Printing industry profits should be celebrated

Jo Francis is delighted that the printing industry is the source of another wad on Dragons' Den.

How marvelous that Steve Parish will take up the hot seat vacated by Moonpig’s Nick Jenkins when the new series of Dragons’ Den airs later this year.

Jenkins came from outside the printing industry and made a fortune from his brainwave about harnessing the power of personalised print; while Parish is very much one of print’s own, and made his millions from the reinvention of a repro house.

Coincidentally, both Jenkins and Parish sold their businesses in the summer of 2011. But since then plenty of others have cashed in on the value they’ve created in print, including John Watson of the eponymous John Watson & Co (£15m), Paul Anderson at Tradeprint (£20m), and Aron Priest and Andy Smith at Solopress (£££ undisclosed at the time of typing).

Good for all of them! Yet again, who says there’s no money in print? There certainly is, for those with the necessary savvy, as a glance at PrintWeek’s Top 500 and indeed the winners of PrintWeek's Performance Awards makes abundantly clear.

Those who run the right sort of business, with the right structure and the right management can do very nicely indeed.

This industry is more than capable of providing the Dragons’ Den producers with a pipeline of potential investors for many series to come.