The challenge

What should a printer do when demand for its products is declining? The solution might seem obvious: become a Jack-of-all-trades and keep volumes high by printing a greater array of products.

This of course has been the response of many businesses to challenging times. And often rightly so – the case for branching out has long been made by thought-leaders in the industry, with entreaties for printers to take risks and come out of their comfort zones producing many notable success stories. 

And yet this policy is by no means for everyone. Many would draw attention to the second part of the above maxim – the much-maligned Jack is of course also a ‘master of none’, suggesting all manner of misregistration, streaking and colour issues might arise if his trade happened to be printing.

This concern certainly helped shape strategy at Hayes-based Victoria Litho as the company found its established markets shrinking. 

The company started out as map printer Philip Print when current managing director Andy Wilson’s father bought the print arm of a cartography company back in 1984. 

So when demand for printed maps first started to decline 15 to 20 years ago, the company could easily have been panicked into serious diversification. This could certainly have been the temptation with the advent of satnavs and GPS, developments that have seen Victoria’s map work shrink from around 90% of its jobs 15 years ago, to 20% today. 

And yet Victoria has stuck to its guns. Realising that it had a large-format niche worth holding on to, the company has not been tempted to spread itself too thinly. Rather the company decided to carve out a new niche for itself, one that it intends to stick with even in potentially tumultuous, digital media-oriented times.

The method

Wilson says that the kind of large-format work Victoria’s expertise in map printing lends itself to best is POS display products, such as floor standing units, dump bins and overhead displays. Most of Victoria’s work is now fast-turnaround POS. The firm prints images to be mounted by litho laminators, who then supply supermarkets and other retailers direct.

Wilson explains that here, the firm’s reputation and skill in high-quality printing comes into its own.

“We have quite a critical eye for detail. We will focus on fine registration and the quality of finished products,” he says. “We’re not a ‘slap a set of plates on, get the registration marks up the side of the printed sheet and go’ kind of operation. If you were just a poster printer you could probably get away with a little bit less attention to detail. But for us, it’s actually about paying attention to the printed image, and that comes from the mapping trade, having to register fine lines within roads, etc.”

Wilson feels safe within this niche as it’s not one many others currently inhabit. “When you go over that 1,020x720mm size there are only a handful of people who can handle that with the detail we can, and with the fine registration.”

Crucial to maintaining a first-rate reputation for this kind of work is being just a bit picky about employees. To ensure your company is the go-to printer for one very specific type of work, the little details matter, explains Wilson.

“We always go for staff with large-format printing experience,” he says. “I wouldn’t necessarily employ a printer who’d only run small equipment. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t be a perfectly good printer, but there are a lot of differences when it comes to substrates, rolling powers on the press and ink sweeps across the sheet. You need to know about things like that.”

He adds: “If there’s a roller mark that appears in a particular solid it’s knowing how to change the sweep on the machine so that it won’t appear somewhere obvious. It’s little things like that.”

And on the subject of staff, Wilson has had to be strong in resisting some employees’ suggestions and entreaties to branch out into other areas. “Some sales staff have come to me with suggestions about other applications we could run on our kit or investments we could make, but I’ve not been tempted. You have to know what you’re good at turning a profit from.”

A key part of Victoria’s very focused strategy has been never working for customers direct. Taking only trade work from other printers and print managers means the company never feels the pressure to be a one-stop shop. 

“The one thing we’re very very strict about is not dealing with the end-user,” says Wilson. “I try to pitch us as an extension of someone else’s factory. If our trade customer is printing something for Mercedes for example, I will not then go straight to Mercedes because they’ll then ask me to start producing business cards or something that I’m just not interested in.”

The result

Never attempting to go straight to the end-user has the other key advantage of ensuring trade customers stay loyal, reports Wilson: “We feel pretty confident our customers won’t go to another printer because there’s always a risk of people taking accounts and going to the end-user. Because we’ve been trading a long time we have a very good relationship with a lot of our customers – they know that we have very high morals when it comes to that.”

The result of this, and of Victoria Litho’s reputation in this niche, is loyal customers of 20 years or so. This has enabled the company to keep turnover sustainably and solidly around the £3.2m mark. If tempted to use Victoria’s large-format kit for smaller formats or to invest in special kit for this, the company could easily have ended up in dangerous, loss-making territory, believes Wilson.

“You are limited with a large-format press. Yes, I can produce smaller-format stuff, but not for the sort of money other people can produce it for. I don’t want to start producing pizza boxes or A4 flyers where I can print 20 or 30 on one sheet of paper, because I’d have to run the press extremely fast, buy a low grade of paper, bash it through and run the risk of damaging the machinery for a very low return. I don’t even print my own business cards and letterheads,” says Wilson.

He adds: “If I start producing smaller items I start competing with the majority of the print trade, which in my opinion is incredibly cut-throat because everyone’s buying on price and driving everyone the wrong way. I won’t get involved in a Dutch auction to that extent.”

Quite apart from the machinery Victoria has and the highly competitive nature of commercial print, the team’s experience from a business knowledge point of view, is an important consideration, says Wilson.

“We just have the expertise in this area to know exactly how to keep costs down on the work we do, whereas with another sort of work we wouldn’t necessarily know where to take the costs out of it,” he says. “It’s keeping overheads as lean as possible, not being over-staffed and trying to contain costs where you can.”

And Wilson is confident his large-format, mainly POS, niche will remain niche enough to stay profitable in the future. Those diversifying into wide-format work are typically investing in digital rather than litho he says, due to the better ROI it can offer those new to the game.

“They’re going into the digital market because the machinery is generally cheaper than the litho machines,” says Wilson. “And all of the work being put on a digital machine for a month wouldn’t last me very long at all. You’ve got to have the work to fill these kinds of machines and we have because we’ve been in this market for so long.”

So to all those tempted, in some cases perhaps quite sensibly, to branch out in future, a wise word from Wilson: “Sometimes it’s knowing what you’re good at and concentrating on those markets.” 

Victoria Litho: vital statistics 

Location Hayes, Middlesex

Inspection host Andy Wilson, managing director

Size Turnover: approximately £3.2m; Staff: 21 

Established 1984 when current managing director Andy Wilson’s father bought the print factory of George Philip Publishers cartographers to form Philip Print. In 1994, the business became Victoria Litho, after its new location on Victoria Road in Acton. In 1997, the company moved to its current premises in Hayes

Products Today, it prints predominantly POS items, such as floor-standing units, dump bins and overhead displays, but it also prints maps, posters and packaging

Kit KBA Rapida 162a, Agfa Anapurna M2540 FB digital press, two Epson Stylus Pros, Kasemake cutting table, MBO and Stahl large-format folders, and large-format guillotines 

Inspection focus

λ Sticking with what you’re good at

DO IT YOURSELF

Following suit

Specialising in one specific area certainly won’t be for everybody. The case for smaller-format printers offering a wide variety of different product types it often pretty strong. “I can wholeheartedly see and appreciate all the different technologies that now go into these machines; all the different coatings you can now get on the smaller side makes market diversification a sensible strategy, whereas it’s not so much for us,” says Wilson. 

Geography is also very decisive, says Wilson. Located on the west side of London, Victoria Litho is perfectly placed, he feels, to serve trade printers around the country with fast-turnaround work, meaning the company can offer a fairly narrow range of services to a large number of trade customers. “If we’ve got press passes you can get here very easily. Location is very important to us,” says Wilson, explaining that those in slightly harder to reach areas will be better gearing themselves up to serve those on their doorstep with a wide range of formats.

Potential pitfalls

Being tempted to serve end-users direct could be a real pitfall, says Wilson. This might seem a good strategy for boosting margins, but the risk is the odd business card or flyer job for a brand turning into a regular, loss-making job.

Top tips

λ Make sure there really is demand for the niche you’re offering. Victoria Litho was savvy in branching into something new when demand for printed maps started to wane. 

λ But still some businesses might want to be careful that any diversification plays to the business’s core strengths, such as high-quality large-format print of the sort not many businesses offer.

λ Remember your offering is only as strong as your staff. If you’re going to build a reputation for yourself as highly specialised in one specific area, it stands to reason your employees will need to be specialists. 

Wilson’s top tip

“You have to know what you’re good at turning a profit from.”