We were just starting to dismantle the stand on the last day of The Print Show 2023, when a customer who had been picking my brains on growing his business, somewhat embarrassingly, asked for a selfie with me and then proceeded with his camera, at arms length, to photograph the two of us whilst I smiled somewhat inanely, slightly bemused at this development.
So I know what it's like to be properly famous and wasn't at all surprised when Colin Sinclair McDermott (aka The Online Print Coach) asked Wayne and myself to do an interview for his very popular podcast, The Printerviews.
The interview was going really well. We went through how the business was started from my garage, how we grew from an office only base into a production house and the enormity of our first printer purchase. Colin commented that Venture Banners had a great name in the industry and that he'd never heard a bad word said about us, to which we modestly responded, "yes, we know".
And then he threw us a curve ball… "apart from one thing", he said, "I've heard your turnaround times can be very rigid".
The explanation for that is simple. Like most businesses, we don't have an infinite capacity, and we're old school - we don't want to overpromise then underdeliver, and would (grudgingly) prefer to turn away work rather than let someone down.
However, we had already recognised the issue and behind the scenes the wheels were in motion. During the summer, as we got busier, our turnaround times increased and at one point was up to seven days, and that was far too long for our liking. We had to come up with a plan.
The first thing we did was to buy another Zünd. That doubled our cutting capacity immediately. When you've got six high-end VUTEk printers, together capable of producing close to a thousand square metres of print an hour, the bottleneck is always going to be the finishing.
The second issue to overcome was space. We needed more packing tables, which meant we needed to create a lot more space on the production floor.
The problem is we hold an awful lot of stock—both material and hardware—and over time the stock had encroached into the production space. The solution was an additional three thousand square foot unit to hold the bulk of our stock, the plan would be to use this unit as a 'pantry' in effect. This would free up a massive amount of space and enable us to expand the finishing and packaging.
Of course the overall investment, as always, was huge: the additional unit, an additional forklift, a curtainside truck to ferry the stock between pantry and production units, as well as the significant cost of the Zünd. But the payoffs in terms of increased finishing capacity as well as a consistent and possibly even reduced turnaround time should make it worthwhile.
We've also added a 'turnaround estimate' section to the website, on the right, underneath the calculator, to save our customers having to phone us and ask what our turnaround time is.
Sometimes, we're able to get things out sooner for a nominal charge so we've also added a section that states whether an 'Express' turnaround is available.
The whole turnaround thing is less of an issue between November and March but I am going to be very interested to see the impact of our investment next year.
In the meantime, have a great Christmas and a very prosperous New Year, and if you find you have some time over the festive season, have a listen to The Printerviews—there are some great interviews with some very interesting people.
And for anyone thinking of attending next year, I'll be doing signed photos and autographs at The Print Show 2024.