Tradeprint has taken ownership of the whole building in Fulton Road, Dundee
Dundee's finest
Now one of the most well-known online print service providers, Tradeprint’s history dates back to 1997, a year before Google came into existence, and was originally known as Fairprint. In 2015, the Dundee-based company became part of the global Cimpress Group and was renamed Tradeprint.
The past year has been a busy one for the business with a stream of news coming in regarding investments, expansions, and continued sustainability efforts – not to mention an award or two along the way! This year, Tradeprint’s plant site has doubled from 20,000sq ft to 40,000sq ft with the company bringing its large-format production into one building after taking ownership of the whole building in Fulton Road, Dundee.
“As pioneers in the print industry, we leverage technology and the expertise of our highly skilled team to innovate and delight our customers with an outstanding experience,” says Santha Hope, head of marketing at Tradeprint who joined the company in June this year, bringing over 16 years’ marketing experience in large-format print. “Our aim is to be able to make print accessible to anyone and everyone via one brand by 2025,” she adds.
Through its large online catalogue of printed products, Tradeprint offers everything from small-format business cards and print, to signage, foamex printing, and billboards, as well as bespoke quotes. As the name implies, Hope explains how Tradeprint is proud to support its loyal print resellers with dedicated account managers and its Tradeprint Pro membership scheme which offers delivery upgrades, promotional discounts, Pro resource tools, and credits based on spend.
“In just the past 12 months, we have given our customers back over £500,000 in credits,” explains Hope, adding that the company’s Tradeprint Connect print API is the longest established in the market with over 1 million different SKUs set up over the past seven years.
Having invested more heavily in its in-house large-format and signage capabilities and offering its customers access to a value-added installer network over the past year, Tradeprint has also recently become a member of the ISA-UK.
Going for Green
An area where Tradeprint’s name has been cropping up more and more recently is around sustainability. The company has long been working to improve its own environmental impact and is always looking at investments and processes that can support this.
Back in 2021, Tradeprint became a member of Two Sides, enabling it to promote the sustainable efforts of the business, as well as aiding the mission to remove greenwashing within the print and paper industries.
At the same time, Tradeprint sales and customer success director and sustainability lead, Anthony Rowell, became Chair of the BPIF Environmental Forum. The forum meets every other month with webinars and focus groups held in between and focuses on topics such as carbon and plastic tax. The community also acts as a source of information and networking support for those wanting to improve their own sustainability and environmental impact.
(L to R) Paul Bisland, Print Week Highly Commended Trainee of the year 2023, and Anthony Rowell
Just before stepping into this role, Rowell also volunteered to take on the role of Sustainability Lead at Tradeprint. He has also recently become Vice Chair of a new Sustainability Super Hub which will see industry members come together to share resources and boost sector profile on the topic. He also hopes to support the IPIA as a council member on all things sustainability.
Both the Cimpress Group and Tradeprint are on a focused and dedicated sustainability journey with Rowell leading the charge. The aim is to eliminate 100% of problematic plastics and use only 100% recyclable packaging by 2025. The Group also has the goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2040 with Tradeprint’s efforts contributing towards this.
One area that the company is striving to improve its impact in is with the hardware it uses and in September 2022, Tradeprint first began working with HP Latex – partly due to its own search for sustainable solutions, but also in response to increasing demand for environmentally friendly print from customers.
Not a company to do things by halves, Tradeprint dipped its toe into this area of print by investing in not one, but five HP Latex printers. This came about when Tayprint, one of Tradeprint’s main suppliers, liquidated, enabling Tradeprint to take ownership of the machines and begin work almost immediately.
The acquisition saw Tradeprint take on two HP Latex R2000 flatbed printers, a HP Latex 570 large-format printer, and two HP Latex 3600 large-format printers all of which were installed by reseller Perfect Colours.
Tradeprint has also been able to make use of HP’s cartridge and printhead takeback programme offered through the HP Planet Partners initiative. Rowell says one of the best things about working with HP, and HP Latex in particular, is their approach to greenwashing which he describes as reassuring.
“We buy into HP Latex’s sustainable approach with the energy efficient devices, water-based odourless inks, and the cartridge takeback scheme,” Rowell says, adding: “HP Latex provides several advantages when you consider sustainability; we don’t need special ventilation on the shop floor, the prints are odourless and there’s no reactive monomer chemistry.
HP Latex provides several advantages when you consider sustainability; we don’t need special ventilation on the shop floor, the prints are odourless, and there’s no reactive monomer chemistry”
“It’s better for the workforce and meets the increasing requirements of customers who want to be purchasing more responsible print collateral.”
With wide-format being Tradeprint’s fastest growing category, the HP Latex printers are also allowing the company to deliver more, quicker. The company is also committed to removing plastics so being able to combine the HP Latex machines with PVC-free substrates is a win-win.
Deserved Recognition
These efforts haven’t gone unnoticed and just last month, the company was awarded the Sustainability Advocate Award at the IPIA Recognising Excellence Awards 2023.
Whilst this sustainability journey is something that Hope says she is most proud of about the company, she says her favourite thing is the people and friendly work culture – although she admits the Scottish accents in Dundee took some getting used to!
However, she quickly mastered this and describes the friendly work culture as “totally genuine and experienced in every action that individuals and the business make each day,” adding: “Our company values are lived and breathed which I hope all our customers also experience.”
To end 2023, Tradeprint has launched its own brand soundtrack which has been composed to reflect its personality – customers are encouraged to listen out for this when calling into Tradeprint and also in the company’s social media posts, marketing videos, and at events.
Looking forward now to the new year ahead, Hope says the company will continue to focus on ensuring all its customers experience consistent quality and excellent service, so that they want to return to Tradeprint again and again in the future.
On this, the company’s key focus is to be able to offer all customers’ print requirements from one single brand by 2025, by improving the online customer experience, tailoring this to a more personalised approach and extending its catalogue range of printed products available.
“I am excited in the current challenging economic climate to be supporting our professional print customers with the Tradeprint Pro membership scheme, giving back credits based on spend; and Tradeprint Connect, the UK’s Print API, which helps our customers to extend their own catalogue and reduce costs by utilising our manufacturing capabilities and white-label shipping,” Hope adds.
Charlene Joss, managing director of Tradeprint
With Tradeprint having celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022, we speak with managing director, Charlene Joss to find out what it’s like to be at the helm of such a fast-evolving and innovative company.
What has your career in the print industry looked like to date?
I started at Tradeprint in 2015 shortly after Cimpress acquired Tradeprint to assist with the corporate finance requirements and lead the finance team as finance director. I set up and managed the Business Intelligence team, which helped shape our data-driven culture, and provided me with great exposure to the wider business. Three years later in 2018 I was promoted to managing director and have led multiple teams over the last five years including Marketing and Product.
What is it like being the managing director of Tradeprint?
It’s truly an honour! I get to lead an incredible team with a breadth of knowledge and skills, and I feel like I learn from them every day. I feel like there are so many opportunities in front of us and it’s a privilege to lead such a talented team.
What is something you’re most proud of about Tradeprint?
The people. We operate at a fast pace, constantly looking for ideas and opportunities to invest our time and resources, and the unwavering commitment and dedication from the teams across the business is incredible – they all want to succeed as much as I do.
What has been the biggest challenge for Tradeprint in recent years?
Definitely navigating through the Covid era. We had to act quickly which was incredibly difficult when there were so many unknowns and variables. There were a lot of tears shed but as a team we really came together, and I firmly believe the actions we took then really helped shape the company for the future. When volumes were low and recovering, we had more time to plan and focus on our longer-term vision and we continue to execute on that today.
How have you seen the print industry change and evolve?
Unlike some of my colleagues I’m relatively new to the industry but over my eight years we are starting to experience the decline in some of the more traditional paper-based products like business cards and stationery.
Home working and a shift towards digital advertising and communication will naturally impact those product lines. Run lengths are also getting shorter likely due to spend budgets being impacted by the cost-of-living crisis. A real shift in focus towards providing sustainable alternatives has also weighed heavily on our New Product Introduction plans and we remain committed to our local and Cimpress-wide sustainability targets.
What would you say is the biggest pressing issue for the print industry currently?
The general economy, fluctuating costs and the impact that has on profitability and cash flow. Soaring energy costs put a huge amount of pressure on manufacturing businesses not to mention the huge annual percentage increases in living wage. Many of these costs have been absorbed by businesses as it’s been difficult to be able to pass on to the customers and still retain volumes.
And how are you tackling this?
We are constantly looking at process improvements and make strategic investments to improve efficiency and output wherever we can to offset these increases. We invest in robust training and development plans for our production employees to allow them to be multi-skilled in numerous areas to ensure we increase our headcount proportionately and react to any drop in volume in particular streams.
We’re also actively growing some of our product categories out with the highly commoditised (and low margin) small-format products into large-format, labels and packaging, and PPAG where the opportunities for growth and potentially higher margins are stronger. This ensures we can offer a wider catalogue to our customers and also allows us to offset any future decline in small-format volumes with new emerging products that will continue to grow our revenue base overall.
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