Washington Direct Mail eyeing continued growth in 2018

Mailing house Washington Direct Mail is hoping to continue on its current growth path in early 2018 with ISO 27001 accreditation and a new website.

The Newcastle-based firm is on track to achieve the ISO 27001 accreditation, which centres around information and data security, in January.

Washington Direct Mail managing director Lynn Beasley said: “It’s been a huge project, but rewarding. It’s helped us streamline production, increase security and generally put in all the necessary processes to move us up into a whole new world of business opportunities.”

The firm’s new website is also set to launch next month. Beasley said the new site will be faster and more easily accessed, tracked and analysed.

“Most importantly, it will be built specifically with Google search engine optimisation in mind, so we can be certain we’re maximising our content in the way Google wants to see it,” said Beasley.

Established in 1983, Washington Direct Mail has a turnover of £2m and employs between 30 and 50 staff, depending on the time of year and the current production workload. Beasley said 2017 has been the company’s “best year yet”.

“We’ve been averaging four to five new customers a month, which is a staggering increase in growth for us as a family business. With the addition of a new major retail client worth £150,000, and another new financial services client worth in excess of £200,000, we never imagined how busy it would be, or that we would need more staff.

“The step changes and decisions we’ve made have cumulatively given us a revenue growth of over 11%.”

The business, which operates two Xerox Versant digital printers and a Presstek 52DI digital offset press, serves clients nationwide in a wide range of areas including financial services, retail, education, transport, software and social housing.

Beasley said: “We’re now looking at a B2 press, simply because we’ve already outgrown the Presstek 52DI which we installed in April 2017. We’re also considering a Duplo spot UV machine to create a low-run, high-quality service.”