Beanprint is moving to premises giving it twice the space of its previous unit. The Redditch web to print business will have 357m2 in the new unit, more than double the room of its old premises.
Business founder Chris Chedgzoy says the additional room is necessary. “We crammed out, simply can’t get anything more in,” he says. “This new unit is more than double the size.” He is already eyeing a cutting table to improve the quality of small boxes that the company produces.
It is very much a family affair with Chedgzoy joined by his daughters and their husbands in the business, which he started in 2009 operating with software that he had written himself. “We were web to print before there was a name for it,” he says.
That marked a return to print, as before becoming a software engineer he had worked at SP Print in the years before its acquisition by St Ives. There is no ambition to return to a business of that size, nor to take on the sort of large contracts that marked the specialist retail display printer.
“We specialise in short run stuff, anything from a single poster to 100 badges or 100 business cards for a local business that we can deliver the same day,” he says. That can amount to 500 orders a day, comprised of small value jobs which are processed automatically thanks to the software used. “Our system enables us to run the operation with a small team, handling the smaller orders that bigger printers tend to shy away from.”
The philosophy is also to buy rather than lease equipment, only investing when the cash is available to do so. It means that the company is more resilient than it would be with a monthly financial commitment to make.
The move comes ahead of the back to school rush and behind that the influx of calendar orders. “We print a lot of calendars in the run up to Christmas,” he says. “We have all that equipment for that.”
It also has the equipment for kiss cut stickers, beer mats, personalised face masks and other party paraphernalia and temporary tattoos.
