Doherty says ASL is the first company he has worked for that treats its customers and employees the same
Communication and collaboration
A dedicated supplier of a wide range of print hardware, software, and services, ASL Group has seen significant growth and success over the past decade. The company’s strategic investment, acquisitions, and a management buyout, amongst other things has seen its turnover rocket from £6.6m to £43m.
Today, ASL offers a unique standpoint for supplying kit in that it has solid relationships with many of the main manufacturers enabling it to deliver an unbiased offering to the industry. Most recently, the company moved to new premises twice the size in Ely, Cambridgeshire. This alongside its additional eight regional offices in the UK means the company has a local offering with national reach.
ASL Group recently moved into new premises double the size of its previous one
To find out more about how the company has achieved this growth and success, Carys Evans spoke with Will Doherty, commercial and industrial printing systems director who brings with him his own wealth of knowledge and experience to the ASL team.
Strong footing
Founded in November 1991 by founding member and chairman Martin Tye, ASL Group had a strong start with Tye’s established footing in the industry. The founder’s career in print began back in 1975 and by the age of 24 he had started his first business, The Ultimate Group. This company grew to become the largest Minolta reseller in Europe and Tye successfully sold the business to a public company in 1987, going on to found ASL Group where he remained until 2011.
In 2009, ASL’s group sales director joined the business and went on to lead the management buyout the following year. Since this, ASL has grown substantially having successfully completed 13 acquisitions and grown into a £43m turnover business.
These strategic acquisitions have increased the company’s geographic reach and resulted in new partnerships forming with leading manufacturers. Today, ASL operates from nine locations nationally with Ely, Cambridgeshire being the central hub and head offices for all operational and administrative functions. The recent move to Cambridgeshire was into premises twice the size of the previous site comprising 9,435sq ft of office space and 24,824sq ft of warehousing space. The headquarters also has 75 car parking spaces of which ten are free-of-charge electric charging points.
Doherty’s journey with ASL began in 2018 but his career in the industry spans much further back. Having worked in the printing industry for the past 27 years, Doherty was originally trained by Heidelberg to manage the full product lifecycle for offset lithographic printing, CTP, and workflow systems. He then transitioned to digital production printing equipment as the technology continued to develop and improve.
At this time, Doherty’s role was to assist and guide long-term lithographic printing companies in the adoption of digital printing technologies designed to provide cost and process efficiencies across the whole operation. It was following a joint venture between Heidelberg and Kodak that Doherty transitioned to Kodak as part of the company’s newly formed Graphic Communications Group. In this role, he had the task of developing the NexPress digital colour press platform customer base across the UK and Ireland.
Whilst spending time in product development and sales for leading manufacturers within the digital printing equipment market, Doherty had an internal focus – to bring a vendor-neutral solution to clients. With this in mind, Doherty met with the owners of ASL and it was decided that he would be the perfect fit to develop this idea at the company.
Relating this to the day-to-day running of things and ASL has the ability to be agile in its service offering by reacting to customers’ changing needs. “ASL customers require the reliable and cost-effective provision of products and services which meet their needs and expectations in terms of representation, technical performance, service, and price.” Doherty explains.
“As a supplier of equipment, software, and service, we strive to develop and maintain a level of excellence and in doing so must aim to achieve ‘right first time’ activities in all aspects of our business, which covers the supply, service, and distribution of equipment, software, and associated consumables nationally.”
Doherty goes on to explain that independence and impartiality is at the core of ASL’s CIP (Commercial and Industrial Print) division, and at the heart of its offering to the print industry. “For as long as I can remember, the digital equipment supply business in the commercial print sector has been manufacturer-driven with a small number of independent suppliers playing on the periphery,” he says.
“What this means is that each manufacturer will do their best to ‘sell’ their products to the client irrespective of the suitability of the solution. At ASL we are different. We are fully accredited production systems partners with all the major manufacturers which means we can offer a truly impartial viewpoint and focus on best fit solutions instead of the brand badge on the machine.”
Over the years, Doherty has witnessed the CIP equipment supply business changing and it is this impartiality that has enabled ASL to remain successful. “Historically, clients relied on salespeople to provide all the knowledge and information they would need to buy the right equipment and that is why many companies have stuck with the same brand of digital press for many years.
“These days, customers will often have researched what they are looking for, for weeks or months before they ever engage with a salesperson. By the time they are ready to buy, they might be 80% down the decision-making journey.”
Doherty continues: “I see our role within ASL as being information providers to our clients. We make sure we are fully aware of all the current and emerging technologies within the industry so that we can inform and advise our clients on an ongoing basis.”
We make sure we are fully aware of all the current and emerging technologies within the industry so that we can inform and advise our clients on an ongoing basis”
ASL’s offering includes cut-sheet toner and inkjet colour and mono digital presses, continuous feed inkjet colour and mono digital presses, wide-format, print finishing, and related software. For the sign industry, ASL has found that many sign businesses are looking to add additional services to their client bases. Therefore the company provides automated small-format production solutions which allow them to offer products such as business cards, flyers, letterheads, postcards, and more.
As well as supplying hardware, ASL supports its customers’ business objectives by providing qualified independent advice on their print, software, IT services, and unified communication requirements. ASL’s quality assurance programme has been designed to establish and continually improve the effectiveness of the quality system.
This means the company provides a framework for employee participation and involvement using clearly understood effective systems of work and training of employees to meet the quality required by its customers.
Doherty says: “Our head office in Ely, Cambridgeshire is the central hub for our service centre, national call centre, and professional remote team ASSIST (Automated Systems Support Innovative Solutions Team). Providing the ability to understand what is happening in the moment is more valuable than ever. Utilising market-leading software with improved visibility comes with less downtime and outstanding customer experience.
“The ASL board of directors plays an active role in the smooth running of the business, regularly assessing departmental performances to ensure we maintain the standards of operational excellence.”
This is demonstrated by the company’s performance over the past 12 months, during which time it has installed over 3,500 machines nationally. All of these machines are configured and prepared on-site at Head Office ready for transit. Working with SMEs (Small-to-medium Enterprises), corporate, and the public sector, ASL says it does especially well in certain vertical markets which include commercial print and film/TV production. Clients include well-known names such as Netflix and Moonpig.
One big team
Despite the company’s significant growth over the years, its values have stayed the same. These are to be ethical, passionate, respectful, and to encourage success. “We invest in employees and provide a foundation for all staff to upskill and develop,” Doherty says. “Communication and collaboration are key fundamentals to ASL’s success. ASL is a sustainability-conscious business, with many active policies in place to protect the environment and promote best practices with both staff and customers in mind.”
Doherty’s favourite thing about ASL is the company culture and he says they all work as one big team, from business development and marketing departments, through to sales order processing, supply chain, finance, logistics, and service. “We all engage with each other on a regular basis which makes the process of looking after our clients much easier,” he says, adding: “I have been in this industry for over 25 years and in all that time I have never known a business to look after its staff in the same way it looks after its customers but at ASL that is exactly what we have.”
As with any business, the strategic journey of growth hasn’t been without its obstacles and Doherty says one of the main ones at the start of the company’s journey was getting its name out there. “In the early days, our biggest challenge was brand awareness. Although ASL has been in business for over 30 years, we have only been active in the commercial print sector for the last five years. I would often start a call with ‘Hi, it’s Will Doherty from ASL’, only to be asked ‘Who is ASL?’.
“Thankfully those days are far behind us now as since launching the CIP division our marketing and new business development teams have worked tirelessly to develop our brand and make sure potential clients know who we are and what we do.”
It would be impossible to discuss the challenges faced by ASL without mentioning the Covid-19 pandemic. As any business within the print industry and further afield would attest, the pandemic brought with it a whole host of challenges and worries that we had never had to navigate before such as enforced lockdowns and overnight drops in demand within certain markets.
However, despite the global and economic challenges of the pandemic, ASL managed to increase turnover and net profit over the past 12 months. This involved strategically investing in MPS (managed print service) businesses in Nottingham and Liverpool which were integrated during Covid lockdown, enhancing ASL’s service offering and national coverage.
Strategic acquisitions have increased ASL’s geographic reach and resulted in new partnerships with manufacturers
With this in mind, Doherty says the thing he is most proud of is the development of the compamy's CIP division. “When I joined the business in May 2018, ASL had minimal experience of the CIP market and had only really sold production equipment into the education sector. Since then, we have grown to be the largest truly independent supplier of digital production printing equipment in the UK and have developed solid relationships with all the major manufacturers including Canon, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, OKI, Ricoh, Screen, and Xerox. We have built an excellent reputation within the commercial print sector and will continue to develop our offering as the market demands.
“Also, we recently had our first large stand at The Print Show held at the NEC in September which was a huge success for us; so I am also proud of that.”
In September this year, ASL Group had a large presence at The Print Show with huge success
Looking forward and ASL has major growth plans over the coming years, facilitated by the expansion of its premises and recruitment of a professional bids team. Doherty explains: “This investment provides ASL with the necessary foundation to handle the smooth deployment and service of hardware on a much larger scale.
“The Bid Team has a wealth of experience in public and government sector procurement and in partnership with our CIP team we are looking to expand the CIP portfolio into the CRD and corporate print room arena. ASL is now an approved supplier on several frameworks, and we have been awarded the contracts for 25% of the bids we have responded to date.”
To find out more about what ASL Group can offer, you can contact Doherty on 07392 848 563 or email will.doherty@asl-group.co.uk.
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