The boardroom at Halstan still has the grand pianos that were used by composers to proof their scores before they were printed, though rarely if ever used for that purpose today. The company is still one of the leading printers of sheet music, orchestral scores, music for choirs, but that no longer dominates.
It is just as well. Demand for that type of product has dropped sharply because these customers have simply not been able to perform during the pandemic. Halstan was already on a diversification path that had added new revenue streams to the business, in education book printing, in navigation,
“Music is still the core of the business,” CEO Rupert Smith told an Integraf seminar on the future of book printing and publishing around Europe.
Rupert Smith took over from his father Christopher at the start of last year, so has endured a baptism of fire. It was not a given that he would lead the business, having spent some years at Deloitte before coming into print and learning the business and taking over without an inkling of what was to follow.
“After the initial shock, revenues have started to recover,” he says. “The sheet music side has been badly hit, while educational print and mainstream print has remained very strong. There has been a Covid impact on the day to day operation of the business, with extensive work from home. The staff though have been phenomenal throughout the period, and all have risen to the challenge.”
If it has meant changing the way the people have worked to ensure that all can do so safely, it has not changed the strategy that Smith was on course to roll out across the £9 million business. A total business review had already been carried out and changes were ready to be rolled out over a couple of years, backed by investment of £2 million.
“Covid has not changed our strategy,” says Smith, “instead we are accelerating its implementation and instead the changes have been made in nine months.”
This would not have been possible had the company not spent 2019 investigating the approaches and the technology it would need. The most obvious of these is a Canon i300 cut sheet inkjet press to take the company into book of one production of colour books.
The company has had mono digital printing for some years using more conventional laser print engines. “We had held off investing in inkjet until this year. Now we don’t see any difference from litho in terms of quality. And when you can guarantees colour of your sheet it is really powerful.
“There’s always something new to drive the price down. There’s always going to be a differential between mono and colour, or mono and highlight colour to add value in some way, adding colour to chapter headings perhaps.”
The company has also installed a fully automatic binding line for sewn books, the first of its kind. Less physical, but at least as important is a PrintIQ MIS that provides the technology backbone for a book of one production model.
The system was developed in New Zealand to a modular open cloud based design, enabling different modules to be included in order to tailor the system to particular requirements, extending well beyond the four walls of a print factory. More traditional print MIS systems did not deliver to the joined up approach to enable the automated file in, book out model that the company wanted to build its future on.
“We looked at the whole strategy from a production point of view and how print links through to the bindery and to be as future-proofed as possible. Our aim has been to be as automated as possible,” he explains.
This is needed Smith believes because publishers want to de-risk their business. If anything Covid has emphasised this with shipping difficulties from China and Europe compounded by the forced closure of bookshops cutting off a key route to market for books. “Publishers only want to print books that they know they can sell,” he says. “That points towards zero inventory and book of one production. It is not always possible. For example book of one would necessitate a very standardised product, which will not sit well with publishers.
“We have geared ourselves towards that. We believe the entire process should be automated. It makes us easy to work with and we are now working with clients on a partnership level with a solution led perspective.
“We can link into a publisher’s stock control and back office systems whether in the US or Germany or the UK and can print directly from that. They see stock levels which leads into conversations about automatic stock management.”
Once a book has been produced for the first time, its production parameters are logged and can be recalled. “All reprints should be automated in the same way as a print on demand book,” he says.
The book might be printed in the UK, Germany or the US according to the best fit for the process. While Halstan does not have comprehensive production facilities in the US, it has a partnership with a company that can be trusted to produce to its standards. “It makes no sense to print and then ship 200 books halfway around the world.” says Smith. “There has to be a better way.”
This approach also meant that Halstan had to specialise. “We could not be all things to all men. The strategy was to focus on short run quality colour books, especially thread sewn where there is a requirement in the wider market and we had the equipment and experience that means we could be cost effective.
“Halstan has been viewed as a mono house, but we are now doing a lot of colour work because we can offer world class quality sewn and perfect bound books and as we are sheetfed we can be very flexible for customers.”
This means too the ability to print colour throughout a book rather than being restricted to a colour section that is printed separately.
There is also an international aspect. A few years ago Halstan bought a small digital print business in Germany allied to one of the major music publishers and has opened an office in New York. It can therefore deliver a service from three locations, all completely integrated through the technology. Jobs can be split across the different locations using the software to manage this.
“A lot of publishers are investing in Artificial Intelligence to streamline their processes and they will want to work with printers that are very technology minded,” Smith says. Halstan ticks this box. When the Pindar group collapsed, the company picked up the programming team that had been based in Aylesbury, producing maps for transport authorities among others. It led into web design and user interface experience skills. That team has been moved to the parent operation where its experience is being brought to bear on developing portals, on workflows and integration with the technology that publishers are using.
The timing of lockdown has been auspicious for Halstan. “The whole world has moved online so we needed a good platform to support our customers and to link to their online ordering systems,” he says.
“We looked for a system to offer this for quite a long time before coming to PrintIQ. The management team has been working though each aspect of our business to understand what best in class looks like.
“All the conversations we have with publishers are about strategy and workflow and we wanted to make that central to our offering: production quality and service levels are a given now. we are trying to differentiate ourselves through solution selling.
“We brought in external consultants to help us, creating customer websites and running campaigns to target niche ares of their market. We have generated 15 new customers and have started to generate a reputation in that area.”
That is now moving into SEO with Halstan using its programming and design experience to maximise visibility to the right audiences online, reaching customers that might otherwise not have come across Halstan and its services.
“We have pretty buoyant expectations for 2021 because 2020 was so tough,” says Smith. “The book market is remarkably strong.”
