Deliveries to London During the Olympics 2012

So what is your plan for deliveries to London during the Olympics 2012.  We asked ourselves that same question and then started looking into what was and was not going to be possible, speaking to courier companies and reading the olympic notes and government websites. Well, I trust you have more luck than we did, because it seems there is going to be a shut down of a lane running through London, for the Olympic network route, which is for the sole use of the olympics and moving people to and from the events. This, however, means that the traditional roads which are under pressure anyway will be further pressurised by the loss of one lane.
As far as I can tell this will mean trying to get in and out for delivering goods is going to be a non starter. So businesses throughout London are going to get choked from lack of goods or products. Possibly they will take deliveries overnight, but that would mean increased costs to their business and the courier. We shall be planning as best we can to get our deliveries done before and after the Olympics, but there will be emergencies, as I am certain there will be for many other people. So I wonder what exactly will happen in these instances.
If you have any thoughts or comments please use the channels available on this page to get in touch as we would love to hear other's thoughts on the situation.

A Day at the Farm Making Bags

When you drive into the beautiful setting that is Bodiam, you immediately start to relax, our factory is based on a farm that looks back across Bodiam and the views are simply stunning. The factory is 10 minutes away from our main base in Hawkhurst, but ties in on the phone system and computer network. The work we carry out at the farm is now creasing and bag making. The creasing consists of using a machine called a cylinder which has the bag matrix on it, and as the printed sheets pass through it, the matrix applies all of the creases and cuts, necessary to construct the bag. Once the sheets have all passed through they are released from the sheet via the guillotine and passed to the girls for constructing, where all the glues, tapes and boards are applied and the intricate process of making a bag begins.

This art of making a bag, really is a thing to watch, it looks so simple and yet when you start on your own, it stops making any kind of sense and the sheets get ruined. This, I have always felt, would have been a great task for the Generation Game. Quick when you watch somebody experienced and a complete disaster when a novice tries. Once the bags are made up we then drill them for the rope handles, or at this point send them off to a specialist machine called a platten for die cut handles. The bags are drilled in units of five. When we get ropes in stock cut to length, we immediately rope one end so that they are ready to thread through the drill holes, again when you see someone experienced doing this it is simply amazing to see. The bags are then packed and boxed ready to send to the customer.

Paper Laminated Bags In Less Than Five Days A Tough Ask

Date: Monday 30th January 2012
Situation: customer in desperate need of rope handled paper laminated bags for a show on Friday 3rd February 2012

So even in the best of scenarios this is a tough ask, 500 bags 230x70x340 printed 4colour process, gloss laminated and rope handled, and delivered back in just a few days.

Well, Production were fantastic, because the customer was organised and sent through artwork immediately, we were able to lay down on our templates and our production team fit the print into the Wealden Advertiser print run, so that it could dry over Monday night. It was then laminated on Tuesday, and cut and creased Wednesday and delivered to our team of bag constructors, who made them overnight on Wednesday night. On the Thursday they were drilled, roped, packaged and sent out via courier for a pre noon delivery on the Friday.

On Friday morning we checked via twitter they had arrived with the customer who was delighted and they were then taken to the exhibition Friday night for Saturday.

Result: Customer happy and working at their exhibition

Basically, we had all worked together in compiling the various components of a rope handled paper laminated carrier bag to deliver a quality product, right into customer hands on time, on budget. Did you know that to produce a paper carrier bag like the above, it needs to be:

Colour Proofed

Plated

Printed

Laminated

Cut and Creased

Constructed

Drilled

Roped

Packed

Delivered

This is why bags are not generally a quick timescale product, each part of the process requires checking before moving on to the next. 

So for this project, as Head of Special Products, I am grateful to the customer in believing we could do it and their order, to Production for their scheduling and moving of work, Finishing for their timely work, and especially the girls who worked in making up in very tight timescales, and lastly Despatch who worked seamlessly with the Courier to make sure all the aforementioned hard work was not wasted. Simply a brilliant team effort and proof of the quality within the company. 

If you have a project you would like to discuss please feel free to call us on
01580 753322, we welcome a challenge.

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.

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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.