“It’s another unique thing that makes Bakers a bit different,” says Steve Baker, the managing director of the Brentwood labels business.
He might be referring to any number of aspects of the trade label business. Baker Labels was the company that started dealing in substrates; it was the company that chose to invest in flexo when the consensus that letterpress was the de facto technology for printing labels; it was an early adopter of HP Indigo for digital printing and then added UV inkjet. And most recently it has invested in further HP Indigo technology to print pouches on a trade basis. It has become the first in the UK with JetFX digital embellishment. Or he might have been talking about the Well Being Zone, a forward thinking venture that supports staff who might be struggling.
In fact it is none of the above. He is talking about the company’s homegrown MIS. Baker Labels started to develop it for lack of any effective software available commercially. Today Cerm or Labeltraxx offer MIS systems for labels that are effective, Baker admits. It is, however, sticking to its Filemaker based system. If an issue crops up, the on hand programers can have it sorted the same day. No commercial system can be that flexible. And Bakers does not want to be over reliant on any outside supplier.
The MIS, for example, has underpinned growth in the last decade since moving to Brentwood. The company today has 40 staff with a turnover of £10 million, choosing to earn a decent margin than piling on the sales. He explains: “We don’t want to be a £50 million business with a 3% margin. We look at every job to see where money can be made, where is it that value can be added.
“If we are quoting for a job of 50 million labels, we know we won’t get it – we will be perhaps 60% too expensive. Doing what we do is perhaps a little harder. It’s about understanding the market. And that needs a different type of outlook.”
The outlook has been instilled over the 45 years it has been in business. Baker‘s father Roy had been working for a label printer in Battersea, travelling each day from the family home in Ilford. When he decided to strike out on his own with a handful of colleagues, Kings Cross was the logical halfway location. Baker Labels was up and running and when it outgrew that site, moved to Walthamstow on the edge of Essex and London in 1979.
The young Steve Baker grew up in labels, beginning, as he puts it “mucking around on the machines” on Saturdays and in school holidays. “I have been in the business for 45 years, 100% institutionalised, but I still love it,” he says. “I love print and what we are creating here.” He has been managing director since his father retired in 2000.
The Walthamstow factories (there were two) were typical of their time, brick built and vulnerable to the elements in places. The company was careful about the placement of machinery, not so much for ultimate efficiency but to avoid rain damage. “They were old leaky factories,” he says. “Then we found a semi derelict building in Brentwood that was up for sale. We bought it and renovated so it was as new and it gave the business a fantastic opportunity. We became a start up business with a completely different mindset. Staff responded to be being in a tidy building, those from Essex had a completely different attitude. It is a much better place to work, the people are treated well and quality has moved up a notch. It gets better and better.”
It has had a significant impact on sales which have doubled since the move. Even this year the company had enjoyed a strong first six months before the lockdown had an impact. Consequently sales were 10% down for the financial year, Baker says.
Like others work from home has become usual in the last few months, with around ten staff members doing so. Baker was not among them. Nor does he think working from home is suitable for the business in the long term. He likens it to the closure of a canteen at a police station in London’s East End. The local crime clear up rate fell simply because the chitchat, seemingly inconsequential conversations, were no longer happening and it was through these that intelligence was shared.
“We need a level of social engagement for the ideas and conversations that help solve the day to day production issues,” he says. “We do like working in a different way here, the phones in the big open area are always rising. Quietness is alien to this business. This is a business that needs a certain kind of outlook where we understand the market. It’s not a business that can be run from a laptop in the South of France.”
Nor is it a business that expects a flood of orders through the internet. “We could go down that route like commercial printers with a limited choice of styles and materials, that is not our space. But web to print is ideal for the craft and artisan market. Do we want to go there? Not yet.
“As the profile of buyers change, as they become younger they are used to working online. They understand there’s complexity but that is not a problem for them. And we can see us using online purchasing for repeat work.”
The logic is driving in that way with shorter average run lengths and faster turnarounds affecting the trade printer. It has invested in a hybrid digital workflow to automate as many of these steps. “It is the key thing for the future,” says Baker, and a huge change from the culture that underpinned the company’s early days.
Mucking about on the machines had a primal impact on Baker that suits the approach a trade printer needs to have. At the outset Baker Labels had direct clients, Gillette being among the largest at the time. It was already a supplier to the trade, providing materials and having bought its own slitter to cut down wide reels of label stock into a width suitable for its presses. These were also supplied to other label printers and it becomes natural to be able to supply those reels with print already applied.
When 25 years ago, Baker Labels’ sales manager decide to retire, winding down direct sales in favour of trade business was a natural move. “They could buy materials from us, or they could buy labels from us. This was the same customer base,” he explains.
As Baker puts it, “production has always been my forte, so going down the sales route was never the best option for me. I didn’t want conversations with a customer who wanted ‘a label to convey happiness’. I do not know what that means. It is far better to deal with people that know what they want.
“It is fairly unique to have a trade printer for labels. Everyone in labels knows us, and while this does not apply to everyone, they like and trust us to be able to do the tricky jobs they don’t want to do.”
His father had an influence here too, being apt to get into an argument with customers which could lead to lost orders. Now Baker Labels will be prepared to reprint, to lose the skirmish in order to win the war over the longer term. “If someone is spending £40,000 a year with us, there is always room to compromise on a £2,000 project. Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.”
The decision to focus on trade printing became simple. The logic is almost Harry Callaghan. A case of “Here’s a challenging job. Do you feel lucky enough to be able to produce it without huge amounts of waste and lost time, or should you place the work with Baker Labels?” The open plan sales area is a den that buzzes with calls coming in and going out, because while it is not sending sales staff to talk to brands, it is dealing with a host of trade buyers, commercial printers, print brokers and managers, and above all, other label printers. They receive highly impressive packs of samples (sometimes described as the best samples in the industry) that can be used to impress their customers in turn. “We are always asking ourselves and customers, ‘how can we enhance this?’ Everyone gets a buzz when a job comes in. If it’s a tricky job that we can sit down and think of a way around the problems. It’s like the satisfaction of fixing a broken down car.”
That has always driven the company to lead the market, to take on new technology before anyone else. At first this was installation of four-colour Nilpeter screen printing presses and then in 1992, buying its first Nilpeter UV flexo press when everyone else was using letterpress. There are three flexo presses in the business still, all Nilpeters.
It has been digital that has been transformational for Bakers and will be the base for ongoing growth. The logic for the trade printer is that this enables it to take on the short runs that are disruptive for other printers that want to keep their flexo presses running as much as possible. Digital also offers the opportunity for variable data printing, again something that other printers can be reluctant to take on.
The first Indigo, a WS4050, arrived in 2006. There was a decent population of Indigo presses in commercial printers, but at the time only very few label printers had moved into digital print. It was the start of a long relationship. “We were perhaps the second or third UK label printer to have the Indigo,” says Baker. “It made a massive, massive difference to the business.” Little more than three years later this had become the WS6000 (the first in the UK), and replacing a WS4500 that had been installed the previous year.
Today the company has three HP Indigo 6900s, configured to print with whites, fluorescents and metallics. These include HP’s Mosaic and Collage softwares to produce every label differently, printing, again, something that its customer base may not have invested in.
This has continued with the installation of JetFX digital enhancement technology, able to apply foils, varnishes and textures. Baker wanted it as soon as he saw it, but had to wait until the US developer was ready to deliver. It fits on one of the Digicon converting lines. “There has been a lot of interest in this,” he says. “It fits right in our sweet spot. Our larger customers will be able to buy their own, but first want to test the market and see where it will go before making the commitment. Small customers will never have the volume to justify the investment. Lots of people talk about this sort of technology, but will never buy it. Both have to come to us.”
The installation of new to the market technology is rarely without its teething problems. He adds: “You have to expect that. It will always take a little time to learn and understand the technology. It opens the market to produce variable foiling and varnishing which we could not do before, and 45% of label printers cannot do.
“The foil is smoother than a hot stamped foil so looks a little different though with a varnish on top we can create a slightly raised look that whisky producers like. And because it becomes part of the Digicon line we can run it or not whenever we want.”
Baker Labels is now confident that it does understand the technology and is starting to market it in earnest with a sample that showcases the technology on jobs printed on the Indigos and on its two Screen Truepress L350 LED UV inkjet presses. These are typical personal care, spirits and artisan food products where enhancement adds to the visual effect and shelf appeal.
Its other innovation currently being rolled out is less a logical adjunct to its existing business than a parallel development, earning a separate identity. This is BakPac, producer of digitally printed pouches. “BakPac is the biggest change for many, many years. We are entering a whole new marketplace – digital flexible packaging,” he says.
The company is using the familiar Indigo technology, albeit on the wider Indigo 20000 platform; it is using the same filmic materials albeit with additional thermal lamination step and a Karville pouch making line. “It should have been so straightforward, a walk in the park. But we had underestimated a little bit.
“We expected customers to have concerns about quality of print and registration. It turns out we had more than 40 years’ experience of label printing but zero experience of packaging. In this market functionality comes first and we had not tested this as much as we should have.
“Now we have had a complete reset with a full quality control process and are limiting ourselves to standard materials and finishing for at least a year. Then we can look at different materials.”
In the longer term and if it has not taken off “we will go for something else and will adapt the equipment for another purpose and work around it. It is always about how do we make money.”
There is no expectation that this will happen. The target for BakPac is both existing flexible packaging printers that want to expand their offering without making their own investment in digital printing and its existing label print customer base that are following their customers into pouches. This is a different market to EPac, which has the same equipment basis, and also to CS Labels and Hine Labels as label printers that have moved into pouch production.
The pandemic and lockdown have slowed the roll out and take up of both JetFX and BakPac, but the inquiries are coming in, says Baker. Trade print will often suffer in any kind of slowdown as companies have little overflow work and aim to keep all production in-house. Baker Labels is no exception. The lockdown and extensive use of furlough has perhaps made this worse with directors getting their hands on presses after years of being tied to the office.
“We have inquiries coming in for pouches. Our main target is the bigger flexible packaging groups that new things to engage their customers and can benefit from a trade service. It is different to labels. If we get two or three orders for 5,000 pouches each a day we will quickly fill production capacity.
“Part of the pitch for packaging is about start up businesses and artisans wanting short run, multiple sku orders that are difficult for a flexible packaging printer to cope with. They can work with a trade printer like us to produce work for these small companies as they grow bigger. The vast majority of these will never grow, but one in ten will fly. So there is a massive advantage for a large flexo printer to be able to offer digital.
The investment in the Screen presses was part of the same mindset. It installed the first five years ago and added the second last year, this time with the low migration specification with a different ink set and curing under nitrogen to ensure a complete cure of the inks. The inkjet machines are faster than the Indigos and include an orange ink option to expand the gamut and deliver a different style of label. There is no need to add a varnish or laminate to protect the UV cured ink which has a slightly raised textured effect more reminiscent of screen printing than the ultra smooth finish from the Indigos.
“We wanted something different to the HPs,” says Baker. “We can do body care labels which tend to use that screen printed effect. This is something else that we can sell. We will always consider buying something that gives us something that nobody else can do at that time. That is the beauty of technology.”
In the long term Baker thinks that inkjet will win the race, but that is the long term. HP Indigo technology will see him out. “In my lifetime there will be the two technologies,” he says. “Currently there are a lot of digital presses going in, some to non label printers. Printing, however, is not the job. It has to be finished properly so that it is presented correctly for the application. If the job is the wrong way around, the job will be returned. There is a lot to label printing.”
Nevertheless it is possible to buy the technology and to get to grips with some of the intricacies. The culture is more difficult and this is where Baker Labels stands out and is possibly absolutely unique. The Well Being Zone inside the factory is a very visible aspect of this. It was started by Baker’s wife as an independent business to help members of staff that were struggling. It is now integral to the company.
“You can spend £1 million on a piece of equipment and spend thousands of pounds a month to maintain the machinery, but companies do not spend on their people. Here, if someone is struggling they can see a counsellor with the company paying for the first four or five sessions and contributing thereafter. It will never cost a fortune to get someone fixed. It’s an investment to make sure that staff are in tiptop condition and is very good for business with a measurable ROI.”
It is now being extended into the Bakers Academy, a training system that covers everybody in the business and to help bring new recruits into the company. For some this will be a week long commitment, others will take much longer courses. “It’s an investment in our future, an up front cost that will take two or three years to show the benefits.”
Baker is confident though that there will be benefits for the business. It is part of taking the long term view that has stood the business in good stead for 45 years. “We have always been a business that is run conservatively, keeping money in the business, and while we like being on the leading edge, it has always been in a controlled manner,” he says.
Steve Baker with a Digicon line. The latest investment is the UK’s first JetFX digital foiling and varnishing unit which is integrated into the finishing line.
