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Which FTSE 250 company has got more retail units than McDonalds, owns more wagons than Securicor, turns over in excess of £2.7bn per annum and was recently named one of ‘Britain’s most admired companies’ by Management Today? Any ideas? Here’s another clue: the firm started out selling electric sheep shearing equipment and was a pioneering car manufacturer. Still struggling? What if I was to say that it owns brands such as Plumb Center, Build Center and Bath Store? Give up?

Despite its dazzling business credentials, the abject lack of awareness among the general public about Wolseley is because the bulk of its business is undertaken by its network of UK trade outlets, which have helped to make it the UK’s largest distributor of construction materials.

Responsibility for coordinating the firm’s colossal print spend across these outlets rests on the shoulders of former printer Marcus Goss. Goss (pictured) undertook his print apprenticeship on letterpress machines in Birming­ham before moving into packaging and then heading up different divisions within a host of print firms. He spent six years as print manager for the Royal National Institute for the Blind before joining Wolseley in 2005, when he became the firm’s first dedicated print manager. Up to that point, divisions were buying print from a number of suppliers, on different stock at varying prices, which was
inevitably causing problems.

“We were using lots of suppliers and they were not necessarily right for the jobs they were being given,” explains Goss. This led to some farcical situations, such as print that was required in the north of the country (at the firm’s former headquarters), being produced on the south coast and then transported to the north from where it was mailed out.

Suppliers’ audit
On taking the print mantle, Goss’ first task was to standardise the firm’s print and its roster of print suppliers. He undertook an audit of the 40-plus printers the firm was using and whittled it down to just six – all within an hour’s drive of its Leamington Spa headquarters.

“A lot of hard work went into choosing our suppliers, especially after the relocation to Leamington Spa,” explains Goss. “The importance of the supplier management cannot be overstated. As the relationship grows, product knowledge becomes a major factor at all stages of production and suppliers are viewed as an extension of Wolseley.”

The chosen few, which include Taylor Bloxham and Artisan Press, supply a wide range of print, ranging from brochures through to banners, with run lengths anywhere from a couple of thousand to a couple of hundred thousand.

Goss says that he chose the printers on the firm’s roster thanks to the high levels of service they offer, “nowadays, print quality should be a given, it’s service that’s the differentiator”.

He considers his printers to be part of his design team and believes that the internal account managers and press minders are the people that make all the difference.

“A lot of people can buy 10- or 12-colour machines, but it’s all about the people you’ve got manning them,” says Goss. “Whenever I visit a printer I ask myself ‘are the staff interested?’ When you talk to the press minders you get a feel for if they’re interested or if they’re simply going through the motions. The internal account managers also make the process work because they are the ones at the coal face, scheduling and ensuring production happens.”

Loyal relationships
None of Wolseley’s printers are on contracts – the business relationships are based on trust and the loyalty that Goss feels towards them as a reward for the results they have been achieving. But that doesn’t mean they can afford to sit back and relax.

“They’re constantly benchmarked, and suppliers are aware they cannot rest on their laurels. Someone will always come up with cheap prices, but I feel there should be a certain amount of loyalty from both parties (customer and supplier). Jumping from cheapest printer to cheapest printer, does not forge an efficient working relationship. I can see no immediate reason to change any of my suppliers, because they offer service and quality. However, they all realise they are only as good as their last job”

Goss’ approach, and the relationships that he has forged, are clearly paying off for Wolseley, with print savings of £300,000 achieved in the first year. However, he modestly says that this is not due to him “being brilliant” but as a benefit of standardising the company’s print.

The bulk of the 2,000 annual print jobs Goss places are swallowed up by the regular price guides produced for some of its business divisions – such as Plumb Center – which are produced three times a year.
Goss is also called on to produce more bespoke marketing literature, such as brochures promoting a particular product range, employing various print techniques from digital, through litho, screen and heatset.

To emphasise his point, he fishes out a brochure advertising fireplaces, that the firm produced recently. He proudly flicks through the pages of what is clearly a high-spec job. “This is the kind of quality we produce,” he emphasises. “The majority of our work is full-colour with very little two- or single-colour work. We don’t do any Mickey Mouse printing.”

All of the firm’s brands are colour coded, so control over the quality of colour produced is important and will become even more so in the future.

“Colour is extremely important because our core brands have colours that people identify with the brand. Therefore it is critical that there is no variation in the colours.”

He accepts that it is difficult to match colours against different print disciplines, given that digital produces a different blue to heatset, but he is working at the moment with the firm’s suppliers to achieve better results. “If suppliers cannot represent a print standard then they shouldn’t be doing the work,” he believes.

Green credentials
The firm takes corporate social responsibility extremely seriously and has strong green credentials. It is creating a £2.9m sustainable building centre (SBC), which will be an interactive centre for everyone involved in the construction industry.

“With our commitment to sustainability, it was realised that recycled paper would become more of an issue. After in-depth tests with our paper supplier on different grades, I produced several high-profile jobs on a recycled material. After a few months, brand managers came to me requesting that we look into using recycled materials. They were astonished that we already had and that the quality had actually improved. This was achieved because I had confidence in the printer and the paper supplier, and it was done subtly. We have now used several hundred tonnes.”

But Goss adds that he is restricted by the amount that he can use because he can’t find a grade of a high enough standard to produce the all-important price guides.

“I haven’t found a 75gsm recycled grade that we can put on heatset yet, as the quality is not good enough. I’d like to move all of our work to recycled stock but it’s up to the mills to get the quality right.”
Unsurprisingly for an ex-printer, he sees print as an important part of the firm’s future. “There is still a need for printed literature, because most tradespeople want to feel something tangible. We’re dealing with builders that are up ladders, plumbers with their heads under the sink. These people don’t carry laptops. Hard products are still important and will be for the foreseeable future.”

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WOLSELEY FACTFILE
• The company started in 1887 in Sydney, Australia, when Frederick York Wolseley founded the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company. Two years later he moved to Birmingham and Wolseley Engineering was formed
• Herbert Austin became works manager and the two started to experiment in the manufacture of motor cars. This led to the company producing the first Wolseley motor car in 1896. After producing almost 100 cars, the motor car and machine tool businesses were sold to Vickers Son and Maxim, which eventually became the Rover Group
• Today, the company has operations in 27 countries, with more than 5,000 branches worldwide and more than 80,000 employees
• It has a market capitalisation of approximately £7bn, with £14.1bn of sales and £882m of trading profit in the year to 31 July 2006
• In the UK and Ireland, Wolseley employs more than 15,000 people and operates 1,800 branches under brand names such as Plumb Center, Parts Center, Build Center and Hire Center

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CASE STUDY: PLUMB CENTER PRICE GUIDE
The Plumb Center price guide is produced three times a year. All artwork is created in-house and supplied as printready PDFs to Artisan Press in Leicester. Once the files have been ripped, soft proofs are sent back for approval because “to run cromalins would cost £10,000,” says Wolseley print manager Marcus Goss.

He uses a file transfer protocol (FTP) site to proof the pages and they’re then signed off by himself and by the designer. Goss says that they use a lot of remote proofing and that they were one of the first companies to start using it regularly (he adds that some work is still press passed but that’s mainly on publications where the image quality is of the highest order). Turnaround time for the price guides is three weeks for 208 inner pages and an 8pp pull-out cover.

The guide, which is printed on a Heidelberg Sunday press, is produced on 75gsm inners from UPM, with a 200gsm cover – on UPM Polar Star – and has a run of 135,000. Once printed, the guides are mailed directly to individual tradespeople and also despatched to the firm’s 500-plus Plumb Center branches, with the rest held in stock until needed.