NEWS
ROUTE 1 PRINT HELP PRINTERS PROMOTE AFTER LOCKDOWN South Yorkshire trade printers, Route 1 Print, are helping print businesses to get back on top with a host of free resources to boost sales after lockdown. Route 1 Print’s ethos is to put their customers at the heart of everything they do. As well as working to make the print buying process as simple as possible, Route 1 Print often produce free tools which their clients can use to grow their businesses. Now, as we all get ready for lockdown to end, the company are releasing their biggest resource pack yet. The launch centres around Route 1 Print’s latest eBook, the Essential Guide to Rebuilding Your Business After Lockdown. This free eBook is packed with advice on how printers can prepare their business for re-opening – not just so that they can re-open smoothly, but also how they can get their print business back to full strength as quickly as possible. The guide helps printers to form a comprehensive, rebuilding business plan. Readers will learn about important product and pricing considerations, as well as marketing and sales strategies to ensure they are driving a healthy profit margin from the start. As well as their free eBook, Route 1 Print has
released a series of marketing templates. These just add branding templates can be quickly edited by clients, giving them a ready made marketing campaign. It’s just one way printers can save time and money on their rebuild plans! The trade printer has released three template collections in total, all focussed on ways printers should be promoting themselves to their own clients after lockdown. Each collection includes an email, poster, social media post, and a direct mail piece – everything you need for a cohesive marketing campaign. Brand Manager, Christie Round, says, “We want to do whatever we can to support our clients at this critical time. This resource launch is just another example of how we’ve been working to support printers over the past year. We will continue to work with our clients to find out how we can best help them at every point in their rebuild plan and beyond.” Christie goes on to say, “If there is something else that we could be doing to make things easier for print buyers, we want to hear about it. After all, client feedback is the best way we can learn how to improve our service. We’d like to encourage our
clients and other print buyers to get in touch if they have any ideas, and we’ll get to work on finding a solution.” All these resources, the eBook and the marketing templates, are 100% free to download from the Route 1 Print site. Simply head to their COVID-19 Essentials hub and look under Business Support. • Route 1 Print was founded in 2012 as part of the Bluetree Group. • Since starting, Route 1 Print has grown quickly and now dispatches over 1,000 jobs every day from its 100,000 square foot production hub in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. • Route 1 Print is the largest online trade print provider in the UK. • In 2018 & 2019, Route 1 Print were national winners in the European Business Awards. • Route 1 Print exists to support, empower and simplify the lives of printers and creatives by putting them at the heart of everything we do. www.route1print.co.uk
SOLOPRESS ADDS PRODUCTION WITH HORIZON HOF-400
Efficient and flexible production from SoloPress’s new HP PageWide T250 web fed inkjet press is being supported by a Horizon HOF-400 high speed offline feeder from IFS. The Southend-on-Sea company, founded in 1999 through an informal collaboration between two start-ups, produces a wide range of commercial print including leaflets, flyers and brochures mainly for small businesses. The HP PageWide T250 inkjet press joined HP Indigo and iGen digital presses and Heidelberg
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SpeedMaster litho presses. Solopress also operates a range of wide format production systems. Head of Operations, Jack Clifford, explains the investment: “We wanted something that would help us stitch the short runs from the new HP PageWide T250. We easily manage the long runs with our existing machinery. For short runs we were spending more time setting up the stitcher than running it. The HOF-400 allows us to manage these shorter runs more efficiently by loading collated sets with many different titles.
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“It also gives us the flexibility to either complete jobs using the HOF or the hoppers. If there is a run with a high page count it makes more production sense to use the hoppers. If it is a small pagination then it is best to run it through the HOF-400.” As for choosing the system he says: “When we were making the investment we spoke to IFS to see what would be the best solution for stitched books of low quantity. The HOF-400 ticked all the boxes. We expect it to enable us to achieve a 20% to 30% increase in output.” The operation has also added a second HOF-400 to its bindery line up to support short run production from other presses. The Horizon HOF-400 high speed offline feeder provides flexible system configurations such as cover feeding, sheet insert on, variable page count, bleed trimming and creasing for digital printing. The HOF-400 finishing system can also be connected with the finishing devices for the offset outputs to process both digital and offset print. www.ifsl.uk.com
Engravers and 3D Printers. Roland is committed to offering the best after-care support in the industry through our dedicated training courses at the Roland DG Academy and our comprehensive RolandCare warranties. Tel: 01275 335540 • www.rolanddg.co.uk
APRIL 2021 • QUICK PRINT PRO
