Customer care is paramount at Ian Allan Printing

For a publisher, there are bound to be benefits in having a print supplier that is itself owned by a publishing group. The understanding of the pressures and processes involved as well as the ability to convert complex technological matters into real publishing gain. The simple acceptance that deadlines can and do move.

Such is the case at Hersham company Ian Allan Printing, which is one part of the Ian Allan Group – a diverse portfolio of businesses that have grown from the founder’s wartime fascination with the railway system to incorporate publishing, printing, business travel, motor dealerships, property letting, seaweed extract and organic seeds.

“I have a publishing background,” says Nick Lerwill, managing director of Ian Allan Printing, “as do a number of the staff. We feel we can do a lot of ‘hand-holding’, and we can take smaller publishers from the conception of the idea through to sending out the finished product. We still retain the ability to produce high quality scans for customers, though more and more people come to us with PDF files.”

The service ethos runs deep within the company, and when the four-man management team can accumulate a combined 120 years service at the company between them, it’s clear that this is no idle boast. Longevity like this, both as a print supplier, and as a senior executive within such a company, only comes from looking after the things that really matter – the customers.

It’s worth relating the history of Ian Allan Printing, and the group of companies to which it belongs, since it is slightly more colourful than that of most print companies. Ian Allan, having lost his leg at 15, worked in the public relations department of the Southern Railway during World War 2, organising the print and production of the company magazine.

His interest in locomotive classes and all types of rolling stock was, it seems, became a hobby. After fielding a large number of enquiries from the public about the numbers and names of Southern Railway’s locos, their classes and shed allocations, Allan suggested publishing a pocket booklet containing this information, but was turned down by his bosses. He set about publishing it himself in 1942, paid to have two thousand copies printed (for £42), and saw a 5 shillings and sixpence classified ad in Railway World magazine realise one shilling postal orders for almost every single copy.

The other major railway companies soon wanted the same, forcing Ian Allan to enlist friends, colleagues and neighbours; he then published a similar book about London Transport (the tubes, buses and trolleybuses) – a 20,000 print run disappeared in days. Before the end of the war, Ian Allan Locospotters Club had been formed – the very birth of train spotting, no less – and at its zenith the membership numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

In the years after the war, Ian Allan Limited went into magazine publishing, and in 1955 Ian Allan Printing was created, due to the publisher questioning why he was paying someone else to print his books and magazines.

Today Ian Allan Printing works closely with its fifty or so established customers to produce for them a variety of work comprising magazines, books, brochures and promotional literature. Half of its workload still comprises producing books and magazines for its parent group, although Lerwill stresses that the print arm has to tender for the work and be competitive. Some of the other titles the company prints are in the “enthusiast” sector, mostly being niche titles produced by smaller publishers. These are exactly the kinds of company that will value advice and appreciate the personal service that Ian Allan Printing pledges. The small to medium length print runs that the company handles are produced on its single B1 8-colour Heidelberg sheetfed press.

So the company knows its place in the industry, serving what Lerwill calls a “small but very discerning market”. Likewise, it is a small-ish printer itself, with 26 staff, and sees that “there are lots of competitive printers out there, many of them bigger than us”. “We are small in number but we have the expertise to take magazines and books from pictures through to fulfilment,” he observes.

Four years ago the firm bought a second-hand Sitma mailing line, enabling it to count Presstream distribution within its service offering, and thereby giving clients a key advantage by having the ability to mail in house. “Where third parties would not accommodate small runs on their mailing lines, we offer this as part of our service,” says Lerwill. The company has a highly experienced mailing team and can offer friendly advice which can save customers significant sums in postage, not just for UK mailings but overseas as well.

The pressures on customers are well understood by the team, especially since these clients are increasingly doing more and more of the preparation of files up to PDF status themselves. It calls for an evolving approach from Ian Allan Printing’s prepress manager Ian Cheek, one of the four-man management team, who has been at the company for almost 25 years. The craft skills are therefore long ingrained, but Cheek says he is enjoying the increased customer contact that now comes with his role.
“It’s about trying to advise customers on the right way to supply the job – whether it’s bleed, colours as CMYK, fonts being embedded – and keeping them informed all the way down the line where their job is in the process. I love it. It’s about good relationships at the end of the day,” says Cheek.

Sales manager Jonathan Bingham is another key member of the management team, with production manager Peter Gallagher completing the quartet. Bingham reinforces the point about customer service, saying: “A lot of our customers have been with us a long time and we quickly try to build up a good relationship by our actions, to make them feel well looked after. It’s care and attention to detail. That’s really where we can be different to other printers, and that’s the only way we know.

“When we do an estimate we will often look at alternatives that will give the customer a competitive edge. They look to us for initiative and we certainly offer that. We all play a part in customer service.”

It may be a more traditional view, but the customer relationship and the regular work that comes with it is the primary focus. What’s certain is that if a potential customer is looking for the cheapest price on the market, then Ian Allan Printing is not likely to be where they eventually place their work. Lerwill says that, as much as it can, the company has resisted the downward price trend that has blighted the print market, and places more importance on reducing internal production costs than on chasing work at any price.

Going forward, the environment will also play a bigger part. Ian Allan Printing already has both FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody and has taken to printing with vegetable-based inks; the volume of waste going to landfill has been reduced by about 75% thanks to better sorting of material. Kodak processless plates will be the next improvement to the firm’s sustainable practice. There are further steps that the company would like to make.

Lerwill says: “We aspire to ISO 14001 but with a company of our size we would need to dedicate a lot of someone’s time to it, and currently clients are not asking for it.
We’ve also found that getting FSC and PEFC have brought a number of useful new management disciplines with them.

“We’ve reduced our use of IPA (alcohol) on press, but not to the extent of running without it. We carry a lot of images in the types of jobs we print, and I think the product would suffer if we did completely remove alcohol.”

Digital printing is also likely to play a role in the future of Ian Allan Printing. Currently jobs such as short run conference leaflets have to be sub-contracted, and the company is watching the demand build. This will reach a point where Ian Allan decides to invest in digital printing capability, and Lerwill predicts that this will happen, adding: “It would certainly be an adjunct to the business.”

Ian Allan Printing is therefore evolving along with the needs of its customers, but keeping hold of the more traditional aspects of customer service that it believes make up its strong suit. It’s also a company that, with the Group ownership behind it, is built upon solid financial foundations, and that, combined with the dedication and attention to detail characteristic of the trainspotter, makes Ian Allan Printing a print supplier of note.


www.ianallanprinting.co.uk