After a period of significant investment, one thing that’s clear is that 2023 and beyond is going to see continued growth and expansion from Southend-on-Sea-based Solopress. Cutting its teeth in the industry as an online e-commerce company, Solopress has certainly expanded its offerings over the years and today provides an all-encompassing service as a job aggregator producing everything from litho printing, digital printing, high-speed inkjet printing, wide-format print, and also a range of merchandising items.
Solopress operates from multiple neighbouring sites in Southend-on-Sea
Since current managing director Simon Cooper took over the reins back in 2019, the company has undergone continuous investment and development which has seen it physically expand into new neighbouring premises, as well as add a number of new equipment and technology to its line-up. This has enabled Solopress to expand its offering to trade printers as well as end-users, and remain competitive whilst weathering the storms that have faced the industry in recent times.
We spoke with Cooper to find out what the past few years have looked like for Solopress, and the company’s ambitious plans for the coming years.
A two-tiered approach
Perhaps the most significant investment for Solopress since Cooper stepped into the role of managing director was its most recent. This saw the company invest almost £5m in new premises and B1 litho capabilities after a record year of investments all round in 2022. However, the strategic focus on expanding production capabilities began years before.
Whilst he joined the company only four years ago, Cooper’s experience within the print industry spans almost three decades with the managing director first starting out due to his dad already being involved in the print industry. Since then, Cooper has worked in a number of roles within the industry, working his way up from sweeping floors to overseeing an entire business.
“I’ve worked pretty hard and tried to be brave,” he says, adding: “I’ve said yes a lot, put in more effort than was required, and step by step I kept learning and progressing over time.”
Having made its name servicing end-user customers which are typically small businesses, Solopress has more recently expanded its offering to service trade printers, too. “Really Solopress was a one size fits all, so whether you were a small independent person ordering some invites for your own birthday party, or a marketing manager of a mid-sized business ordering some brochures for your company, you would pretty much get the same service,” Cooper explains.
“Broadly speaking that was okay right up until we were trying to deal with resellers and I think for resellers you do need a different type of service.”
Enter, Solopro. This offering enables resellers and trade customers to be looked after by a dedicated account manager that’s very experienced and has worked in the business for a long time. They have also worked in printing for a long time and therefore really understand the products and the processes and how to make sure that a project progresses really effectively throughout the company.
“We’re also able to look very specifically at your account and give you discounts on the types of products that you order most frequently where the price is the most important variable rather than an option or a turnaround time, but actually hitting a specific price point,” Cooper continues.
We can help customers really uniquely set price lists on their most significant products where they’re ordering them very frequently. Or we can offer discounts across the range and it’s just a way of us providing a two-tiered approach for different kinds of customer segments ”
“We can help customers really uniquely set price lists on their most significant products where they’re ordering them very frequently, or we can offer discounts across the range. It’s just a way of us providing a two-tiered approach for different kinds of customer segments that have different needs. So Solopro has gone really well for us and we’ve seen that part of the business growing most significantly in the last couple of years.”
Increasing efficiency and capacity
In order to keep up with growing demand and the ever-expanding business, Solopress has put a real focus on boosting its productivity by streamlining its setup and investing in new kit and technology. This is something Cooper has overseen and one of the first things he says needed to change when he joined was to upgrade the company’s production platform.
“When I joined we had all B2 litho presses and iGen digital presses and really those weren’t the most productive ways of producing the work that we had, or the demand that we’d managed to generate. So over that time we’ve invested heavily in technology, we’ve brought in inkjet presses, and replaced a lot of the old litho.”
Most recently, the company has upgraded its litho offering with a £2.5m B1 ten-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106 with coater and upgraded its inkjet capabilities on the wide-format side of things. The company also brought in B2 Indigos including the B2 Indigo 100K at the start of 2022.
The HP Indigo 100K digital press was installed in March 2022
“The biggest step change for us is in terms of productivity,” Cooper says, adding: “When we measure the output in terms of revenue per hour worked in the business now compared to 2019 when I joined, we’ve improved by 50%. “So that’s probably the most significant thing. We’ve become much more efficient in the work that we produce, and in the end that means we can be more competitive for our customers and pass on better pricing to them.”
We’ve become much more efficient in the work that we produce, and in the end that means we can be more competitive for our customers and pass on better pricing to them”
The recent addition of B1 litho production and the expansion into Site 4 saw Solopress invest almost £5m. When you look back over the past few years and the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the cost of living crisis and energy price hikes, it would be fair to ask, ‘how has the company pulled this off?’.
The new Heidelberg ten-colour B1 litho press is housed in the new Site 4
In response to this question, Cooper explains that because Solopress has been doing well and volumes have increased, more capacity has been added as a result. But another part comes from looking at how to do things more efficiently and continuing to improve the productivity that Solopress has seen the big step change in.
“It was clear to us that we needed to grow our capacity to serve a growing demand, and then the question was just ‘what is the right place to invest?’. We’d considered putting in more high-speed inkjet technology, but in the end it was really clear that we could shift some work that we were producing in B2 litho offset onto B1 litho and just be more efficient, but also give ourselves some headroom and some capacity to grow.
“Then there are other elements to that investment – we’ve also taken on a new site, we’ve added new folding machines, we’ve put in new fold and makeups for presentation-type folders, we’ve invested in perfect binding equipment, and so really the business has had quite an overhaul this year.”
In terms of how a 24/6 production business logistically makes this sort of investment without causing too much disruption in the process, Cooper explains that because Solopress has a peak from September to the end of the year, it was important to add the extra capacity in time for this. Critical to this was finding a press that was available. To achieve this, the company opted for a pre-loved press from Excel Printing Machinery with the supplier able to find exactly the press Solopress was looking for in the timeframe it had.
“Going with a new press would have meant we wouldn’t have had it in time to serve the demand that we had this year,” Cooper explains. “We’re really happy with the Heidelberg. The press is a beast! It’s very, very effective.”
Because the investment involved expanding to a new site, the process was a smooth one as Solopress was able to set that site up and get it ready to run without disrupting normal production. This hasn’t always been the case with Cooper reflecting on past occasions where the company has taken kit in that’s involved moving something out and bringing something new in which is more challenging, especially during busier times of the year.
“I think therein lies the key – we’ve typically tried to choose the time of year to do that change around where we’ve got some extra capacity because we’re not too busy. Or in the case of the inkjet investment that we made, we obviously were very quiet during Covid and so that gave us the perfect window of opportunity to shut down a few presses, refurb the room, and bring the new technology in; and also spend time learning that technology and getting competent at producing work on it.”
Despite being in a position to make this continued investment, Solopress wasn’t immune to the effects of the issues highlighted. However, thanks to a series of small decisions in terms of how the business markets itself, how it services its customers, and how effective it is at producing its work, it has been able to weather the many storms faced and come out in a stronger position.
In addition to being able to utilise the downtime caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, another key part of this has been being extremely data-driven. Cooper explains how the company utilises metrics in terms of complaint rates, reprint rates, customer happiness, and so on, to gain a clear understanding of whether things are moving in the right direction – which they are!
“We’ve been smarter with our marketing and are trying to track the right kind of customers now. We’re much better on the customer service side of things to make sure we’re providing the right level of customer service, and we’ve launched the Pro offering which enables us to really look after those professional print brokers and other printers and print resellers,” Cooper says.
What’s clear when speaking to Cooper about how the company has continued to grow and keep offering more, is that there is no one secret tactic that’s worked. It’s been a constant flow of strategic decisions and analysis to ensure every corner of the business is working as efficiently as possible which in turn allows Solopress to offer the most to its customers.
Cooper echoes this: “The net result is that I think we’ve got the right formula. We’ve added lots of products this year and we’ve been pushing really hard to get more products in the range. We’ve added a search feature on the website to enable customers to find the things they’re looking for. Last year we actually upgraded the website and really improved the speed and performance of it.”
Ambitious growth plans
With the addition of Site 4 creating more headroom for Solopress, the company has very ambitious growth plans from a revenue standpoint. Cooper explains how the plan is to grow by 15% in 2023 with the company estimating it is probably already in a position to do this. However, if successful with that growth, the company will be looking for more capacity in 2024. The new site has enough room for another eight-colour B1 press alongside the new B1 ten-colour so Cooper says this is likely a move that the company would look to do sometime in 2024.
The new Site 4 has room to add more capacity as the company continues to grow
There is also a unit adjacent to the current unit that the company could take extra space from and Cooper says he would look at putting some of the finishing here as well as a couple of B1 presses, retaining one of the B2 presses, and selling one of the older ones.
“One of the challenges we have here is that we’re a multi-site business,” Cooper says. “What we’ve been able to do with Site 4 is have a really closed loop production cycle so we’ve got white paper in and finished goods out. In other parts of the business, we have to move printed goods to a finishing hall. But as we expand Site 4, we’ll be able to do more under one roof and it just improves the efficiency again.”
Looking forward and Cooper has a very clear set of goals for the business. Immediately, he says the company will weather the storm that’s remained from 2022 although he says the team is feeling fairly optimistic that the planned growth will be achievable. Over the next five years, the company has much more ambitious plans to double the size of the business from a revenue point of view.
Solopress ended 2022 on £32m and plans to be above £60m in five years’ time. “Half of that will be achieved organically,” Cooper explains. “We’d like to move into new product areas like packaging or new vertical markets like publishing, but in addition to this, there will need to be acquisitions too. We have a specialist in the group that’s going to help us with that and we’ll probably start looking for some opportunities for that next year.”
In addition to launching lots of new products, Solopress will also be offering new software opportunities for customers to connect with the company. One such example is the development of an API which is currently in motion. “We believe this new opportunity for larger customers to integrate with us will be a great success,” Cooper says, adding: “With our strong growth ambitions and the new headroom that we have because of the new technology we’ve invested in, we think it’s the right time to go for some volume.
“This will enable us to do integrations with big print managers that perhaps have significant volumes but don’t want to be passing orders through in a manual way.”
Once this has launched, there will be three ways that resellers can engage with Solopress. One could be through direct integration through an API, one could be through an account manager, and the other would be the conventional way through the website.
“It’s just continuous evolution and improvement. We’re relentless I suppose, and step by step, hopefully getting it right for our customers and therefore they return and we have a growing business,” Cooper concludes.
