BUSINESS WEST – CONNECTING BUSINESSES inspire


UK’s largest business printers, who have successfully ridden the storm and continue to grow their business.


Tell me about Integrity Print. We have been a real ‘traditional’ business printer operating for over a 100 years from our Midsomer Norton premises. We have been a major local employer and


had generations of families – grandfathers, fathers and sons all come through our ranks, and I say that advisedly as printing has been a hugely male dominated environment in the past which we are slowly but steadily addressing through recruitment. Our history has been in high volume business


‘forms’ i.e. invoice remittances, computer paper, bank statements, wage slips, cheque books – all of which are still a requirement today but certainly with significantly reduced demand.


Looking to the future: Andrew Law, Integrity Print’s sales and marketing director


that there has been an across the board decline in the UK market rather than in any one specific activity. This UK decline directly reflects the experience of other countries, particularly Japan and China where we have seen the largest overall reduction in market size. So in an industry that is seeing global decline,


how can print companies respond? In this interview, Paul O’Collins, head of innovation at Business West, speaks to Andrew Law, sales and marketing director at Integrity Print, one of the


How has this general decline affected Integrity’s activity and what challenges have you faced? Printing has traditionally been a capital- intensive business, and our existing investment in plant and machinery is significant. We had no intention of moving completely away from our core business, so we have had to face the challenge of how to maintain our core capability, leverage our existing investment in machinery and support our 320 strong workforce, by being innovative and creative in our approach to identifying market opportunity and new services.


So how has this innovation helped you in dealing with these key challenges? Through strong leadership and a solid business strategy, we have not only survived but flourished in a difficult market. For us, the development of a


clear and shared business strategy has really helped us with good decision making. This strategy has helped us


remain competitive, but our offers are now increasingly solutions based rather than just price based. In fact, this strategy has required significant


investment in new equipment and staff and so it’s important that we generate revenue to reinvest. However, some of our traditional volume business is still very much based on us providing highly price competitive solutions.


So you would describe Integrity as being in good shape to face the future? I think we are. We have always maintained a quality culture in our business and have built into our strategy a core reliance on accreditation to key industry standards. This allows us to perform some business-critical activities for our clients. We have attained accreditation in key industry areas including:


• Sterile food packaging from the British Retail Consortium (BRC)


• ISO 27001 – Information Security • ISO 9001 – Quality • ISO 14001 – Environmental


• FSC and PSC accreditation to ensure we source our paper and packaging products from sustainable sources.


This approach has proved really beneficial to the business in many ways. For example, our BRC accreditation has allowed us to print sterile labels for supermarket shelves that in turn has driven a £500k annual revenue stream for the business. A completely new market that we were not previously operating in.


in making our choices consistent and aligned and really kept us on course. A lot of thought and energy went into developing our business strategy, but we have distilled and simplified the thinking into four key elements:


‘We have always maintained a quality culture in our business’


What do you think is the biggest challenge facing Integrity, and how do you plan to overcome it? It is in understanding what the market changes in printing will be and making sure we are flexible enough to adapt to changes in the industry. For example, with new


‘information rich’ product labelling, we have already grown a new labelling and


1. Be the last man standing in our traditional high-volume print market


2. Develop a focus on specific “niche” growth sectors through the acquisition and development of expert sales channels


3. Supply chain integration by moving our business towards the higher value data management aspects of our clients’ printing requirements as well as print itself


4. Be perceived in the industry as a “safe pair of hands”


Following these four strands has made taking some difficult decisions easier and ensured consistency in our business.


So with this strategy have you been able to avoid just competing on price? By focusing on niche solution-based sales rather than volume we have in many cases been able to move away from price led negotiations. That is not to say we haven’t needed to


packaging business stream from virtually zero to £6m annually. The way we all shop and expect our products to be delivered is changing dramatically and we believe this will increasingly drive the requirement for new ‘super-smart’ labelling and packaging solutions. The conscious move into expanding markets


like short run food labelling has presented us with new challenges and we have invested heavily in capital equipment and new channels to market so that we can address what we think is a real growth market. For example, our short run digital labelling


equipment has cost us over £250k but has already allowed us to enter the craft beer labelling market, providing ‘bespoke’ short run labels. Identifying those growth markets and investing in them will be the key to our success.


And the future? Three things – responding to market and client needs whilst sticking to our core strategy, making sure our clients value us as a solution provider as well as a product supplier and picking the right technologies and niches to invest in.


JULY/AUGUST 2018 insight 19


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