Slough-based, large-format print specialist The Big Display Company is fast building business on the back of a HP Latex R2000 Plus printer it bought through approved UK reseller Papergraphics in March 2021. I talked with marketing director Jack Murphy about what a difference a year makes…
Can we just recap on what prompted you to plump for the HP Latex R2000 Plus printer in the first place Jack?
Well we’d had a HP FB700 for about seven years and although the technology was still great, there was beginning to be too much downtime on it and we felt we were losing out on print quality. So we looked at all the options, and we’re very convinced about Latex technology having been gone through the 360s, 570s, 800 etc, so the R2000 was an obvious one to go for once we saw samples and understood what the actual throughput would be. Within a week of it going in it had totally transformed how we were doing things.
From quite soon after that HP Latex R2000 Plus printer purchase you spoke about the new opportunities it was affording you. What have been the most major gains so far?
There are really two big areas we’ve been able to improve upon - at totally different ends of the market.
We’ve been able to produce some really nice high quality acrylic displays, which though in theory we could do on the FB700, by the time you do the whiteover you lose time and ink. Because of the heads and the way the white ink sits on the R2000 you’re quickly up and running and we were able to take on some very nice work where we’re laying down different variations of white onto acrylics, and onto some ultra clear films as well - work we’d not been able to get near previously.
At the opposite end, we’ve been getting involved in short-run packaging and printing onto cardboard. We’ve been aspiring to do that for such a long time because it’s so hard to outsource it, especially where a trade customer may only want five, ten, 50, 100 - the big packaging guys out there are not interested in doing that. It has taken us a while to be able to deliver on that front but we’ve managed to narrow everything down the right supplier, the right stock and now if we get an order for one box or 500 we can print it.
What shape do you think The Big Display Company will be in, in another year’s time - and will the name still be representative of what it does?
It is a running joke in the office that we should be the Big Box Company, the Big Sticker Company… As you know, our original trading name was Bullseye Awards and Garments Limited because it did trophies and T-shirts - we’re of a constantly evolving mindset. We moved into display graphics. Now we’re moving more into short-run packaging, but we see that as being part of an entire offering we have. It feeds quite nicely into companies that sell branded merchandise for instance, and want the boxes for that merchandise as well as the roller banners and ways to display their products. It sits very nicely together.
In terms of where we see ourselves going, our next bit of investment is in another 1.8 x 3.2m Zund, which is coming soon. I’m really looking forward to that because when it comes to packaging, finishing is a massive bottleneck so it should help us be able to develop that side of the business. It will also enble us to take on more acrylic work because it won’t matter if we need to route in for two hours - the other work can go through the other cutter.
And do you see margin improving along with all this diversification? Many companies seem to invest and extend products/services to increase turnover, but what about profitability?
That’s a really good question. When it comes to short-run packaging it’s certainly about margin - the gross margin we can achieve there are fantastic, the net margin not so good when you’re needing to be very labour intensive, hence our investments! But we’re finding that with the very premium products too, customers are happy to pay for our expertise rather than just ink on sheet. It’s not about ripping anyone off, it’s about appreciation of what we do and allowing us to be able to pay everyone a fair wage, continue to invest and to keep moving forward.