Islington printer Ivor Solution has created a free print academy and will call the register for its first class tomorrow. Managing director Spencer Slee says that as a company it is constantly providing its customers who have little or no specific print knowledge with training and support.
“The academy came about because we needed to create an environment where we could train and provide awareness to people who buy print but are not from the industry. They are running their own businesses and naturally lean on us to support them, which we do in the field. However, this is quite costly and ineffective,” says Slee. “A better way is for us to provide them with the tools to be able to do it themselves.”
Ivor Solution categorises this for their customers, according to the different services they require. One of these categories is entrepreneurs. “To us, entrepreneurs are people who have an opportunity to use print to sell to their customers. They have a need for print but haven’t focused on it,” says Slee.
He uses a funeral director as an example. The funeral director provides a variety of services for support often quite needy clients. But the quality of the funeral stationery is quite easy to overlook. The subject can be quite complicated and emotive, and difficult if the funeral director is not very technology aware.
“We have built very sensitive solutions, where the bones of the technology is very complex but the interface isn’t. They can add that to their comprehensive offering and they become a new reseller channel for us.”
Designers are another category with completely different needs. They may come to Ivor Solution just for print. “They may have done a rebrand for a client and they come to us for the first-time print. We ask them if they are missing an after sales opportunity they are missing,” Slee points out. “We can provide an online template that the designer can give their client, to say ‘Here is not only your design, but a method to protect the integrity of it going forward.’”
The print academy occupies some 100m2 of “prime London real estate” at the back of the building, with its own entrance. Ivor Solution has created several modules which are divided into awareness and training. There will be a rolling timetable with each module running at the same time every week.
The company is creating collateral and samples for the academy to give the delegates something tangible to relate to. Print is very hard to bring to life, he says, so the training room will be very much a product showroom too. “It isn’t just really nice works of art that we want to capture. We want to show all types of print.”
The heart of the print academy is director Ivor Jacobs. He will spend three days a week running the courses. Jacobs has been in the instant print business since 1974 and is in the rare position of starting with digital and then adding litho.
“I’d like to think we can pass on our knowledge in a useful and pertinent way, so that when we are talking to people and training them we can give them something they can relate to,” says Jacobs. “The space that we’ve made is very creative and we will encourage our customers to bring their own customers to meetings here. It is going to be a multi-purpose space.”
Ivor Jacobs will be focusing attention on the running of the Ivor Solution print academy. The aim is to help customers make the right choices when selecting print, and so to make the process smoother and more effective.
