Minuteman Press Stockport

Web to print

2011-11-03T18:06:00.000Z

Last Thursday, besides rain, I remember for the visit to Telford. Thankfully, the GPS system worked fairly well and I arrived at my destination promptly; only running around one round about twice to weigh up the pros & cons of the gps instructions. Having ignored the lady on the machine sat nav I arrived at the Ricoh factory. The venue of the seminars on web to print.

Today was a sponsored by Whitmar publications event on Web to print. One item I learnt during the day was that customers don't care about web to print. (Web to print? I forgot to say what it is. It is a software system that allows customers to order on line. Vistaprint are experts at it.) So they don't care, yes, that makes sense; its easier to ring up and say could I have 500 business cards. Web to print sales people emphasize the downside of traditional systems, the to-ing and fro-ing between printer and customer. From the customer's point of view the advantage is that the responsibility for errors is left with the printer. Even today this was highlighted as one of our customers had us design the art work; they were to send the completed art work to an on-line printers; we then 'wasted' much time helping the customer sending their art work to the on-line printers. several variations on the art work, emails left right and centre, phone calls to the on-line printers customer support. Web to print companies cope by stonewalling and fobbing off customers.

I was told that Vistaprint has a 20% complaint rate, true or not it hasn't stopped them succeeding as a company. Then, as I review my print jobs I realized that to turn our business into a full web to print enterprise would be nigh on impossible unless I removed most of my catalogue. Web to print companies specialize in a limited range of products, such as flyers and business cards. Print shop such as the Minuteman Press outlets specialize in not specializing.... raffle tickets, posters, brochures, file conversion, forms, diaries, calendars, wedding stationery, business cards, copying, faxing, overprint of pens, newsletters etc. Attempting to computerize all this would be a challenge. Another common factor of these systems is the extraordinary expense of installing them, £3000 for setting them up, £500 a month charged. Forget it. There are cheaper options available but they tend to be a bit clunky.

Moving on, it turns out we are already using web to print, in part; web to print includes a whole range of technologies and many printers will have some of them... email marketing, electronic pricing, web sites, templates. Anyhow, it was an excellent series of seminars led by informative people who seem to know what they were doing or saying. At the end of the day it didn't seem to quite add up. More thought and analysis needed.

Heresy in the camp

2011-08-16T14:04:00.000+01:00

Received another email from business guru Chris Cardell this morning; besides selling his training videos and conferences he regularly pops in a gem of how to market your business. He caused me some amusement to me by suggesting Twittering wasn't very effective for marketing. I do tend to agree that use of social media for marketing purposes seems a dubious way forward. We shall see...

Minuteman Press Stockport: International Stockport

2011-08-12T23:21:00.000+01:00

Minuteman Press Stockport: International Stockport

International Stockport

2011-08-12T23:18:00.000+01:00

Where are we?
I notice that most of the Blogg views are in the USA. How is this? Is Stockport in the USA? Well, it seems to be; with a little work with Google there are at least two Stockports there, Stockport Ohio and Stockport New York. So if you are reading this we are Minuteman Press, near Manchester, England, North Europe (in case there is a Stockport near Manchester in the USA). Other than the occasional riot (topical comment) Stockport is quite interesting, not least the weather than has none of the predictability of a continental or tropical climate. Today is wet; tomorrow could be sunny and hot (I haven't checked the weather forecast, though), the next thing you know we have a drought etc. Stockport is sort of straddling the Victorian railway line and has the iconic brick viaduct that uses millions and millions of bricks from the days when the citizens were really oppressed and worked for a pittance. There is big river running through it not that one can't see it for the most part because it was covered and had a shopping mall (sorry, an Americanism) built over it. I read someone was suggesting digging it up again. I'm old enough to remember before it was paved over.. not that it was the good old days, more like the grey old days of post war depression whilst we paid the Americans back for all the money they lent us to defeat the Germans (sorry, the Nazis). Meanwhile, we are Minuteman Press, Stockport, printers. There are about two of us in the Manchester area. There were three, another in Chorlton, but it closed a few months back. Due to the way Google works, though, their Google optimisation means they continue to come high in Google rankings for printing searches in Manchester. I would love to ask Sanjay how they did it but I haven't heard from him since they closed. He classified himself as Manchester which was dead cheeky, mind you he was dead opposite the Manchester cemetery, so had a good trade in funeral printing. We are about one mile from Stockport crematoria so perhaps I could improve my stall in that area.
Meanwhile Stockport, tends to be overshadowed by Manchester up the road (no, I don't know David Beckham; does he even work there any more everyone; I thought he emigrated to the USA?). Manchester had the dubious privilege of being smashed by the IRA a few years back and hasn't looked back since. So Stockport limps along, it has an iconic pyramid office block; inhabited (at least the sign says so) by the CoOp bank, a splendid Rochdale invention (north of Manchester). A newly refurbished super cinema from the 1930s (Wikipedia puts in 'citation needed' here). Several museums, a hat museum. I just can't excited by the idea of a hat museum, there is a fantastic science and technology musuem celebrating the good old days of British industry, but that's in Manchester. Lots of hills, none of the cycle friendly Cambridge flatlands. There is an expensively refurbished Victorian market. It even has quite a few shops in it. I even met some tourists trying to see it, wasn't open for business. There is the really old Parish Church that the Rev Roger seems to have make his lives work to raise the millions needed to replace it, stone by stone. People complain about the railway station, guess it's a ploy to try and get some money spent on it. It seems OK to me and is on the main line north and south with easy access to London, Manchester and Birmingham (not necessarily in that order). Oh! Yes, the motorway too, it squeezes between two of the viaduct pillars. The busy airport (I say 'busy' to emphasize that it is a decent size) is down the road and interestingly owned by the local authorities; I guess they prove my theory wrong: that nationalisation doesn't work, they seem to make a decent job of that. They have a splendid museum too with a complete but non flying Concorde and various other examples of British aviation technology. Which reminds me, there is Styal Woods under the airports flight path, a National Trust establishment (couldn't think of the proper word there) with a working water powered mill (the good old days again with child labour). Its getting late; I'll stop for now.

Bizset

2011-08-12T08:29:00.000+01:00

Visiting Bizset this morning at Trafford Park. This leaves a bit of time before I go. So, spending some time doing some development planning on the business. I guess its like a mini business plan. Business plans seem OK for getting support off other people but they consume a lot of time and include lots of unattainable expectations. Can the business plan include all the unforeseen elements such as having business premises burnt by rioters or economic down turns or maternity leave or staff illness, technological developments? The list goes on. One of the key things is staying positive. Avoid reading the paper or watching the news... the hacks seem to spend spend less time reporting and more commenting as self proclaimed experts on every subject under the sun. As a business I am at least happy that we are still moving forward through these interesting economic times. Thanks to our loyal customers who, as a business we can't take for granted. Also to those angels who actually recommend us; two yesterday that I know of. Dave at Lloyds TSB recommended us to a friend and a new business whose friend told him to come to us. Well, this took 20 mins, best get back to the job in hand!

All things to with a web site

2011-01-12T19:56:00.000Z

I Enjoyed another web SEO (search engine optimisation) session this afternoon at The Eword in Trafford Park (just across the way from Printing.com I kept being told!). I was told it is meant to boring; perhaps I'm in the wrong job because I find it fascinating!
Loads of helpful stuff presented in a clear way and kept me engaged for 2 hours. I didn't keep notes this time. I've found that I take copious notes and then never refer to them. I tried a different strategy, listen to what was being said and concentrate on 3 things:
Confirming things I sort of know but not so sure about;
remembering a couple of things I didn't know;
refocus our SEO strategy at Minuteman Press, Stockport.

Something new: I learnt the value using a shortened link in a pages title tag. http://tiny.cc/printUK
I'll try it in Tweets too.
Log out of my Google acount before doing a search to help make sure that Google isn't trying to be helpful by focussing on Printers search results!
Perhaps cut our Pay Per Click budget completely; our site ranks highly on the first page anyway, without the Paid ads. The money could then be paid on more 'natural' search engine optimisation.

Oh! Yes I need to make sure my other site has a site map too.

Colour printers

2010-08-25T21:49:00.000+01:00

Looking back it is easy to see why the previous owners of the business didn't take on the lease to change the ancient digital printing devises It is a minefield of options and heavy sales techniques, and potential expense. The first option is continuing to use a Xerox machine. I'll leave that hanging because I don't want to get sued for libel. It was suggested we report Xerox to Stockport trading standards, last week. Maybe. I was keen to buy into Toshiba, they make a nice machine that my research showed had a reliable performance and good service record. A new machine would cost less than £10000, to give an indication of their value. Its main advantage from my perspective would be a reduced lease outlay. However, the 'click' cost compared unfavourably with the other contenders, Oci and Konica Minolta Direct who are marketing a heavy duty machine called the 5501. Probably over £20000 to buy new. Oci seem OK but remain an unknown quantity in comparison to Konica Minolta. They are offering a redundant machine in comparison with Oci who are offering a new machine. The latter's 'click' charge is slightly more expensive, making the KM a better deal; the main disadvantage being that the KM machine is a second hand machine. It seems that the extra expense means that our outgoings remain the same, not a realistic option because one of the aims of the exercise is to reduce our outgoings. The final element in the mix is the finance; normally one buys via a lease; not the best of arrangements it seems to me, we never seem to own the machine and the costs seem high. Alternatively we could buy the machine out right; thirdly we could borrow money to buy one. The latter seems a good option to me; the interest rates would probably be lower. At present the KN salesmen can't persuade the finance companies to stump up enough money; we're stuck, he's stuck.

Making it easy to shop

2010-05-25T13:16:00.000+01:00

Last week we met a pleasant gentleman at the international printing exhibition, Ipex. His mission in life was to sell extraordinary paper types. We were shown a variety of excellent papers, they were of synthetic origin; one particular variant had a gold finish to it and was popular for printing the Koran (Quoran?); paid for by the Saudi Royal Family. Apparently, the Finns were also enthusiastic and had bought many thousands of sheets. On the other hand, the British had let the side down because of their reluctance to switch to the new paper. I was particularly impressed with the material called 'Ice' a translucent material that had been used to manufacture a business card. Always enthusiastic, I thought I would look into this but started hitting snags. The paper merchants were a bit vague and couldn't really advise. Though I did manage to get some samples of three types. There turned out be lots of variations and I wasn't quite sure which one did what. By the following Tuesday I had lost the salesman contacts details and so wasn't sure how to make further enquiries. The first customer I spoke to about the delights of the material wasn't impressed and couldn't see any reason to change (especially as it cost more!).

Anyway, I will track the salesman down and try and obtain some Ice, and decide how best to market the product through my own customers. Saying which, perhaps an email with the product benefits as a subject?

Kall Kwik Stockport wins High Court case

2010-04-24T20:34:00.000+01:00

Excitement in the Stockport printing industry as KallKwik Stockport hits the trade press with the news that the owner of the local franchise had successfully sued KallKwik.
http://www.printweek.com/News/MostRead/994527/Kall-Kwik-UK-sued-Stockport-franchise/
Apparently, the owner had been ill advised by the franchise and under estimated the cost of 'doing up'. the shop. I often hear sad stories from franchisees of different brands reflecting on their bad experiences. I noted that my franchise Minuteman Press was hit by an American class action some years ago. For myself I think, was it worth it? The energy and cost of bringing the successful High Court action might have been better spent on developing the business. From my own experience professional advice is often misplaced and tainted and I feel the advice and support my own franchise provides is inadequate. Best work with the good things though and grow the productive parts

Stockport Town Centre...10 ideas for improvement

2010-03-27T10:55:00.000Z

On Thursday I had the pleasure of attending a Manchester CityCo event; representing the Federation of Small Businesses. Whilst I'm still not sure how CityCo and Manchester City Council work together, it left me wondering whether or not Stockport Council were at the event, researching ideas of how Stockport Council could use the Manchester initiatives to improve the centre of Stockport.
I have tried to compile a ten point list (probably naive) of improvements to Stockport Centre.

1) Business owners to attend Council meetings that relate to Stockport Centre. Previously businesses had a say in how the local community through a vote. This is no longer the case and whilst the reinstatement of the vote seems unlikely, at least the council could advertise when the local area meetings are to be held and encourage local businesses to attend.
2) Compile a map for shoppers that displays the attractive features of Stockport Centre. This would start with the location of publicly accessible toilets. The map would be printed and distributed free of charge. along with our Civic Review and via counter dispensers in local businesses and a council employee would be allocated to up date the counter dispensers on a monthly basis.
3) Improve publicity for Town centre events. Often there are are special events such as farmer markets and whilst I am working in Stockport am unaware they are taking place. They need to be publicized via local radio and the Stockport Times and the council web site and business sites.
4) Pressurize landlords by legal methods and financial enducements to keep the empty premises looking respectable.
5) Allocate a council employee to visit local businesses, as they are opening, to make them aware of government help that is available to small businesses.
6) Have a simple, credible, well publicized, easily verifiable Action Plan that shows how our town centre is being improved.
7) Stop council employees (Solutions SK?) and utility companies damaging the attractive road paving. Sometimes the stones are replaced with asphalt and pavements are spray painted.
8) Respond to the constantly repeated criticism that Stockport Town Centre has limited up market dining establishments.
9) Another Action Plan (!) to improve the use of the expensively restored Victorian Market. For most of the week it sits underused and uninviting.
10) If the Council could explain how the 'GateWay Markers' were rejected by the council committee having spent so much money designing them!

The Perfect Day

2010-02-06T12:14:00.000Z

Deliver on time, happy customers, new achievements, new customers and lots of sales.

Some of the indicators of a perfect day!

By the end of Friday I had the management software working again. Not one of the indicators, but a relief, never the less. Thanks to Minuteman Press, Blackburn, who had quickly responded to my request for a copy of the installation disc. (My copy having been stolen, see previous blog).
A new customer was happy, Online Company, having delivered a job to the standard expected, within the week. Thanks to everyone concerned.
Regional winners of the Cartridge World, Green Office Competition. Even better, we actually get decent prizes. Again, thanks to everyone concerned.
Several decent referrals to business contacts, referral to TLC for a newer computer system at Cafe Unity, Heald Green. Three Referrals to Web Guild Media for web site.
Work flowing in after a quieter patch, new customers, referrals - the results of web searches- old customers sending in new work, work from the Heald Green Business club. Also, a variety of work, design layout, copying, challenging work (the sort many printers couldn't do) and traditional task such as one to three colour stationery. Now getting to the situation where we have too much work!
Wife, in Accounts, is sleeping better.

Copying body parts

2010-01-29T08:38:00.000Z

Meeting the public is usually an interesting experience. Add to this the variety of printers life creates some extremely interesting opportunities. This week a young lady arrived in the shop, who seemed a little worse for wear. She pulled up her trouser leg and revealed a large black tattoo of a cartoon character. She requested that we copy the tattoo. I envisaged several potential problems, the first of which being the difficulty of lifting the leg high enough to reach the top of the machine. As an alternative I offered to photograph the tattoo and subsequently load it onto the computer and print it. I quoted her a reasonable £5 for a job that would realistically cost £18. A short bartering session ensued, £3 was offered, 'no, £5', £3.50, 'No, £5'. The young lady left the shop, suggesting that she might return. She never did.

Efficient police help with devastating theft

2010-01-14T21:55:00.000Z

Minuteman Press offers free pickup and delivery. One delivery too far... last Friday I stopped on the way home, at a Heald Green address, to make a delivery. The driver made a poor decision (I'm sure his wife used the word 'stupid' some where in her comments) and left his key in the ignition. Only to find, on his return, nothing. No, the van was definitely not where I left it. I rang home to get the registration number. Dialed 999 and reported the van missing. The operator asked which service I required; I wasn't in the mood for jokes! Anyway, having asked for police, they issued a reference number and promised to ring back. Hey! The number of times I get told that during my working week. Well, within ten minutes someone had left a message on my phone... I had been too slow getting the phone out of my pocket. Unfortunately, it then took 20 minutes to get through to the police number, but at least I didn't have to endure sales messages or having to restart the process every few minutes. I left more details and was given the vital crime reference number by another friendly and helpful officer. I started to have my tea and planned my next course of action... probably paying a visit to the local estate for a search. Even before I had finished my tea I had had another phone message that a 'team' had located the van in said estate and were waiting for me. Jumped in car and met the patrol. Dressed in civvies it was difficult, at first, to identify them. Once again, more help was offered. We worked out what to do next, a shake of hands and off they drove into the freezing January night.
Thanks, once again, to Greater Manchester Police. Van stolen and returned in a space of a couple of hours.

Wolstenholmes

2010-01-08T17:22:00.000Z

Heald Green hit the national headlines this week, featuring on Radio 4, following the closure of Wolstenholmes solicitors. It was reported that the Solicitors Regulation Authoritysuspected serious malpractice and had stepped in to help clients who were in danger of their transactions not going as expected. Radio 4's 'You and Yours' interviewed clients whose house transactions had been unable to complete. One lady had had to use bed and breakfast accommodation because she was now homeless.

Snow closure

2010-01-06T12:43:00.001Z

Tuesday 5th January 2010.

Minuteman Press, Stockport.

Motorway network working well but congested at junctions due to slow traffic. Arriving at Stockport town was a different story; roads made impassable by buses slewed side ways across roads; tanker and lorries stuck, cars skidding and requiring the push to get free.
Those staff who lived locally were able to report for work as normal, by walking. Other staff didn't get beyond their front doors. Stockport turned into a ghost town as many businesses closed early or stayed shut. The main furniture shop opposite received deliveries on large trucks during the day, the deliveries had to go away because the shop was shut. Unfortunately it took the lorry drivers a lot of skill to then escape the snow laden roads.The commercial estate agents up stairs had staff unable to get in the premises, that too was shut. For myself, paper deliveries didn't happen. Quotes were difficult to obtain because other businesses had missing staff. On the positive side my competitor down the road stayed shut all day and alot of business continued to flow via email, telephone and the web site. Finally, around 4pm, a gritter and snow plough improved the road conditions on the access road outside the shop. One walk in customer during day. One passer by asking to use the phone for rescue purposes, another wanting to shelter from the cold.

Successful print web sites

2010-01-02T10:27:00.000Z

In the higly competitive print environment it is a sophisticated and expensive business keeping ones web site at the leading edge.

The site has to focus on two strands.
Firstly: being visible to the search engines, particularly Google, because it has the biggest market share in the UK.
This is achieved by including lots of text relevant to the sites main business. At the present time Flash content is an obstacle to this because search engines aren't very successful at reading pictures.

By constantly developing the site. This is partly achieved by using Blogs. The blog will vary in sophistication from a Steven Fry type Tweet to a WordPress document; the latter will be indistinguishable from a normal web page.
By creating hyper links from other sites to your own; the other sites should have 'status'. This will improve ones 'Page Ranking'. The way of achieving this is one of those mysteries of SEO (Search Engine optimisation)

By persuading people to visit your site. Cranky pop videos on You Tube are one way of achieving this.

Finally, by subscribing to Google Adwords. Plus, all the other add ons that Google offers to help your web site develop. Maps and Analytics spring to mind.
Adsense seems an odd way of developing your site, Google adds relevant adverts to your site and pays you when visitors view them. Unfortunately, because the ads will be 'relevant' they will include advertisments to competitors products
The second strand to a web site is ecommerce. Whilst making your web site come top of any Google search is challenging and potentially expensive; creating a successful ecommerce site is a modern miracle.
It has to look good.
It has to very easy to use.
It has to include choice, choice of products and choice of designs.
Making it easy to use means reducing the number of steps the customer has to take to the very minimum.
Working against this principle are issues such as security that help reduce internet fraud. Amazon have minimized the steps for the customer by including 'one click' purchases.
The customer needs constant reassurance with graphics that illustrate the progress of the purchase.
Reassurance that it will 'only take 5 minutes'. Reassurance that the business is bona fida (including a postal address on the site). Reassurance that the products actually exist, with pictures of boxes.
The choice of design is one of the biggest challenges to the business running the web site and needs frightening amounts of investment in generating relevant, stylish, well organised, modern designs.
The design process has to work, in some cases this is not the case and the customer's art work disappears down the digital black hole. Or, one is left frustrated at ones inability to personalise the design.
I am particularly impressed with the www.uprinting.com site; it is particularly attractive and useable.
It provides a roll model for me, one that I can aspire to when developing my own site.
www.minutemanpress.uk.com

New Year

2010-01-01T18:50:00.001Z

A new year with exciting business challenges

December 09, the first posting

2009-12-21T22:17:00.001Z

Christmas is busy