Matalan

Founded 26 years ago, clothing and homewares retailer Matalan now has 212 stores across the country, along with a burgeoning online sales offering. The group posted sales of more than ￡1bn in its last financial year.

Paul Dykes, print manager says: "From the retail side of things there’s been a step up in marcomms print. We are getting more exposure through using inserts and we’ve seen growth in that area over the past three-to-four months. We’ll possibly look to do that again with the new season campaigns.

"In my department, we touch on every single area of print and we are always investigating different ways of producing things from a unit cost point of view. Digital production is becoming more prevalent. We are looking at increased personalisation and things like variable product placement to target the right customer with the right product at the right time.

"We are just starting production with a new weekly digital piece that’s about 10,000 a week, and we have more campaigns coming on-stream. It gives us flexibility at the right unit cost, while making sure we get the right return on investment.

"Our use of digital printing is completely dependent on the product and the piece at the time. We are using long-run digital as well as short-run. And we’re also discussing the possibilities for four-colour personalisation.

"Something that Matalan has been doing is putting on local store challenges. These involve events to generate footfall in-store such as a special ￡5 knitwear promotion. This type of thing could involve anything from 4pp broadsheets, to 16pp A4s to single-sided flyers. Speed of turnaround is absolutely vital, as we have a lot of tactical and fast-moving campaigns. We could find out about an intended promotion on Tuesday and it will go live in-store on the Friday with all the necessary print collateral in place. Our print suppliers have to be very reactive.

"Part of our role is to ensure we have the right supplier mix, so this can be leveraged to meet the requirements of the business. We are not just interested in the cheapest, we are interested in the most cost-effective and best method and this is a totally evolving picture. We are always in communication about better ways to do things: price, quality, speed of turnaround and making sure all the specifications are met across all the substrates we print on. I’m off to discuss some future projects with one of our printers today, as it happens.

"We see things getting busier and busier. We are spending an increased amount of our marketing budget on print to support online and in-store communications. It’s an important part of the marketing mix."

Honda

Honda employs almost 180,000 people worldwide and alongside its well-known cars and motorcycles, the Japanese company is also a major manufacturer of power products, including generators, outboard engines for the marine industry, and general-purpose engines. Its corporate philosophy is ‘respect for the individual’ and it operates under the principle of ‘the three joys’, expressed as the joy of buying, the joy of selling, and the joy of creating.

Chris Minshull, buyer, Honda Print Management says: "We’ve just done a car launch for the new Civic without producing a single printed item except an A5 leaflet. The whole thing was based around content on Motorola Xoom tablets in our showrooms – what would have been a brochure and loads of leaflets was this one item. There were no flags and no pop-ups.

"I’m not saying that’s indicative of where we’re going, but, for this launch, it was deemed that a new and innovative approach was required. We are printing brochures and posters for the new Civic now it’s actually been launched, though, and our day-to-day printing requirements are pretty stable.

"Tight turnaround times are the norm for us. We recently produced a 48pp brochure that had to be printed, laminated and bound in two days.

"Digital printing makes up perhaps 10-15% of the work we produce and we are interested in doing more. However, colour matching between litho and digital, and the print quality on some of the tints we need to produce, is an issue with digital at the moment. And the print quality is so good from the litho printers we use, so whenever we do something digital, someone will pipe up about its quality.

"We work with a consortium of printers and don’t chop and change them. We only take on companies that meet a set requirement for financial stability. Yes, sometimes there can be cheaper prices in the market, but with the lead times we work to, security of supply is critical."