Industry Mole

With spring in the air, the Mole has been busy looking at the best way forward for 2013. Like most other business owners, I am always thinking of ways to increase business, generate more sales and ultimately improve the bottom line at the end of the year.?I gave thought to all the normal business generating suspects, including the revamp of our website and throwing lots of money at Google Adwords, through to employing a PR company to increase exposure in key markets. All great ideas I thought, but then it got to the staff discussion: “But if we are generating more enquiries and sales opportunities then we are going to need a sales person”.?

You’re probably like me, busy each day reacting to the needs of your business to give too much thought to the ‘next big thing’ in digital printing. But sometimes we have to make time.

The mole had benefitted from 45 years of good health and well-being until just a few months ago, when disaster struck. After eight weeks of illness, generally feeling terrible and losing nearly half a stone in weight doctors diagnosed that I have a gluten intolerance. At the time I was totally ignorant to what this meant, not being sure what gluten actually was! Now I am an expert on the subject which, in a nutshell, means I can’t eat anything that contains wheat, barley or rye.

“Anything is possible. It’s just hard work and grafting”. I was inspired by Mo Farah as he breathlessly declared this after his 5,000m triumph during London 2012. Farah said, there is "no way to describe" becoming a double Olympic champion. Unquestionably, Team GB, draped in patriotic red, white and blue, outshone the gold that glittered with the sweat of honest brows. As the Olympic flame was quenched, the national conversation sparked into life. Topics like funding, school sports, opportunity, and legacy veiled a yearning undefined; quite simply, ‘how can we keep this going?’

Politics aside, I squirmed at the recent hubbub over our political elite being named and shamed for not knowing the price of milk and by inference, appearing out of touch with price-sensitive shoppers. I writhed because I too would have waffled and wriggled. I'd squirm further if I was asked the price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity, a low-energy light bulb or a roll of three-ply. At least I couldn't be accused of being a cynic. Oscar Wilde wrote: 'What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  In business, perhaps we're encouraging our customers to become commercial cynics.

“Waiter! There’s a fly in my soup.” Customer complaints justified or otherwise, can be as unwelcome as a bluebottle doing the backstroke in your broth. Sure, we all claim customers are important to our business, but how we handle customer complaints, especially those we deem unfounded, is our litmus test. Most of us are big enough to hold up our hand and admit when we’ve messed up. Whether we’ve innocently mismanaged customers’ expectations or let them down catastrophically, lessons can be learned. 

Embark or miss the boat?

Being in business is inherently risky. Being successful, sustainable and bankable has more to do with foresight than fortune. In life, nothing is certain but death and taxes. In business, it's change. Technology and globalisation are inevitable levers for change. 40% of the Fortune 500 companies in 2000 were gone just ten years later. Who saw the writing on the wall predicting Amazon and Waterstones would report e-book downloads eclipse printed book sales, or how we now enjoy online music, TV, films, news, articles, and information would decimate entire industries? When Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection under chapter 11 in the US, the winds of change swirled and chilled. This may not be Kodak's finest hour, but for the rest of us it’s a wake up call. What risks threaten, if not our survival, then our sustainable success?

Cloud computing - what am I supposed to do about that then? Having spent a fair whack of time online over the Christmas holidays, trying to find out a bit more about how this ‘trend’ is likely to impact upon business in general, and trying and get some sort of insight into what I should be doing about it, I’m more bamboozled than I was before. And I’m no technophobe – we use some of the most leading edge printers and software applications around - but it’s a case of where to start when it comes to investigating how cloud computing should be used in my business.

I sold my way into my first print job with no clue about printing. I sold ad. space for a newspaper to start with and fancied a change. The fact I had ‘blagged’ the experience became apparent after a couple of days but my new boss said he admired my tenacity so trained me up.
Two years later I fancied another change so I left that company on the promise of a new diesel Golf and an extra £5k a year and poked two fingers up at the guy who had taken me under his wing. I feel guilty about it now but that’s the thing; salespeople have a fire in their belly and quite often want to be company owners so beware.

November 2011

For the last two years I have taken advantage of the HMRC’s more liberal approach to the collection of corporation tax as they have allowed me to pay a small lump sum and then contribute a percentage of the debt monthly for ten months.

October 2011

The Widthwise Report 2011 has come out stating that number one priority with us printers is that we would like the machine manufacturers to spend more on R&D to bring running costs down. Personally, I think there should be more transparency in cost. I bet my last pound that if every person who took part in the Widthwise survey had shopped around for ink and other consumables they would have found that the running costs of the machine they had bought could tumble.

July 2011

June 2011