If there is one thing Northend enjoy, it’s a challenge. However, nobody could have imagined the testing times ahead when the company – established in 1889 – celebrated its best year to date in March 2020. MD Nigel Stubley shares the ‘thriving’ Sheffield firm’s lockdown recovery success story.
Following the successful merger of Northend Creative Print Solutions with MyPrintPartners, our business was hit hard by the first lockdown.
Many customers in the leisure sector were prevented from trading and the knock-on effect was profound.
The team went from celebrating our success to almost no business coming in. Turnover halved, and staff were furloughed with a core team manufacturing everything our customers needed.
We took a hard look at the business to see where the shortfalls were and what we could do to come out in better shape. One of the first things that became apparent was how few of the team could work from home, with all machines and servers on site.
We identified the need for a system that operated in the ‘cloud’, enabling the client-facing team to work remotely.
A review of the Print Management Information Service was undertaken, and, by November, we had committed to Print IQ, a cloud-based system with refreshing new ideas of how workflow could operate in a £5m full-service print house.
The system went live in June, and there have been significant advantages – plus more to come in terms of efficiencies which will benefit all stakeholders.
Another area of concern was the ageing digital presses. Would they cope as the volumes ramped back up?
The answer was to collaborate with another business.
Northend bought a minority share and together the business flourished, growing 120 per cent, taking over all their print production and incorporating it into our workflow.
The digital volumes in Q1 2021 (April-June) quadrupled, allowing investment to be made in the latest digital technology from Canon, in the form of its latest engines – the C10010 VPs.
Capacity was increased and uptime improved delivering a higher quality image benefiting the customer base.
Northend has found a way to invigorate our business model by putting service first and innovating to benefit the entire customer base.
In short, it’s doing what we’ve always done. We’ve survived – and thrived – through two world wars and now a global pandemic.”
