While the mea culpa stance of its managing director Stuart Mason is admirable, I’m not sure that he’s being entirely fair to himself and his team.

I could be wrong, but it doesn’t appear that his plan to reconfigure the business to focus on higher margin rather than commodity work, supported by a brave investment strategy, was the problem. In fact, it was the timing, both in terms of the current climate and also how long it was taking for the benefits to be realised, that was the cause of Ink Shop’s undoing.

Mason was a vocal advocate of the need for change in print – perhaps sometimes a little too vocal – but his passion for print generally and his business specifically was admirable.

And while it would be easy to surmise that the lesson to be learned from Ink Shop is that change is not always a good thing, I think Mason would probably be the first to say that the worst sort of decision is no decision and we all have to embrace change.

It’s just that sometimes you need a little bit of luck and enough time to make even the best-laid plans succeed.