part of anyone’s business. Price is important. If we walk around thinking we’re going to win work just because we’re great people and we do a great job, then we’re losing touch with reality.

Crozier Equally though, you’re not going to win work just on the lowest price. Most of the work our firms successfully tender for we don’t win because we’re the lowest price, we’re often not. I think clients, and print managers, are starting to realise that if they go for the lowest price all of the time, then their supplier might not be there in six months. Client/supplier relationships have to be sustainable.

So is added value something that clients are prepared to pay for?
Neal Yes, definitely. I think there’s far more to adding value than just saving clients money. People do business with people, and if you’re prepared to go the extra mile, it can be as simple as that. We’re a smaller company than a lot of the people around the table, but our clients know we can solve problems that perhaps can’t be resolved by technology alone. So we’re adding value without taking away costs and importantly, by having a good relationship with our clients we can win a job before it’s even gone out to be quoted.

Moore I agree, clients still like to deal with specific suppliers because they’re likeminded people. I think that’s when clients keep coming back and giving you the opportunities.

Jones I think we have a responsibility to ourselves to talk more about adding value rather than just price. And when I say value, I mean three things: quality, service, and price. They’re all important, but quality is a given, service is the critical issue, and it is two pronged. Firstly it’s about exceeding expectations and secondly, it’s about the service offerings that you have going through your entire proposition. You can’t affect price, as a printer, but what you can affect is efficiency and service and both of these are very dependent on people.

Patterson And we mustn’t forget that if you’re adding value neatly, then cost doesn’t really figure in the conversation.

Are green accreditations a key part of a value added offering?
Moore I think accreditations do add value, if you use them in the right way. And judging by the amount of business we’ve won, or at least retained, because of ISO 14001 and FSC accreditation, they definitely pay for themselves.

Crozier The green issue is a big one, and it’s definitely about value added. It’s not necessarily a cost saving to the customer, but they often want to go out and sell themselves as green, so effectively we have to be the ones that deliver that for them.

Neal They’re vital. You can’t really break into new accounts without the environmental accreditations, but you also need a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding them, not just around print. It’s the stuff behind an accreditation that really makes a difference when you talk to a client. More than that, they actually save you money too.

How have you added value to your offering?
Spence A year ago, I owned a company called Colour Quest which was half a mile away from the Buncefield oil depot explosion, as a result of which the building had to be demolished. I then decided to merge with a similar company, with a similar ethos called Buckingham Colour. What that has meant to us in terms of adding value is that we have won contracts that we never could have won on our own. We’ve also started to offer warehousing and distribution, which would never have done individually.

Moore We were working with a print manager who had to offer a significant saving to its client recently. On face value, they were after a double digit saving. We were able to offer a different product to them which gave them the saving they were looking for and also gave us the margin we had before.

Stagg One of the key things we’ve done is launch a new division called The Last Four Feet. It’s a consultancy that looks at shopper habits and more effective implementation of PoS.

So to what extent to you invest in branding and marketing to add value?
Crozier In many ways, marketing in the print industry is still in its infancy, because as a sector we’ve been driven by price for so long there seemed little point in focusing on marketing.

Ruck We’re a DM company, so we go out and actively market our products to creatives, face to face and we also target them with some of our innovative mailers – getting potential clients to see first-hand what you can do for them is key.

Patterson For us, the Sensations book that we produced for Fespa has absolutely been the best thing we ever printed in terms of marketing – it’s stunning. I know we’ve all talked about adding value not being about print, but I think there is some mileage in it. If you put a piece of marketing material in front of someone and they interact with it, you can’t put a value on that.

Blackwell We had a similar experience. Two years ago, we built a new web factory and installed two M600s which had a monstrous amount of capacity. We’re basically a leaflet printer, but we always wanted to be one step ahead. We got involved with Fuji and its Liso screening technology, and we actually printed a book on the web presses using 300lpi screen and prospects love it.

Jones In many ways, marketing is a missed trick in print and it probably has been for a long time. I came from a marketing background, and from my own experience simply by applying some fairly simple marketing principles and by not confusing marketing with sales, I like to think that we have managed to progress ahead of many of our peers.

Neal We don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing, our marketing is our reputation. If you’re asking how you can use that to sell to new clients, it’s based on good reputation and the fact that no-one has a bad word to say about you.

What about strategic partnership with other companies as a way of punching above your weight and adding value?
Jones Our work is very time-sensitive, and while we rely on people, we also rely on kit – and kit is less forgiving than people – so we have a working relationship with another printer for those situations where kit lets us down. It’s a win, win.

Patterson One of the problems we have in the UK is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of trust between print firms. In Europe, working hand in hand with a web printer, or a magazine printer and consolidating what’s going into the store or supply chain is very common.

Crozier I think that’s great and we should do more of that. But, in reality, if I were to give you all a list of all my customers, if you could go off and steal them then clearly we as a supplier are doing something fundamentally wrong. Openness is positive, we can all learn something from each other.

Moore We actually have strategic alliances with allied trades within the industry already, and one of them is with Tyrone at BCQ. They have services that complement ours and likewise.

Spence And Augustus’ Daniel probably doesn’t realise it, but he actually does work for BCQ at the moment as well. If partnerships work, it means we can embrace the clients and just keep saying, yes, yes, yes…

How can adding value help you win new business?
Jones It means that you can start the [communication] process a lot sooner through marketing and making the right impression. What you’re doing is giving a perception, and customers buy on perception – they don’t buy on reality, they experience reality.

Moore But I think that perception goes hand in hand with reputation.

Patterson I have to say that if I’m honest, added value aside, if someone calls us and the first thing they say is ‘I’ve been let down…’ that’s the best opportunity I’m ever going to get.

Crozier It will be the person that clicks with a new client that will win, that’s why at the end of the day it’s about personal relationships. But, if you wanted to put on 10% more turnover, you’re probably better off looking at your existing customers than trying to attract new.

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ROUND TABLE DELEGATES
Phil Blackwell, business development director, Alderson Brothers Print Group
£20.8m turnover commercial print group Aldersons employs 228 staff and operates in the sheetfed, web-offset and digital markets

Ben Crozier, operations director, Media & Print Investments
The £56.7m, 500-plus staff group operates in the book, fine art and commercial markets and includes Butler & Tanner, Friary Press, Borcombe SP and BAS Printers

Tony Jones, chief executive, Pensord
The £10m turnover south Wales-based B2B magazine specialist was bought by Jones in an MBO in 2003 and in 2006 won the BPIF Turnaround award. It employs 125 staff

Simon Moore, managing director, Eclipse Colour Print
Kettering-based web and sheetfed commer­cial printer Eclipse has a reputation for investing the latest technology and its 101 staff generate sales of £13.4m

Sam Neal, corporate strategy director, Geoff Neal Litho
Crowned PrintWeek’s Direct Mail Printer of the Year in 2007 and 2006, the £6m turnover 44 staff family-run firm was founded by Sam’s father 30 years ago

Daniel Patterson, head of sales, Augustus Martin
This award-winning £34m turnover, 293 staff screen and large format specialist also produced the Sensations book on behalf of round table sponsor Fespa

Peter Ruck, joint managing director, Bridge Communications
Another DM specialist, £7.5m turnover, 70 staff Bridge also boasts a high-tech reputation and a clutch of industry awards

Tyrone Spence, managing director, BCQ Group (Buckingham Colour Quest)
B2 offset and digital outfit BCQ was formed from the merger of Buckingham Colour and Colour Quest to create an £11m turnover group, employing 117 staff

Nick Stagg, sales director, SMP Group
Large-format specialist SMP is another PrintWeek award-winner and last year the £19m, 251 staff firm launched its own in-store division, The Last Four Feet