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Rob King is surprisingly humble. Especially since his baby, Altaimage (just seven years old), has some of the biggest clients in the publishing sector. BBC Worldwide, Penguin, the National Portrait Gallery, Random House and the British Film Institute are just a taster of the prestigious roster the pre-press and digital print company has managed to accumulate. Even its location, in London’s Docklands, is impressive.

“We have a good relationship with our clients. We love what we do and, more importantly, we are excited about it,” says joint managing director King. “With some of the bigger companies, it’s just numbers.” Whereas King insists that he likes to treat clients with more care.

Big companies aren’t a threat to Altaimage. After all, it has already recruited two ex-Wyndeham staff. Former Wyndeham Pre-press technical sales director Nick Finegold joined the company in July, while in August Altaimage recruited Liam West, previously production manager at Wyndeham, into a senior sales and production role.
While Altaimage’s list of high-status clients will certainly raise a few eyebrows, King is more concerned with print. He has an array of work laid out on the table before him and his excitement is obvious when discussing the quality of the company’s work.

“Quality has to be top. Quality is one of the things that is lacking in the industry,” King says. Perhaps Altaimage’s focus on quality is why most of its new business is gained through word of mouth.

And this humble way of doing things has been fortified since the company’s beginnings. Partners and owners Rob King and Mark Robson worked together at Keene Repro, before starting out on their own with an HP Indigo press. Formed in 2000, the business was initially run on a part-time basis from a London lock-up and work consisted of printing t-shirts, hats, and umbrellas. In 2003, the company started retouching photographs and the name Altaimage was born.

Taking a chance
“We decided that we’d had enough of playing with it and wanted to do it for real. We took the jump and have never looked back”, says King. With a steady influx of new work, the company also moved sites in 2003 to its current location in Canary Wharf.

Investments in technology and development have come thick and fast for Altaimage. Apart from claiming to be the first in the country to install a Dubinder this year, the company invested £500,000 in boosting capacity. This included the addition of a further 200m2 to the site, investment in a Xerox iGen3 to target personalised applications and a host of supporting finishing equipment. Its array of new kit also includes the UK’s first MGi U-Varnish coating system, supplied by Graphic Arts Equipment.

“We wanted to keep as much in-house as possible,” says King. “When we can, we like to match customer stock. In fact, I had one customer asking us to match a digital book with a litho run and you could not tell the two apart.”

Altaimage’s philosophy of expanding according to the needs of its customers has served it well. Not many companies would create software so customers can track the daily costs of retouching images, but Altaimage has done exactly that. “I wouldn’t want to have a huge bill for retouching,” remarks King. A busy influx of work from its repro business was the reason for its 200m2 expansion, enabling the company to separate its repro side of the business from the digital print side.

With the purchase of a Xerox iGen3, new client Foxtons followed in June, for which it is producing online business cards and offering web-to-print services.

Quality and environmental management are also targets the company has set for itself. “We are on course for attaining ISO 14001,” says King.

The future for Altaimage is likely to be an exciting one. “We are not selling print as a unit. What we want to offer is a bespoke service. We love the quality of our repro; it’s what we do best and the print-on-demand is an add-on,” says King, who is marketing the company as a one-stop shop.

It has already started offering large-format printing with the purchase of the Mimaki JV3SP. Even the likelihood of competition from abroad doesn’t faze King. “Clients want stuff so quickly now. They are bringing it to us from the Far East.”

That’s certainly a ringing endorsement for Altaimage and it all should add up to a bright future. King’s baby has grown from humble beginnings into a growing market force.

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ALTAIMAGE FACTFILE
Location Canary Wharf
Managing directors Rob King, Mark Robson
Established 2000
Staff 16
Clients BBC Worldwide, British Film Institute, Foxtons, National Portrait Gallery, Penguin, Random House, Virgin
Sectors Newspaper advertising delivery, pre-press services, books, brochures, business stationery, variable data printed matter
Turnover £1.5m
Plant list Xerox iGen3, Duplo DP 460H, Mimaki JV3, Tru-press (SRA3 litho platesetter), MGi U-Varnish coater, contract proofing kit, digital delivery, CD/DVD duplication