Dectek MD Mike Beese explains why he’s such a strong advocate of collaborative working.
Strength in numbers is not a new concept but, during these times of economic uncertainty, more effective results can certainly be achieved if businesses work collaboratively with others. The proof’s in the pudding, and DecTek MD Mike Beese is happy to share the company’s recipe for success. Taking turnover from around £2m in pre-Covid days to an anticipated £4.5m this year is impressive, and he expects that to grow to about £12m by 2025. Collaborative working has a lot to do with that.
“By pooling resources, knowledge, and expertise, print businesses can achieve more significant results as a collective than they would be able to accomplish alone. No business can offer every solution, but at DecTek we’re aiming to offer our partners, client base, competitors, and suppliers, the ability to extend their product range beyond their niche,” he says, explaining that it has built a comprehensive ‘digital manufacturing toolbox’ to this end. It provides its trade partners with a zero-risk opportunity for them to leverage their relationships with their own customers and sell products outside their own manufacturing capability.
“In essence it’s drop shipping” says Beese. “Our collaborative approach enables print businesses to expand their product portfolio without any equipment or staffing costs. Furthermore, they access a team of industry professionals with a wealth of knowledge, know-how and experience.”
He continues: “We introduced this new trading mindset post Covid in late 2020. We had realised that there were a great number of print companies looking to expand their product portfolio but unable to invest in new equipment to support diversity, and we saw this as an opportunity to expand our portfolio and grow and create new trading relationships and capitalise on our print and manufacturing expertise.”
DecTek also envisaged engaging more with its supplier base, offering branding and marketing products to promote and support new product launches and marketing campaigns for new products such as sustainable products awareness.
“Bringing our suppliers closer to the fabric of our business has had dramatic results. They understand what we need better than we do. So why resist change? Allowing them greater access has led to a more detailed understanding of our business and the opportunity for them with their equipment or consumables. This has been a wholly successful exercise for DecTek,” stresses Beese.
He goes on to say: “DecTek’s collaborative approach has seen it rapidly expand its range of services and includes a diverse product offering including dye-sublimation, banners, packaging, signage and corporate badging to name just a few. We also brought to market our print and manufacturing fulfilment services, which has been very successful, increasing turnover quite significantly and allowing us to further invest and grow our product portfolio - what I term a perpetual growth cycle.
“We are not shy to invest in our print fulfilment manufacturing range of equipment. For example, we were approached by an online ecommerce trading company to supply dye-sublimation full-colour mugs. We started low tech with a hand press. From this, and due to client demand, we now have our first fully automated mug robot delivering 200 full colour mugs an hour, generating over 3,000 sales per week - a great investment.
“DecTek has also secured contracts for additional products such as direct-print-to-garment (DTG) with its first T-shirt production line going live in early April. We expect great growth and activity in this market sector, which in turn will attract other associated textile product enquiries.
“DecTek is continuing to expand, with plans to invest an additional half a million pounds this year in production equipment on top of its impressive £1.2m over the past couple of years. Additionally, the business will expand its manufacturing facility to accommodate this growth plan.
“Part of our collaborative new growth initiative incorporates showcasing our production facilities on a weekly basis because we have learned that by opening our doors to both customers and suppliers we enrich our own opportunity.
“We do not have walls, drawbridges or barricades around DecTek, we have pure transparency on our production processes and equipment portfolio. We invite anyone to meet us and share experiences. There is always common ground. There are often common frustrations too, but these can lead to great opportunities. We would like to think that we are the greatest converts to business through collaboration.”