One hundred and fifty years of Linneys watch over the progress of today’s Linney Group, from William Linney who opened a bookshop in Mansfield in 1851 and started a dynasty to Nick, Miles and Charles Linney all currently engaged in the business. The older generation gazes down from the walls of a business that would have been unrecognisable to the owners and managers of a provincial newspaper and the town’s printer for its first 130 years. Indeed today’s business is changed beyond recognition from that which moved into the 10-acre greenfield site on the edge of Mansfield in 1998.

When it moved W& J Linney was not so different from many printers across the country. It had set up a design business and had a small mailing operation, but print was at the heart of everything. Today the presses continue to pump out the work, but these are very much at the service of a company that has become one of the biggest design businesses in the country and one of its foremost print management operations. Behind this is a culture of openness and commitment to people that at first might seem hackneyed but most definitely works and which provides a level of confidence on which flexibility can be built.

The flexibility of outlook most definitely covers its strategic thinking. When the new factory was planned it included the latest thinking in terms of materials movement and centralising services like ink and fount supply to the presses. And it included space for a web press and for a perfecting binding line, says Miles Linney, the current bearer of the family torch on the executive board, while his father Nick remains overall chairman.

The binding line is a recent arrival, while the web press never will be installed. It’s not that the business could not afford such an investment, it’s that the business has moved in what seems to be a completely different direction. Scratch the surface and it becomes clear that development over the decade is consistent with a company willing to take an opportunity where it can and, most of all, willing to adapt to meet its customers’ needs. These customers are spread around the biggest names on High Street, UK, with the company providing the design for in-house publications, display creation, the printing, and managing the delivery of materials in the right volumes to the right stores. As the techniques of retail change, Linneys is keeping pace, ready to invest whatever is necessary, either in equipment or people.

“We are very focused on marketing communications,” says Linney. “Since we moved here we have been undertaking change all the time, revisiting what we do, repositioning ourselves very much non-stop over the last 10 years. It’s still the same message of how the customers communicate to the customer base, but the way they do that is changing, which means changes for us.”

Nowhere is this clearer than in Linney Design. This was started 28 years ago in the days when the Mansfield Chad newspaper was still part of the group. One of the young lads making up ads for clients seemed to have more about him than usual and was asked to set up a separate design business. Today Michael Fisher is still running Linney Design and it has become one of the UK’s top 20 design business with 70 staff and a fistful of high-profile brands. Its building is across from the print factory and according to Linney is “a little bit of Charlotte Street in Mansfield”. The profile of work has moved on from newspaper ads to encompass web design and video as well as printed brochures, magazines, catalogues and displays. On Fisher’s desk is the story board for the launch of the latest Yamaha motorbike. Linney Design will handle the filming, any computer special effects, and deliver the video to motorcycle dealers across 17 countries in Europe for in-store display. The film will also find its way to YouTube. The accompanying brochures will also be designed in Mansfield, though print purchasing is based in Holland and does not involve Linney any longer.

Another group is working on a catalogue for a kitchen company, creating everything in virtual reality on a computer screen. The kitchen is mapped out, the units given their wood finish and the lighting arranged to give a natural feel and effect. Any changes to the finished image can be made quickly and without huge cost. As a result the client gets a finished brochure four months sooner than using the specially created studio kitchen and photography. As well as the huge time saving, translating into extra sales, there’s an equally impressive cost saving.

Says Fisher: “Years ago, the designer produced a brochure and that was it. Now there are many more channels to market, websites, films, YouTube and so on and we have to be able to supply all these.

“The group may not be able to print everything we design, but it is a huge point of differentiation when we talk to clients and it allows us to be faster to market.”

There are client teams ensuring account managers and creatives work closely together, including print production expertise where needed. This was not always the case, as Design acquired a distinct identity. Today, Linney points out, the aim is to bring the businesses closer together again. “We were three different companies with the design, print and fulfilment side. Now we are consciously moving closer again as the client would only see one side of Linneys and believe only that we were expert in new media or at distribution and not that we could handle a larger spread of their requirements,” he says.

It was meeting these needs that first moved Linneys into print management, now Linney Connect, which handles huge amounts of print. “In order to qualify for an increasing number of print tenders we needed to have a print management operation,” he says. “It’s a relatively straightforward concept, handling outwork and so on. We concentrate on very reactive stuff that needs turning around very quickly. And clients know that if something goes wrong with an external supplier, we have the back-up facilities in house. And we have adopted an open architecture, so that clients can see which suppliers we are using. We let the clients know how much we are paying for print and add our management fee on top.”

This mirrors the openness in the design company where work in progress is pinned to a display board for others to add comments with the aim of improving what is produced. In print production this approach allows the production staff largely to manage themselves. What used to be production managers imposing methodology and ensuring work was produced on time, has been replaced by colour standards, a series of key performance indicators and a continuous improvement group. The production team works to ISO 12647-2 standards on properly maintained Heidelberg sheetfed presses and is looking to hitting the figures. Regular team meetings emphasise the continuous improvement agenda.

The presses are separated from the repro and account management area by a glass wall. On the quiet side of the glass the presses take in paper and deliver printed sheets to finishing in the way planned a decade ago. One the wall’s noisier side is the hubbub of the repro and account handlers planning production and dealing with clients. A Prism MIS includes its scheduling package making Linney one of the few that uses digital scheduling, something that is a puzzle to Miles Linney. Here he points out that “repro has moved closer to client managers and project managers” repeating a theme from across the group.

At some point this year, the MIS becomes part of a group-wide information systems network, providing an overview of the entire operation.

The natural partner to the print management side is Linney Direct, its fulfilment operation. This was a further example of an organic expansion, starting because the newspaper press was not big enough to print all sections at once so hand stuffing was necessary; then taking on projects to assemble materials for table top games; until now operating a massive warehouse holding something like 12 million items on miles of racking. The business has expanded on one side into pulling together the complex packs of display items that a shop or fast food outlet needs, from materials produced by a range of suppliers managed by Linney Connect; and on the other into an on-site call centre currently catering for 32 clients. This can handle 1,000 calls a day, almost all incoming, to manage orders, payments and other responses as an extension of the customer’s business. One might be to ask for more window displays for the latest burger campaign, another for more point of sale giveaways. It involves training to be able to give the information succinctly and accurately to each caller.

Linney Direct also houses the group’s first digital print capability. Linney says that the group had kept an eye on developments in the technology and might well have installed it in the design or the print operations. But fulfilment had the first need, using it for print on demand to top up the different materials it holds for customers and to personalise these if needed. A range of Xerox machines from mono Nuveras to an iGen3 cope with demand. Packs are constantly filled and the boxes roll along a conveyor to be sent out overnight. Mansfield’s central England location makes the plant ideal for this, Linney points out.

If the company seems to have reached this point through serendipity, it is the sort of serendipity that takes hard work. Approaching new clients is a strategic game, analysing what they do and where Linney can participate. “The customers we work best with are those that want a partnership,” he says. Marketing supports this, with one recent campaign focusing on the rewards of Linney’s retail therapy – an individual top quality cake sent to 220 named customers. Recognition and response is high. “It really is a matter of asking clients ‘what can we do to help increase your market share?’ rather than just a focus on cost, cost, cost,” he continues.

There is also the work to increase the profile of the group’s business to customers who may only know one aspect of the operation.

Internally the work is just as hard. The company displays its Value Statements in just about every room, emphasising the importance of people and customer service. Naturally training supports this.

Every one of the 550 staff gets to a Core Values day once every three years, this replacing the more traditional induction course. The company will stage IT courses on its premises, bringing in trainers from a local college to run upskilling events. Its printers are expected to undergo full training at least every five years and will be sent overseas for the more specialist areas of knowledge. When the perfect binder arrived, a team was sent to Muller Martini’s headquarters in Switzerland for training and with CPC 24, printers were sent to Heidelberg for a more indepth understanding of the product than was possible at Brentford.

At the management level training is no less important. There is an information sharing aspect involving other businesses outside of print in order to understand different production techniques. One of these is with the Ginsters Cornish pasty business, where food production systems have fed into production benefits for Linney Print. For Linney and his brother Charles this has meant an education taking in the leading business schools making both fit to lead the family business forwards to new generations. It has also meant taking in a course at IMD in Switzerland aimed specifically at family businesses like Linneys. “It was a fantastic course and highly recommended for any family business,” says Miles Linney. As a result there are now two boards for the company, one the holding board where Nick Linney presides and is in charge of the group’s cultural heritage and development, the other the operating board where Miles Linney is in charge of sales and finance issues and sits alongside the non-family operational managing directors. It works, providing a stable structure for succession and accommodating the different pressures the business might otherwise have, and it emphasises the long-term view towards the company’s future. Even if the nature of that future is not absolutely known, the five generations before Miles Linney will be confident that the business they handed on is in turn in safe hands.