The challenge

Horrendously early mornings, hours spent staring at stretches of grey motorway and children who’ve forgotten your name. Commuting very long distances to work isn’t always ideal.

Two years ago Stephen Egerton had certainly had enough. Although he loved his job as a cost containment and business change consultant working for National Grid Wireless, he wanted a change. And having worked his magic there, and never one to stand still for too long, Egerton was ready for a fresh challenge.

Meanwhile, 35 minutes down the road from Egerton, staff at KJB were having the opposite problem. Business was certainly steady at the B3 trade printers. But this, owner Lisa Simmonds realised, can be a more dangerous position to be in than you might think.

The solution was one that would solve both KJB and Egerton’s woes. Simmonds invited Egerton, who had assisted KJB on a high-value property transaction in the past, to collate a full operational, cost and market position appraisal of the business. 

The verdict was perhaps difficult, but of course vital, to hear. “At that time it was a B3, litho-only trade house. They had one major customer that was contributing around 40% of the overall annual turnover and I saw that as a bit dangerous, but also a real opportunity,” says Egerton. “Their defined product range was limited and so had to be grown.”

Egerton adds that although the team was for the most part very strong and dedicated, a slightly stagnant culture had crept in: “There were a lot of loyal, capable, hardworking staff that were attending and doing the day job but the company lacked innovation. I think everybody was comfortable and what I needed to do was take some of that comfort away. As always there were some very good workers, and there were some not so good.” 

It became clear, then, that the benefits of bringing Egerton on board to ring the changes could be profound. So this is exactly what KJB did.

The method

Not that transforming the company from a trade house to a trade and end user printer was an overnight process. Egerton reports that revamping the pressroom and restructuring the KJB team took around six months. Investment in new equipment in order to offer a wider range of products was key.

The company decided to go for a five-colour Komori Lithrone S29 to add a B2 offering. It was also time to embrace digital printing. Two Xerox DocuColor 8080s, a mono Xerox 4112 and XMPie software to enable personalisation were chosen, and the company is also set to upgrade its Tharstern MIS to Tharstern Primo early this year. “That’s to really improve the volume of quotations we can do. We have two full-time estimators and the volume of quotations and conversions we can do is key to driving business growth,” explains Egerton. 

Egerton also decided it would be shrewd to bring finishing operations in-house, overseeing an investment in a Duplo DC-645i slitter-cutter-creaser with integrated folder, Duplo DC-10/60 Pro collator tower, Renz wire-binding equipment, Autobond laminator, Introma stitcher, shrink-wrapping line and guillotine. 

“Traditionally KJB was doing a lot of stationery – what I would call jobbing work,” say Egerton. “What we can now provide is a much wider range. We do a lot of work within the training sector, so wire-bound training booklets which we’d been outsourcing before. Laminating is another example: we were typically outsourcing £3,000-£4,000 worth of laminating each month before and now that’s all in-house.”

Egerton adds: “KJB has always had a strong balance sheet, so we were in a strong negotiating position for financing machines. At the time it was a buyers’ market, and we were in a position to command a good deal.”

But where to house this machinery was an issue. Egerton decided all departments should be on the same site rather than over two locations, 300 yards apart.

“We sold one of the B3 presses to make way for the B2 and we relocated into one site by acquiring an adjacent unit, because what we had culturally was almost a two-part organisation where the bosses and managers all resided in one premises, and some of the workers were in another location. And that made management difficult,” says Egerton.

He adds: “I did various studies, seeing how much time was lost each day and by each member of staff that was travelling to and from the adjacent premises, without even looking at the loss of efficiency of not having managers there.”

Which brings us onto people management. Egerton was also keen to implement a fairly radical culture overhaul, to ensure a cohesive and motivated team: “I did a 360-degree appraisal of the directors, managers and the staff, and the feedback I had was that the directors were invisible. It was a bit of an ivory tower situation,” says Egerton.

“But now the directors all walk the floor. I personally walk the floor at least twice a day. That could involve me dealing with the rubbish, it could involve me dealing with a specific issue.”

Then it was a case of letting go of those staff who, unfortunately, weren’t willing to embrace change. “We recruited and made redundancies,” explains Egerton, adding that recruiting sales and customer care staff was key to starting to serve end-users not just other printers.

“We had to develop a sales strategy focused very much on the end-user,” says Egerton. “One of the really good things about KJB when I joined was the customer care was brilliant; the attention to detail was superb so effectively all I needed to do was harness that. But we did recruit some very specialised staff that had a lot of experience in customer care.”

The result

KJB’s target is to sustainably double sales to £3m and Egerton is confident this target will be met in the 2014 financial year. 

The digital side of things is going very nicely, he reports: “Very quickly, within six months, we were up to a full day with the first Xerox machine, and within nine months we were up to 400,000 clicks, to a point where we needed to buy second and third machines.”

A real digital success story is KJB’s relationship with Bar Sport. “One of our large customers is franchise Bar Sport, they’re one of the UK’s largest, growing sports bars,” says Egerton. “They’ve increased their size over the past year and we provide all printed materials for those franchises.”

Key to hitting the £3m sales target will be building on KJB’s product offering, says Egerton. “KJB has a unique product called Ecolast, which is like the Xerox Never Tear. It’s a water-resistant, tear-resistant paper. That’s been great for KJB. We’ve done a lot of development there.”

He adds: “We’ve also become one of a few Anoto Destiny Wireless approved printers. That’s a system that translates handwriting into computer font, which is useful for patient notes in the NHS for example.”

“The software was great, but it hadn’t been developed as far as it could have been. We used experts here to improve the handwriting recognition. We’ve spent a lot of effort in R&D in terms of ensuring that our print, the magical dot pattern that sits behind the form, can actually convert the pen strokes.”

Going forwards, big data for personalisation will be a pivotal area of investment, reports Egerton. “Big data will be very valuable in the print sector, that goes hand-in-hand with the general trend in the sector of declining print runs.”

Despite not coming from a print background, Egerton’s input at KJB has, then, been extremely valuable. Not only were Egerton’s drooping eyelids revitalized by escaping the daily commute. A fresh pair of eyes has worked wonders for KJB too. 

KJB UK

Vital statistics 

Location Cannock, Staffordshire

Inspection host Commercial director Stephen Egerton

Size Turnover: around £2m; staff: 24 

Established 20 years ago by owner Lisa Simmonds

Products High-quality brochures, marketing materials and stationery 

Kit Five-colour Komori Lithrone S29, two Xerox DocuColor 8080s, mono Xerox 4112, five-colour B3 Heidelberg Printmaster, two-colour Heidelberg GTO 52, two-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster, Duplo DC-645i slitter-cutter-creaser with integrated folder, Duplo DC-10/60 Pro collator tower, Renz wire-binding equipment, Autobond laminator, Introma stitcher, shrinkwrapping line and guillotine

Inspection focus Bringing on board a commercial director from a non-print background to kick-start growth

DO IT YOURSELF

Following suit

Egerton feels that more print businesses than you might think could benefit from calling in outside help. It’s all too easy to mistake maintaining profits for stability, he says: “All businesses are in one of three phases of a lifecycle: decreasing in terms of turnover and profitability, stable or growing. A typical business cycle starts with growth, then plateaus and then goes downhill. So I think what you need to do when you’re plateauing is say ‘we need to do something else’. There are a lot of businesses out there who have more potential than they’re delivering.”

He adds: “A lot of printers have always recruited printers, and I think bringing in fresh blood in terms of people with fresh ideas and a fresh outlook is always valuable.”

Potential pitfalls

Knowing the newcomer’s limits as a non-print type is essential. “I’m a pretty outspoken person so in terms of looking at change I will normally say my piece. I’m fairly direct in terms of driving change,” says Egerton. “But I stay out of a lot of the technical aspects of print. I’m no expert and wouldn’t recommend specifics. I’ve got experts here who can do that.”

Top tips

• If revamping, take time (or get your new pair of eyes to take the time) to do a full review of all that might need to change. This should be a 360-degree review that includes management as well.
• If bringing in a fresh pair of non-print industry eyes, companies would be advised to go for someone nonetheless with experience in a related field: “I came from a background of wireless communications, from the broadcast and telecommunications perspective. That’s helped me in this role because I understood the media sector.”
• Make sure reinvestment is steady and sustainable. “We’re careful of each investment we make – each machine and person needs to earn their keep. If we invest in training for a member of staff we need to ensure that training has benefits and the performance is benchmarked in terms of going forwards.”
• Be alert to the workplace culture being as important to upgrade as the machinery. In KJB’s case, a new culture of visible management and overall innovation was needed.

Egerton’s top tip

“The biggest challenge is always on the personal side. People tend to think ‘we must do it that way because we’ve always done it that way.’”