How Colourfast Financial honed its competitive edge
Ricoh is pleased to host a guest blog from Darren Bacon, Managing Director at Colourfast Financial.
Colourfast Financial has a rich history dating back more than one hundred years.
A history that has traditionally been rooted in all aspects of financial printing, from complex Initial Public Offerings to fast-turnaround business compliance documents.
To continue to be a service provider of choice in today’s demanding business environment, you need to innovate.
That is why Colourfast expanded into online B2B and B2C print provision with Getitprinted.com.
Expanding into print provision
It was an ambitious but carefully considered move. As we know, the world is moving to purchasing products online, and it was natural for us to capture some of this market with items such as personalised gifts and jigsaw puzzles.
In fact, we even received national attention when one of our products was recently featured on one of Britain’s biggest nationwide channels. ITV’s This Morning is a national institution, and a personalised photo puzzle was gifted to one of the presenters. We have also printed 70 puzzles of metro bank buildings for metro bank, and one of our puzzles was presented to the singer Anne Marie, as she likes to do jigsaws.
It demonstrates the power of personalised print supported by high-quality print production.
The Getitprinted.com portfolio of services on Ricoh technology was instrumental in production.
Our Ricoh solutions now include three colour sheetfed presses: two Ricoh Pro™ C9200 presses, a Ricoh Pro™ C7200x five-colour press, and a Ricoh Pro™ TF6251 UV flatbed printer.
Major investments in production technology are always based on costs, speed, and quality. Ricoh gave us everything. They got costs, speed, and quality right.
We continually invest with an eye to the future. New technology must serve our immediate needs and give us the confidence and means to stay relevant in a fast-changing market.
All four systems now manage work across both operations and have been instrumental in securing new contract wins. We can now offer more to our clients and partners.
Colourfast and Ricoh
Ricoh’s EDGE consultancy has been invaluable. It helped us undertake a complete operational review, resulting in significant print volume growth. After reviewing our approaches and procedures, we identified ways to be more effective, productive, and profitable.
Was it challenging to go through this transformation process? Self-reflection is never easy. We needed to stare at ourselves in the mirror. Standing still was not an option.
Our partnership with Ricoh has given us the edge over our competitors and continues supporting our next growth steps.
We wanted to work with someone who could see where we wanted to go and help us get there with a shared vision.
Ricoh has also introduced us to other partnerships with other companies, and we are now starting to benefit from them. The online business has increased 400% in the last few months, and this number is still increasing.
We are entering markets we didn’t expect to. With Ricoh alongside us, we can confidently face the future.
