The Month of December

December is a time for rushing around, working against the odds to get organised in time for christmas, we tend to focus on our personal lives and go into auto pilot for our working lives. At some point both in work and personal you need to step back and evaluate the circumstances. Are you prepared for christmas? Have you considered next year? Do you know the opening times of the places you need to go to throughout December? 

Christmas time is a time for giving, and companies in the current climate have cut back on gifts, and put their focus into christmas cards. As a company with digital facilities we are more than capable of helping with the printing of your personalised range both for home and work, but dont forget the last postage dates. 

Have you thought about your printing requirements for next year, do you need more stationery, perhaps a magazine or brochure or something fancy like a paper laminated exhibition bag for any exhibitions you may be planning to take part in? The earlier you can plan ahead the better, both in terms of options and pricing. Over this year we have been working on promoting that we are not just a magazine printer of certain titles. We have state of the art equipment with great, friendly staff, and we are waiting to help out with your printing.

Lastly, make sure you check opening times of the companies you intend dealing with. There is nothing worse than taking on urgent work and finding companies you need are shut over the christmas period. Make sure you are prepared, and it should be a stress free run up to christmas.
Please follow us on twitter or like us on facebook, using the buttons over to the right. We are working on the visual experience of the facebook page, so this will be changing and showing our identity. But by liking us, or following us we can keep you posted of developments at the company, or find out more about your experiences with us, by your feedback. This can only help everyone.

A Slick Machine

Today I witnessed a beautiful thing and the story is worth recounting. It started with a random call with a customer, and just a little bit of conversation and suddenly they discovered that we actually did print magazines and brochures. We then had the opportunity to quote for a large holiday brochure, within 24 hours we had won the quote for the holiday brochure and were awaiting the supplied artwork. This arrived within the next day and the job was booked in and passed into production, where the studio began pagination for the holiday brochure. Proofs were ran, passed and then sent to plate, where the job was loaded onto the press and printed in a most efficient manner. From there it was matt laminated and gloss spot UV'd with embossing and perfect bound. In my mind a beautiful thing, the whole company working in synch to provide a product for the customer, in this case their holiday brochure, which we all took pride in.
The lesson we learnt was that no matter how much we think, the customer isn't necessarily aware of the range of capabilities on what we can actually produce. We have great equipment but most especially staff. They are capable of turning out high quality work, we just want you the customer to know that. So if you ever wonder who can I ask to print my magazines and brochures give us a call. Check us out on social media to find out more about us, or ring for a free quotation, our staff really are happy to help.

Artwork Formats For Your Printer

Well this is the daddy of all posts, today we are going to talk generically about artwork formats for your printer. In the world as it is today, the customer tends to want to provide their own artwork, for very good reasons:

• They know what they want
• They want to keep costs down
• They have software bundled in with a personal computer

All of the above reasons are valid and we would never argue with a customer's wants and needs. Now with a range of products across our business, each department has very different needs in what they specifically require. Our best advice in all instances is to approach your printer to discuss artwork and artwork format before you send it in or even start it.

It is not always correct thinking to assume that by supplying us artwork it is going to keep costs down, quite often customer supplied artwork will require much more work to get it to a level where we can use it, also the software that comes free on a pc is completely different to the professional software designed specifically for print purposes.

Another source of artwork supplied to us for use is from your websites. This artwork is much lower resolution than we require because it is only needed as a visual reference, also there will be colour issues because of the colour spaces used between the different mediums.

The point of this post is to make the customer think before supplying their own artwork. We have managed to avoid all of the technical jargon and formats etc, because it isn't necessary. Just that we communicate before any wasted time is spent on both parties efforts.

Lastly, if you are going to supply the artwork, make sure it is finalised, because changes will involve starting again in most cases and seriously impacts on time.

Make sure you follow us on twitter and like us on facebook to get the latest news and offers from The Wealden group

Social Media

What is social media? Can it help my business? What social media do you use?

What is social media?
Social media is about connecting with like minded individuals and passing information and sharing content, otherwise known as web 2.0, this is an exciting time to be involved in the internet as you can reach out across the world and tap into potential customers, for instance, I reached out on my birthday through youtube and facebook to say hello to people and spread my message as far as I could across the world, it went to New Zealand, Australia, Falklands and America. This is a simple illustration of how far you can get your company message across.

Can it help my business?
If you can link with people that have a need for your product or information then social media can be a huge benefit to your business. The misconception here, is that numbers or hits are what you are after. Imagine, if you opened your doors to allow 10000 people through, you may consider that great or worthwhile, but if none of them are interested in your product or information then why were they there in the first place. But what if you had 10 people that had a huge interest in your product and they came in, are you more likely to sell to them? This is how social media should be used, find people that have an interest, engage with them and don't try to sell to them.

What Social Media Do You Use?
There are loads of places to start but get involved in youtube, facebook, twitter and google+. Just these few places will take enough of your time, keep a consistent image across all those areas and be prepared to talk, listen and answer. Find out where your likely customers are hanging out, they may have a forum that they congregate in. You need to be where they are.
You can connect with us, via the links on this page and we welcome the opportunity to engage with you. Hopefully you will see from our social that our message is, quality printing, reliable service and helpful people.
Good luck and enjoy your social media.

Special Products at Wealden

Today, Im going to introduce you to the Special Products part of Wealden. My name is Paul Ricketts and I manage this division of the group. The remit is basically paper products that are not regular commercial products, like bags, boxes and folders.

So we are a UK based manufacturer based in Kent who supply high quality laminated paper bags, for small quantities and quick timescales for special events and promotions. We have produced bags for some highly prestigious names throughout the UK and world. We can print in process and specials and have a range of options to suit style, such as matt, gloss or satin laminations, UV varnishes, foils and embossings. Even laser etched patterns (though slight burning inside). Handles can vary from hand held to shoulder, in polypropylene, satin, grosgran or die cuts.

Coupled with our rope handle product we offer 2 sizes of twisted paper handle bags A4 and A3 together with polythene bags such as patch, duffle and clip close.

Because we have so much capacity for this work we excel at folders too, just ask and we will always try to help.

So thats all for today but will come back with more details of our work

Getting Started

Today is the start of our blog, the good intention is to post often and talk about subjects of note and import within our world. We would hate to make the content too stuffy, but rather keep it personable, friendly and engaging, feedback and comments will always be welcome.

Of course we have many areas within the company to talk about, Advertiser, North Downs, Property, Print, Special Products and Town and Country. We would hope that somehow, each department will contribute and keep the blog alive. My name is Paul Ricketts, keeper of all things social media within the group.

Im starting to map out in my mind where we would like to be taking the blogs, but in the meantime, Im happy to take suggestions on board, and disregard them if they dont work within the master plan, but dont let that stop you from suggesting.

Our next item will be special products, for no other reason than its my department and I want to go first. It is the intention to talk about the products and some of the issues we have, and things to watch out for.

Just for fun here is a link to a page to help you decide about your facebook friends unfriend or not, that is the question. Hopefully, that has helped you rationalise your friends, and immediately made us a source of useful information for you.

See you next time!