The tools of success

The Elves and The Shoemaker, remember that children’s Ladybird classic? The story of the mendicant cobbler who was helped to success by little elves, who each night as he slept, made the most beautiful shoes that he then sold in his shop. The quality of the shoes was so exquisite that the shoemaker’s establishment became known far and wide. The cobbler became fabulously rich and lived happily ever after. 

The key of course to the shoemaker’s business growth were the elves who were busily beavering away in the background creating products that the shoemaker could then present to his adoring customers.

So what’s this charming magical tale got to do with printing? Well, actually quite a lot, especially when you apply its central business model – the elves providing the work, tools and materials and the cobbler utilising this external production unit to grow his business – to Venture Banners (VB), the Essex-based large-format, trade printing company.

Venture Banners entered the wide-format market four years ago offering a trade service to print businesses to output digitally printed wide-format banners and roller banners. “Very large-format work is hard to buy if you’re not dealing with high volumes,” says Scott Conway, founding partner and managing director of the company. “What we did was to get work from numerous printers, so we were outputting about 10,000sq.m per month, and because of the volume of work we were able to keep prices very low indeed.”

Upping the ante 

In the wide-format industry there are many trade printers, but this year Venture Banners has elevated itself to new heights thanks to serious technological investment and refinement of its services – giving it an edge that is unique to trade printers. 

 “We are here to make printers of all persuasions look good,” says Scott. “By using us, printers have got themselves a whole new wide-format division that allows them to expand their offerings and diversify into new market areas, without the need of any capital outlay, the addition of new staff or even an expert knowledge of the wide or grand-format market. 

“We make it easy for printers to offer new services, and thanks to our sister company, if a client needs larger than 3.2m wide, we can cope with that as well. In reality, we have no limitations. Everything we print is delivered plain label – either direct to our clients or to the end-customer. Everything is packaged and shipped as though it has all come from the main client.” 

Central to Venture Banner’s great leap forward has been a £350,000 investment in an EFI VUTEk GS 3250r printer, installed earlier this year, which Scott describes as the “Rolls Royce” of wide-format printer hardware.  The GS 3250r is a 3.2m wide, UV, roll-to-roll printer offering true 1000dpi quality, which makes it perfect for high-margin, close-view work across a wide range of substrates. 

 “It’s one hell of a sexy beast,” says Scott. “It is the engine powering our business and by default hundreds of others too. Thanks to economies of scale, we can output banners at £10.50 per square metre and roller banners at £35.00, which for digital printers running smaller machines, these prices can’t be matched. We can print 14 roller banners in just nine minutes! Small digital printers should use their machines for more profitable jobs such as stickers, vehicle wraps and use our printing service to make money for them.”

Trade Website

Venture Banners prides itself on its unique set of tools that it offers to its printing company clients, and the main one of these is VB Media launched earlier this year. 

As far as trade printers go, VB Media is unique because it provides printing company clients their own wide-format website that can be used as an adjunct to their main site – effecting a whole new wide-format printing division, or simply used as their own main website. 

“We developed VB Media in-house over a nine month period,” says Wayne Bodimeade, developer of the VB Media System and Company Director. “For companies wanting a piece of the wide format pie or for those wanting support for more profitable wide or grand-format work, VB Media creates a new printing division. Printing customers don’t need to invest in excess of £7k for a custom-built website, they can use or integrate VB Media into their business and the great thing about it, is that it only costs a nominal fee of £29 per month.” 

The VB Media service consists of two parts. The first is the Admin Control Panel, where users can manage everything such as materials, products, prices, orders and general appearance among other things. It is password protected and therefore is only accessible to the purchasing print company. 

The second part gives the purchasing print company its own public website, where customers visit, use and place orders through.  Site features are very versatile including customers’ own domain names, a large format price calculator and links to social media. When orders have been received through the website, the print company can choose which work it wishes to do itself and which it wants to seamlessly send through to Venture Banners. 

Marketing support

In addition to VB Media, Venture Banners offers a number of marketing support materials that includes a library of images for use in customers’ own printing and promotional materials, basic marketing and pricing guidelines as well as fully customisable print templates of leaflets, so print companies that promote their portfolio of new services which at the very least include their logos and pricing details. 

Venture Banners also offers a Trade Pack to customers who are new to the business of banner selling. The pack includes sample finished mesh and PVC banners plus all information required including pricing and materials. 

“Venture Banners was started by people who hail from a marketing background and we have used our expertise in this field to really provide a trade printing service which leaves the others in the shade,” says Wayne. “If printing companies want to venture into new wide format areas, they can build a whole business plan around us. They know that with our top-of-the-range kit they are getting the best quality print at the best prices available. We also operate a solid consistent pricing policy. It doesn’t change, so printing companies wishing to use our backroom resources have the confidence and peace of mind to devise solid business plans and projections based around our services.”   

An option-rich future 

With the installation of the EFI VUTEk GS 3250r, Venture can offer the highest quality banner and roller banner work, as well as high quality poster work, something it couldn’t have offered before it installed the VUTEk printer. With this machine fully at the heart of this trade printer’s output, Venture will be expanding the type of work it can offer its clients and next year will see a push for pop-ups, posters, self-adhesive and general exhibition work. 

“We work with the market, whatever its demands we can respond. We can cover anything. Our invisible yet highly effective service makes it easy for printers to take the steps required for growth but without the obvious risks.”  

VB Media what it can do for you

• A website with your own domain name
• Control the look of your own website
• Change colours and fonts easily
• Create custom pages
• Control the navigation
• Add links to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ pages or your company blog
• Get your very own large-format price-calculator on your website
• Select and control the pricing of the materials and products supplied by VB
• Customise the text for any of the materials or products
• Add your own materials and products
• Start taking orders through your website
• Choose which part of the orders you want to send to VB and which you would like to print in-house
• Process orders within the control panel
• Seamlessly send orders to Venture Banners
• Accessible from any modern browser or smartphone

For more information about Venture Banners trade print services please visit www.venturetrade.co.uk or call Scott on 0845 604 5470

For a demonstration of VB Media visit www.banner-king.co.uk