We won three leading industry awards, welcomed some great new team members and installed swanky new pieces of printing kit.
On top of this, we did some pretty outstanding stuff for clients (always ones to blow our own trumpets!). Making a label printer your best friend isn’t always top of the ‘to do’ list for marketing and creative agencies, but it should be, and it should definitely be on that pesky New Year’s resolution list.
For any creative agency dealing with packaging, there’s a great deal of expectation from clients to be a source of endless information about what works best for an individual brand or product. For some specialist design agencies, this is no problem: they have a good idea of who can do what in terms of labels, yet these agencies are few and far between.
The nature of most creative agencies is to do a wide range of work for quite a diverse selection of industry sectors. This makes it difficult for them to have a good grasp of what’s new in terms of finishes, substrates and print technology, and that almost anything is possible with a label – you just need to ask the right printer.
It should be a company ‘mantra’ to encourage clients and prospects to involve the printer as early as possible. We grab any opportunity to show a captive audience behind the scenes at Label Apeel. For us, time on-press with other experts is not a cost but an opportunity to learn and share. I’m pretty sure that isn’t the attitude of other printers, who often seem more concerned about their hourly rates than the customer or agency experience.
One of the best rules of business I’ve ever heard is ‘surround yourself with people who are good at what you’re not’. We adhere to this: we’re great at print, so we love to collaborate with similar businesses that complement our service.
One of these businesses is Nottingham-based design agency We Are Pure. Over the last two years, we’ve become a formidable team and a source to be reckoned with when it comes to label and packaging design and print. The relationship has brought in over £100,000 worth of business to Label Apeel in the last 12 months alone.
Our close working relationship with David Rogers from We Are Pure is testament to what I’m talking about. It demonstrates exactly how printers and a creative team can collaborate and come up with some rather cracking stuff. Self-congratulatory as always!
Our relationship with We Are Pure is built on mutual respect, trust and good humour. Before the collaboration, as a company Label Apeel, were trying to showcase just what we could do to a label. But it was a catch-22 position. We didn’t have many clients who had fancy, exotic designs, so we struggled to show off any samples. Because we didn’t have the samples, no one would trust us with their fancy designs.
Lucky for us, David popped up and he was in a similar position. He wanted to break into certain markets and needed to show some of his designs finished. Once we got talking, it became obvious that there were synergies we could leverage to both our advantage. Since then, the relationship has blossomed and we use him for design work. He recommends us to his customers because we’re pretty good at what we do, as is he.
We’ve worked with other design and creative agencies, but there’s a natural fit with We Are Pure. We’re very similar in our outlook and are always open and easy.
David is like an ideas dynamo and he is edgy to the point of sometimes being dangerous. This makes life fun and challenging, the things that Label Apeel gets off on.
We work hard to encourage an open, honest and collaborative atmosphere with everyone we work with. We’ve spoken with clients we’ve worked with and we always get a positive response. Many have commented on how refreshing it is to work with a printer who’s open to trying new things. People have also spoken of our passion and the way we are keen to share our knowledge with them. We’re not shy about sharing out ideas. Just like we’re always eager to hear other people’s thoughts and creative ideas, no matter how barmy they may be.
So, our New Year resolution is to continue to build on the reputation that we’ve developed. We have investment plans for the New Year and we are strengthening our team. We are also on the prowl for further strategic collaborations with other creatives, printers or service-based suppliers.
This worked well in 2012 and we are already in talks with a box manufacturer about building stronger links. This kind of growth mechanism seems to work well for us and we hope to find other likeminded companies to work with.
Here’s to a great 2013!
Stuart Kellock is managing director of Label Apeel.
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