p50-52 Screen:Layout 1 15/04/2009 12:05 Page 50
SCREEN PRINTING
It’s a funny old
game, isn’t it?
Joe Moore (right), director, of Morley-based The Tshirt Printers Ltd,
charts the ups and downs of a business that is governed by what
happens in the world of sport… and it’s not all bad news
D
on’t Panic! Things aren’t as bad as they The peaks in the footy years are interspersed
seem; 2009 is the final furlong of three with slightly leaner odd numbered years…
bad years. unless, of course, a squad of overpaid numpties
Yes, 2009 is going to be tough, but we always fail to qualify. We estimate that England’s failure Three consecutive lean years: 2007, 2008 and
knew it was going to be. There’s no football this to make the 2008 finals cost us revenue of 2009. Ouch!
year. around £250,000 last year. Last year, we were forced to make difficult
As we all know, even-numbered years are easy On top of this we had forked out for the choices and look hard at our costs.
for marketing departments: stick a football on necessary investments in kit and people to boost Unfortunately, we had to make some
your product and, hey presto, you have just our capacity to make sure that we were in a redundancies, but we also focused on other
created a marketing campaign. position to make hay while the sun shone. areas - buying as efficiently as we could, cutting
The Duracell bunny kicks a ball instead of It is fair to say that Steve McClaren was not our back on waste, reviewing phone and insurance
banging a drum, Domino’s launch their football- favourite person. costs.
shaped pizza, Suzuki pay Cristiano Ronaldo England’s failure to qualify meant we had to Were we, in short, nailing down the 1,001 little
handsomely to do a few keepy-ups in front of a revise our plans, and the forecast we are details that make up a business? Maybe we
car, and so on. currently working from now looks something like weren’t, but we are now: our incredibly flexible
And the same phenomenon hits the crazy world this: staff are now all multi-skilled (production staff
of printwear and promotion. Newspapers offer a
free In-ger-land 1966 T shirt for all readers, your
stationery supplier gives you a football shaped Revised forecast
squeezy stress toy instead of a mouse mat;
everything just goes footy mad.
People don’t just switch their spending from one
product to another, they actually spend more.
And that’s not even counting companies with a
direct link, such as the tournament sponsors or
official licence holders who will boost the
spending even further!
Having observed this phenomenon, back in 2006
we mapped out our plans for expansion and
investment leading up to 2012.
Our forecasted growth in turnover was supposed
to look something like this:
can work on print, embroidery and packing
machines, office staff can cover the art room and
Forecasted growth vice versa, and so on), which means no one is
standing idle and we keep agency staff costs
down to almost zero. Our warehouse and stock
control system has been streamlined, our credit
control tightened up; we’ve negotiated better
discounts with suppliers, and in a thousand little
ways we are a stronger, leaner business than we
were 12 months ago.
Yes, 2009 will still be tough, but we are
prepared for it. The good news is that as far as
we are concerned it marks not the beginning of
dark times, but the beginning of their end.
The really good news it that it looks like Fabio
Capello might be the man to whip those
| 50 | May 2009 www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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