southernprintman

Welcome to the first of what I hope proves to be many informative blogs.

I have been back in sales since the beginning of the financial year and am amazed at how much the market has changed for those of us in the print industry.

I thought things would be pretty much the same after a three-year stint in the world of e-commerce and project management. How wrong I was. The growth of digital print, the impact of technology and the meteoric rise of social media has profoundly changed our customers needs and marketing strategies.

I returned into sales to find a print industry reeling under the pressure of change. The print industry is no stranger to this pressure………….its the pace of change that is new.

This is good as the situation supplies lots of fodder for future blogs – however – I thought I would start off in this first blog by answering some common questions I have encountered over the past 6 months. After this the blogs will take on a more informative nature.

“I thought you guys had left town a couple of years ago”

In 2005 Wickliffe employed over 300 people in Dunedin. After acquiring Moore Gallagher in 2006, Wickliffe moved its head office to Auckland and the Dunedin office in 2008 – from the big blue building in Clyde Street to its present location in Glenelg Street Kaikorai Valley (the old Tamahine Buildings).

Our Kaikorai valley offices house the sales team, national call centre, national technology centre and national logistics management team (there are more logitics staff at our Mosgiel Warehouse)………we still remain the largest print employer in the Otago Southland region with over 50 staff in the region.

“Didn’t you guys go bust ?”

No – but we came close. Wickliffe’s growth and size was based on large run rotary fed print (think lineflo, tractor fed forms and large runs of banks statements etc). This market experienced a huge, rapid decline over the past 5 years.

The ability to adapt quickly without spending vast amounts of capital is always a challenge – luckily for Wickliffe Steve D’souza and Kalamazoo came to the rescue in 2010 and we are now part of the Kalamazoo Group and enjoying growth again.

“I always thought Wickliffe was just into lineflo and big print jobs”

10 years ago that was the case. However, Wickliffe has grown into colour offset, colour digital and extensively developed its logistics capabilities over the past decade.

Dunedin Branch  in particular, is set up to handle small to medium customers. A big proportion of our local business is very short digital runs.

“Do you still have a warehouse in Mosgiel ?”

Almost half of our local staff is involved in the logistics operation (Stocklink). We mainly handle print related, storage and distribution projects – we are also involved with apparel, promotional products , sports goods, loyalty web sites etc

“I need large runs of colour work – I know you guys were never really involved with that locally”

Although we only manufacture short run colour work locally, our Christchurch branch has A1 5 colour and A2 5 colour capability. Our Wellington and Auckland branches have 10 Colour A1, A2 and A3 capability. Our freight rates are amongst the best in NZ – so whatever size your colour print project is – you can be sure of getting a competitive solution from us. (see Kalamazoo page for group details)

I welcome all comments – and please do not hesitate to ask if you want some specific topics covered in future blogs.