Taylor Bloxham sets up dedicated education and membership team

Print and marketing communications company Taylor Bloxham Group has established a dedicated team to work with the education and membership sectors as part of its continued targeted growth.

The five-strong client-facing team, headed up by director James Fear, has more than 20 years’ combined experience working both with and within education institutions and membership organisations.

They will promote joined-up marketing communications from across the group and advise clients in these areas on a range of strategic issues from printed materials, including litho, digital, large-format and POS, through to campaign mailings and collateral storage and fulfilment.

“People want more added value from their supplier base and they are searching for more strategic partnerships, based on experience, knowledge and trust, which is what we are trying to offer,” said Fear.

“Marketing teams in both the education and membership sectors are rapidly becoming far more commercial in their outlook; partly driven by external factors but also by the nature of the people they are now employing, the lessons they are learning from other sectors such as retail, and the redrawing of traditional demographics boundaries driven by new marketing arenas such as social media.

“These sectors have a healthy appetite for every one of the service provisions that we deliver through our four sub-brands, so it’s almost like a perfect match.

“Well over 75% of our targets have got an extremely healthy appetite for litho print, digital print, large-format point-of-sale, direct mail and, increasingly, storage and fulfilment solutions.”

He added: “You have to be very committed to say that you will have a team of people that will only work with clients in one sector, but that they are truly going to understand the marketing challenges that those clients have and what the collateral is used for in order to be deemed a true extension of their team.”

Taylor Bloxham was recently involved in the Membership Communication’s (memcom) annual conference and awards.

As part of its headline sponsorship commitment, the business printed event guides and personalised menus as well as installing wall graphics and wayfinding signage to dress the entire event. The company also manufactured the trophies for the awards.

And following discussions with Imperial College London, the group also recently sponsored the Imperial Festival, an event that showcased a wide range of research projects and advancements to the public, prospective students and the wider academic community.

Taylor Bloxham’s large-format/POS division Instore created all of the external directional and promotional signage and the group printed event programmes and flyers for use in advance of and on the day.

In May the 210-staff group, which turns over around £28m and celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, appointed a new business development director.

Recent investments, meanwhile, have included a Koenig & Bauer Rapida 106 litho press, delivered in Marchan HP Indigo 7900, which was installed in January, and two Muller Martini finishing lines and an MBO K8 RS folder, which went in last summer.

The group is comprised of four divisions, all of which are based on separate sites – the main Taylor Bloxham printing wing, the recently relocated FastAnt division, which focuses on areas such as storage, fulfilment and e-commerce, direct mail division Mailbox, a new business arm launched in January, and Instore.