Podcasts On Demand

In the final episode of series two, we welcome Charles Rogers from Portland Media. Charles is also Chair of the Independent Print Industries Association (IPIA) and a strong advocate for the sector. As a long-standing business owner, he truly believes in the craft, creativity and the strength of the print community. Tune in to discover:

• How Charles used print community forums to learn, network and grow his business over the last 40+ years of his career
• What advice Charles would give to any print business leader when it comes to always being up-to-date with technology
• Why it’s important that everyone gets involved in IPIA’s lobbying of the UK government to protect print

You may also be interested in:

• Community: become a member of the IPIA
• Trade show: Visit us at Drupa 2024 to discover the latest technology innovations
• eBook: Be a Print Champion - winning strategies for print industry

In this episode, we welcome Neil Lovell from the Printing Charity, an organisation dedicated to supporting people working in the print sector and looking after their wellbeing. Under Neil’s leadership, the charity works to make a positive difference in people’s lives by providing practical, emotional and financial support; and championing emerging talent. The charity’s free, confidential helpline is already there for over 26,000 people in our industry, and their main goal for 2024 is to continue to expand this reach and help more individuals. Listen to the inspiring chat to discover:

• How the Printing Charity has been championing people in print for generations
• What initiatives are making the difference and what is available to those in need of support
• How to get involved to help raise awareness or reach out for help

You may also be interested in:

• “The Printing Charity: the ways we’re here for you”
• The ‘Rising Stars’ programme
• eBook: Be a Print Champion - winning strategies for print industry

Join us as we chat to Graham Lycett, MD of Jellyfish Livewire marketing agency & Green Gift Cards who is championing print and driving innovation in a niche gift card market. With his unrivaled passion for sustainability he is not only revolutionist the sector via helping big retail brands to stay true to their ESG goals but at the same time Graham is making the industry less reliant on an old energy intensive process which creates a lot of waste. In this episode you will discover:

• Why Green Cards are chosen by more and more big retail names and how digital print contributes to this
• How Graham has created a business niche in a market that is very much reliant on an old, industrial manufacturing process
• What it takes to innovate and co-create and why it's crucial to have the right technology partner on your side.

You may also be interested in:

• Graham's Whitepaper: One simple change retailers can implement today to help tackle the issue of single and limited use plastics.
• Latest Ricoh report: The Automation Gap: Attitudes Versus Adoption in the Print Industry
• eBook: Be a Print Champion - winning strategies for print industry

In the 7th episode, we welcome another Champion of Print, Ben Haynes, Director of Operations at Adare SEC who via his leadership has been driving continuous improvement activities across the business. This approach is adding a tremendous amount of value to the organisation which is now one of the becoming a top tier CCM service provider in the UK. Listen in to learn:

• Why Adare SEC is leading with customer first approach
• How Adare SEC is dealing with various challenges facing them as a business as it transitions and grows within the industry
• The four key themes shaping Adare SEC’s future goals: regulation, risk & compliance, digitisation and sustainability

You may also be interested in:

• Latest Ricoh report: The Automation Gap: Attitudes Versus Adoption in the Print Industry
• Latest Adare SEC report: Communication Cut-through  
• eBook: Be a Print Champion - winning strategies for print industry

We welcome Craig Brown, CEO of the ISA - UK, who has over 30 years industry experience, has run his own signage businesses and now leads the UK division of the International Sign Association. In this podcast we do like to discuss key verticals & opportunities and in our view, sign & display market is definitely one of them. As it happens, Sign & Digital Show concluded a few weeks ago and ISA took part in some of it's featured sessions. This episode will leave you with:

• A little recap on the show and Craig's personal view on how it went
• What support is available to you and the aim of ISA - UK as an industry association  
• How to take advantage of the opportunities in the sign sector

You may also be interested in:

• Ricoh blog: your complimentary insights around signage technology
• Sustainability strategy: our long term approach  
• eBook: how to succeed in 2023

Join us as we celebrate the International Women’s Day and look at the role of women in the print industry. In this episode we are joined by Deborah Corn from Girls Who Print to discuss practical advice for women in the print industry as well as print businesses wanting to improve diversity in their teams. The podcast also shines a light on the power of:

• Cross-training: examining your existing workforce and offering opportunities to learn new skills.
• Communicating to your teams: How to make diversity and inclusion part of your strategic objectives and not a tick box exercise. 
• Authenticity in your approach to diversity and inclusion, and how that translates into better business outcomes, especially when working with print buyers belonging to Gen Z.

As we wave goodbye to 2022, it's time to reflect on and consider the major trends in the print industry, what’s driving them and how to make a success in this ever evolving marketplace. What is the best practice and what can an average print business do to grow business in 2023?

In this episode we welcome Brendan Perring, General Manager at Independent Print Industries Association- an organisation committed to serving and protecting the interests of print as well as connecting our industry with the associate ones like creative and design industries. IPIA are definitely Champions of Print and can support you with:

• Ways to navigate the frequent changes in the industry, how to diversify and/or pivot
• Ideas around new markets, applications and strategies that are worth considering right now
• Networking, collaborations with suppliers and other printers and building personal interactions with customers, which are key

As we often look up to the biggest print businesses in the UK, we also often wonder how operations like these manage their complexity, different customer types and keep their services consistent across their production sites. It's not an easy task and it comes with its own set of challenges, but also opportunities.

This podcast series is about the Champions of Print - the people in our industry who are innovative, forward thinking and bold in a marketplace that never stops evolvingIn and in this episode we chat to Sue Evren, who is an inspirational leader at Paragon Customer Communications, leading her part of the business to success. Listen as she gives her view on:

• How the company manages its culture given the scale of their operations, acquisitions and growth over the years
• Changing customer demands and how Paragon constantly improves on customer experience
• What activities Paragon put in place to improve team engagement and successfully drive their sustainability message.

There are business leaders within the industry who are bold, innovative and best embody the new mindset needed to succeed in the ever changing print industry. The Champions of Print, as we call them, are not only incredibly inspirational in a way they lead their business to success but also have the confidence to be optimistic, collaborative and forward thinking while they deal with industry pressures. It’s not an easy and rather demanding job as our market will never stop evolving.

In this episode we chat to two special ladies who have been shaping the success of Communisis - Cara Walker, Executive Director of Digital Solutions; and Christina McMinn Executive Director of Manufacturing and Logistics. Listen in as they explain:

• How the innovation and operations need to go hand in hand
• Changing customer demands and how Communisis is transforming to address them
• That it's all about traceable results and what works and not one channel of communication over another
• How Communisis sees real strategic partnerships and would not accept anything less

The shape of the UK printing industry is constantly changing, although the rate of this change - and the extent of it - is different in various sectors. It's often referred to as a barometer for economic stability. This makes it a very interesting and appealing sector to the people who are passionate about print, but is it as appealing on the outside? Is the evolving landscape easy enough to navigate for an average print organisation and why - and how - do they keep going? What business support is available for those willing to transform and take advantage of the opportunities? In the first episode of series 2, we chat to a great champion of print, Charles Jarrold, the CEO of BPIF who gives his view on:

• the industry health and challenges
• the ‘hottest’ verticals to be involved in and…
• why this business is about relationships and the journey and not the transaction

Branding has a real impact on the wider success of a company and can create an emotional connection with your business. There has never been a more important time to build brand engagement and workplace design plays a vital role in this process. The companies such as Them can help transform how your business engages with the people it interacts with; internally or externally. In this episode, we chat to Dan Moscrop, advocate for print & physical experience, CEO & founder of Them Design Ltd and host of the Spacecraft podcast.

• Why a changing culture can create an opportunity but also be a threat to an organisational survival, if it's lost
• How print can support the growing trend of creating ‘better than home’ workplace environment
• Why blending physical with digital is so important for the future of workplace

With a long history of reinvention and overcoming adversities, print service providers (PSPs) are once again adapting to the new digital reality. There is an important mind-shift taking place here. Where print used to be THE means of communication, the industry now comes to terms with the fact that print is A means of communication, not inherently worse or better than the rest. Capitalizing on this shift implies that PSPs need to be able to satisfy a broader range of their clients’ communication needs including, but not limited to, printing. In this episode, we chat to Matt Irish, European Partner Manager at Objectif Lune, who gives us his view on the digital transformation and what it means for print.

• Digitization vs digital transformation in print - what's the difference?
• Why companies & brands need to be ready to make a switch and move to digital when required
• How technology providers can play an important role in enhance the customer communications, link to process management and make execution more automated and effective

While the shape of the UK printing industry is always changing, the rate of this change and extent of it, is different for different sectors. Declines, according to the official statistics, continue in newspapers, magazines, catalogues and advertising material, suggesting that buyers are cutting print runs or reducing the numbers of sections in catalogues and magazines. At the same time demand for greeting cards and photo products continue to grow and revenue from printing books continues to underline the resilience of the printed word. WIth all this in mind, paper manufacturers, who are a very important link in the print industry’s supply chain, are transforming their production lines to meet market demands. In this episode, we speak to Jim Whittington, Channel Sales Manager at Mondi Group, who gives us his view on the market from a paper manufacturer point of view.

• Major shifts in the paper manufacturing and how they affect the commercial print market
• Why sustainability and CO2 emissions are on top of the paper mills’ agenda
• How tuning into paper trends can give you a competitive advantage

Print is everywhere. It informs and illuminates, brings us beauty and entertainment, it communicates, educates and inspires. Who wouldn't want to be involved in this industry? However, with digital transformation also prominent in the print sector, we need the digital-savvy young talent to be encouraged to join and lift it off. In this episode, we welcome Karly Lattimore, Managing Director of Training at BPIF, who is doing a fantastic job with apprenticeships and training of the next generation in print.

• How can our industry compete with the shiny & glamorous world of digital communications?
• Time, effort, energy and passion is needed to mentor young talent but what are the benefits?
• How can every printer get onboard programs available and future proof their operations by investing in the younger generation

The print industry has been under constant scrutiny for being wasteful, unsustainable and less green than digital comms. In this episode, we speak to invite Steve Lister, sustainability strategist & influencer, who gives us his view on the topic and shares his simple method of how any printer can improve their sustainability agenda.

• The big push - how the print industry is impacted by the global sustainability trends
• Why telling your sustainability story has never been more important
• What can every print service provider do around sustainability to make a difference and satisfy the growing demand

In this episode, we welcome Henrik Müller-Hansen the CEO of Gelato, a Norwegian production-on-demand platform that allows e-commerce entrepreneurs to localise the production and delivery of customised print products to customers all over the globe. We discuss the accelerated shifts in cloud and on-demand printing, the challenges these trends present to PSPs and explore the exciting opportunities in the world of digital print.

You will discover:

• Faster, smarter, greener - how Gelato connects thousands of online stores for customized print on demand products and delivers them anywhere in the world within an average of 72 hours.
• Why a former telecom leader thinks that being a digital printer has never been more exciting.
• How any printer can tap into the opportunity presented by the “new wave"of ecommerce entrepreneurs. It's not a zero-sum game anymore!

IIn this episode, we speak to James Shand Chairman at TriPartum, a customer communications management (CCM) firm, to explore the accelerated shift from physical and printed communications to digital, the main challenges and consequences this shift presents to an average print service provider and the potential solution to finding your way around this new reality

You will discover:

• How the customer content management can be your unique selling point (USP)
• Why channel of communications should be up to customers and not marketers’ choice
• How to add value and create competitive advantage by managing big data & providing single communication strategy
• Where to start with your CCM journey without making a big investment

In this episode, we welcome Danny McNeil from TM creative agency, the people behind the famous 365 calendar, and have an inspiring conversation about collaborating your way to innovation. We also share a winning formula you can replicate when you go after a big creative print contract.

You will discover:

• The story behind the famous calendar, why creatives love the initiative and how the 2021 edition became the most successful to date
• Why speaking the same language and demonstrating bespoke ideas should be at the forefront of your pitch to creatives
• What the move to hybrid working means for Finance teams
• A proven blueprint for any ambitious print project to ensure successful delivery

In this episode, we catch up with Scott Russell at Plockmatic Group and have an inspiring discussion about innovation, automation and telling a story through print.

You will discover:

• What technology innovations are available for every size of a business to take advantage of nowadays and why format is the last frontier
• How finishing can make it easier for printers to tell the story through the printed page
• How it all comes down to adding value i.e. short run, meeting last minute SLAs, having the right tech for the job
• Why automating being as much as about using hardware and software solutions as partnering with companies that can advise on best solutions

In this episode, we welcome Lucy Swanston at Nutshell Creative and have a fascinating discussion on the power of print, the impact it can make on campaign ROIs, how we can all invigorate the future print industry by working with our communities and what simple steps a printer can take to win more work from creative agencies or consumers.

You will discover:

• How print can offer a better cut-through when included in the marketing strategy
• How to answer to common myths around print industry including sustainability and price vs value
• nspiring stories and examples of work that makes a difference in print business

In this episode, we speak to Mark Nelson from Compass Business Finance and discuss how you can take full advantage of CBILS and sharing tips on how you can secure future financing.

You will discover:

• Why finance has become at the forefront of everybody’s mind this year and what options are available for the print industry
• What are CBILS and how to take advantage of the support available
• Best practice on how to create a business case and improve your odds of being accepted

“Anything that can be digital, will become digital and print is no exception” - Benny Land

In this episode, we are joined by Tim Cox at Vpress and have a deep dive conversation about all things e-commerce in print:

You will discover:

• Online - the unsurprising shift in digital and its acceleration
• Why bother with going online?
• Do benefits of ecommerce actually outweigh the risks
• How to get your head around starting online