J Thomson colour printers is regarded by many as the Royal Family of Scottish print, but its factory is hardly a palace. It lies between the centre of Glasgow and the airport, close to the motorway on the sort of industrial estate built before everybody travelled to work by car. There is no glass and steel structure, no grand portico entrance, just a series of low-level unimposing buildings that were linked up as the company expanded under its charismatic leader Hamish Thomson. Cars park where they can find space. Yet this factory produces some of the best print in the UK let alone Scotland, supported by numerous awards won over the years.

Though 81 years old and well past retirement age Hamish is still seen in the plant and remains chairman of the business. His son Nick works in the business with an emphasis on strategic direction as well as the sales side and has taken on the mantle of protecting the shareholders’ interests. Unlike his father, his strengths lie away from production. The managing director’s hat is instead worn by Kevin Creechan, who with just three years under his belt, is one of the newer recruits to the business. The younger Thomson and managing director make a strong team in one direction, while the operational management is equally strong. Here too Creechan is the newest member: prepress director Allan Harrop, production director Ian Jackson in charge of the pressroom and George Hollinsworth in finishing have all been here longer. All are at the top of their game. What Creechan has brought is the ability to harness these skills and personalities and direct them outwards in the service of the company’s customers. He explains: “Everything was already here, all the raw materials and people so it’s not that difficult to put it all together. From day one my intention was to build the business, not to cut back or to lose jobs.”

As the turnover had slipped from around £9 million at its peak to around £6 million, the easy answer might have been to cut fixed costs. Instead the actions taken in the last three years have steadied the ship and brought sales back to “where they should have been”. Creechan is confident of beating his £9 million target for this year. He has had the support of the shareholders and an extremely strong balance sheet.

That action has been putting in pace the measures that perhaps ought to have been implemented previously: examination of costs; better purchasing policies; systematic measurements of manufacturing efficiency; getting the right shift patterns in place. This was followed by a change in the sales strategy and a different way of calculating commission. The new emphasis is on cultivating customers, even print management companies who says Creechan are moving from working with the cheapest companies to seeking out those with best in class performance. He continues: “When I joined the business was very production led, telling customers that ‘this is what we do’. The market had changed but the company hadn’t. Now this is a very customer driven business and has become so without diluting the offering. The reputation has been built on an attitude of ‘if we say we will do something, we will’ and that remains.”

The aim now is to build J Thomson Colour Printers as an identifiable brand for quality printing. The outward sign is that the logo has changed, but beneath much more has altered. Creechan brought in one of the top marketing graduates on a short term project for the company. “She had a completely different view of the business. Some of her ideas were straight out of the text books and could not work, but she had good ideas as well. If nothing else it has helped focus the sales team on the brand and the values we represent.”

What has gone are the errors and mistakes that prove costly in any business. Creechan is a firm believer in ISO 9001 and the company applies it very, very strictly, catching problems early. Print director Ian Jackson oversees this and the other standards that the company upholds.

He too is a strong believer in the right way to do things. The press hall has what was the first 12-colour Speedmaster in Scotland six years ago, supported by five and six-colour Speedmaster CDs, both with anilox coaters. It has worked with Mellow Colour on ISO 12647-2 and Jackson measures everything. “As a tool Image Control is second to none,” he says. The company has two, as it has two of most devices in order to guarantee service. With a short-run, multi-section project where only plates are changed, make-ready waste is down to 200 sheets. He’d like to cut it further. “There are a lot of factors involved: getting the presses set up consistently, getting the plates right and so on,” he says.

The belief in the importance of doing things the right way dates back to Creechan’s first job in the production control department at Fields, then DRG Lairds. “They had very structured business expectations and you learned the right way to do things,” he says.

From there he moved to Ritchies, becoming part of the mbo team that in 1996 took control of the business. Two years later after proving that it was possible to run the business better than it had been, Ritchie was sold to Clondalkin. “It was a good learning experience to be involved in a purchase and then a sale within two years,” he says. Creechan stayed for his two year earn out before joining another Irish owned plc, Oakhill. This mini conglomerate owned Bell & Bain in Scotland alongside other print businesses, including Hythe Offset in Colchester. For three years Creechan performed the weekly commute from Glasgow to Stansted. That job also involved closing down an operation, which was going nowhere, and overseeing another operation in Leeds. In all as training it’s the sort of varied management experience that Creechan admits he would have paid for.

The commute became too much and he began looking for a job nearer home, and was quickly asked to come to J Thomson Colour Printers as a consultant. After six weeks he was offered what he admits is an ideal job.

Until now the actions have been largely defensive, but have laid the foundations for what is going to be a sustained period of growth. The company has earned ISO 14001, surprising itself in that what was thought to be a cost to the business has turned out to be a big money saver. The project began with requests for FSC paper. Typically Creechan wanted to do things properly and set sail for the ISO certificate as well as FSC and PEFC.

The savings have come through better management of waste streams and measurement of resources that the company used. This turned up a somewhat surprising discovery: the higher the turnover the company was generating, the less power its presses used. This realisation can be fed back into the pricing strategy with the company knowing that the most efficient way of working is at higher levels of usage.

Presses are at best only available 92% of the time, the remainder given over to a strict maintenance regime, which pays off in terms of quality and performance from the three Heidelbergs. These presses replaced a four press line up of Rolands. Now the search to replace these machines has begun with Heidelberg, Roland and KBA in the frame for what will be one of the most prestigious three press orders for some time.

This project is at its early stages, not so the company’s return to digital printing. The company was one of the first to invest in digital print with one of the first Xeikons. The timing was wrong and the move did not sit well within the company at the time. Now, offering clients digital print from the same stable that they buy offset is a logical move. “Most of the blue chip customers that we deal with are spending money on digital printing, but not with us.

“We probably should have made the move a year ago, but I like to do this properly and would rather take a little more time to do it well. We already have the sales and key production staff in place. Digital sales will back up the existing sales teams, and it will be a completely separate project.”

Prepress director Allan Harrop remembers that first project ten years ago: “We were ready, but the market wasn’t educated. It’s very different now.” So too is his department. Film has gone and plates drop out of two Creo-badged platesetters. These are due for replacement and a processless solution is under consideration, if only to cut the £7,000 it spends on chemistry each year. The plate supplier is Fuji, the workflow is a Prinergy system with Insite server. Harrop has found clients reluctant to use its full capabilities, using it to upload files rather than on proofing or approval. Financial clients are beginning to change, causing him to push Kodak into providing a secure server for Insite, the first time the supplier had been asked for an https version.
While fully digital, the company retains a drum scanner used for high quality projects for those photographers who continue to use film. Harrop himself admits to a preference for “a good transparency”, finding that often jobs supplied with digital photography are created with no understanding of print. That will change as has the entire business.

Harrop is clearly involved in one side of the digital press project while George Hollinsworth is looking at the finishing equipment needed, and recalls the problems with handling over-dry digital print on conventional finishing lines the first time around. His bindery has benefited from the first stage of the company’s expansion adding a 12-station Muller Martini Tigra perfect binding line and Autobond laminator last year. The idea is to give the company greater control over the work it prints.

The balancing act is to bring more work in house while not losing the close working relationship with external suppliers who will continue to be needed.

Hollinsworth is a mixture of new thinking in terms of automating as many processes as possible so that folders can be run from one position for example and guillotine operators can concentrate on cutting, but tempered with experience. “Fifteen years ago all we had was fold stitch trim and everything else had to go out. If we had a perfect binding job we had to supply sections two days before the job was needed. Now that we have binding in house we can leave printing until the last minute, customers still want their job tomorrow, even when they’ve delivered it two days late,” he says.

If the various investment projects herald a production-led expansion, setting up a sales office in Edinburgh is more of a customer service-led move. The company reckons to earn 25% of its sales from the financial services sector and another quarter from agencies and print management working in this sector. Despite the growing importance of Glasgow as a financial hub, Edinburgh remains the key market. While the cities are physically close, opening an operation close to the east coast customers is more than a gesture. The site acts as a base for sales staff, a unit for typesetting financial work, either from submitted files or raw text, and a place to pick up proofs. The office has the same Epson colour proofers with GMG Rips that the Glasgow factory has. Output at either end is identical.

It remains early days for the new sales office, but already Creechan is thinking in terms of setting up similar operations south of the border and close to a growing English customer base. “We are a year or two away from that at the moment. We still have lots to learn from Edinburgh. But we will do it. Three years ago less than 5% of sales came from the south, now it’s 15% and growing. At the same time there is still a lot of scope in Scotland.”

The company manages to print programmes for both major Glasgow football teams as well as Hearts and Aberdeen; it is a big supplier to the education sector and when it came to deciding which printer should produce the hefty tomes needed by Glasgow to support its bid to host the Commonwealth Games, there was little hesitation. This was a run of five volumes in a slip case with a print run of just 290 copies. “They wouldn’t have trusted anybody else to do that,” Creechan says. “If anybody wants guaranteed quality or want a job done on time with no hassles, they come to us.”

This, supported by the ongoing investment and team of managers and staff, is the platform that he has been building on. “The foundations are very solid, we can start taking a few risks now. There is going to be some significant growth in the next three to five years. The rate of growth is going to accelerate. Then it gets exciting.”