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Ken Harrison doesn’t come across as your average managing director, but then F1 Colour is not exactly your average repro company. For starters, only half of its turnover comes from pre-press. In its 16-year existence it has diversified into, and then out of, both digital print and design, as well as making more permanent forays into digital photography and print management. Since its inception in the early 1990s, around the time when Apple’s Macintosh computers started making an impact on the prepress community, F1 has always had one eye on new revenue streams. “When the Mac came along a lot of people were saying, ‘that’s just a silly design tool – you’ll never do repro on that’,” he recalls. Harrison, luckily, thought otherwise and in 1992, F1 Colour was born.

Three years on, the fledgling F1, which was operating out of the demo suite of Manroland-agent PPS, made its first move away from pre-press. “Even back then, people were saying that repro was dying, so we decided to make the leap straight away into print with the Xeikon,” says Harrison. So, in the same year that it was awarded PrintWeek’s pre-press company of the year, F1 took delivery of only the third Xeikon press to hit the country, following up on its early Mac adoption by becoming an early digital adopter. It was a move that Harrison came to regret. “The industry seemed to shrink in front of our very eyes. We thought we’d be competitive on runs of up to 1,500 copies, but by the time we installed the press that was already down to 1,000 and soon after it was 500,” says Harrison. “We survived the four years we needed to pay off the press and then sold it, but it could have finished us.”

Capital idea
Undeterred by its failed digital experiment, F1 expanded, first into design and then digital photography. Its in-house design agency, which was set up in 1996, later closed due to a conflict of interest with the company’s repro clients, many of whom were designers. Digital photography, on the other hand, has proved a big success for the firm and, as Harrison points out, at a much lower cost. “We got into digital photography in 1999, so it more or less took over from the digital print. It’s a lot easier business to run and the capital outlay was much smaller – £20,000 versus £250,000 for a press,” he says.

In 2004, F1 moved from Mitcham to Southwark to be closer to its London clients. “I’d wanted to for some time,” says Harrison. “It was definitely the right thing to do. Immediately clients viewed us differently and took us more seriously – our turnover’s gone up 50% since we moved to London.” The following year, F1 moved into print management and “closed the loop” on the range of services it offered. The decision has proved a big success and print management now accounts for around 30% of the company’s turnover.

Harrison divides the hectic past 16 years in half. “The first eight years were all about picking up more work. We weren’t even advertising and we went from two people to 25 without any real business plan in mind,” he says. “The second eight have been much tougher, although the last four years have seen some improvement.”

Regardless of market conditions, the one constant throughout the company’s existence has been Harrison’s willingness to experiment with new revenue streams. “We’ve been trying since 1995 almost to replace pre-press, thinking that it’s all going to disappear,” he says. “But there’s always going to be a certain amount of pre-press around – especially the high-quality stuff. All the big bits of kit that made pre-press tricky are now gone and lots of people are bringing repro in-house, but that won’t work for everyone – only the big publishers with enough work to justify it.”

Evolutionary leap
In the last four years F1’s turnover has gone from being 90% based on pre-press to 50% pre-press, 30% print management and 20% photography. As it has evolved, so too has Harrison’s role. “I’m now far more focused on looking at what to do next and how best to do it. I constantly have six to 10 projects on the go to keep the business moving forward,” he says. Just last week F1 announced the launch of an offshoring initiative with Indian-based repro company Express KCS, which will see F1 act as a local account manager for UK publishers. Harrison is also considering restarting the design side of the business. “We want to get into the catalogue business,” he explains. “We’ve got the photography, the asset management and the colour skills, so it’s just about using the skills we’ve got.”

F1 COLOUR
Founded 1992
Managing director Ken Harrison
Based London
Services Photography, print management, pre-press, asset management, digital editions
Clients Emap Inform, Seven Squared, River Publishing, People Tree, Superdrug