Be Different, Be Dynamic

“A typical day will always start by walking and feeding the dogs who both then sit under or around my desk in the office or try and get constant attention from any of the staff willing,” says Sarah Smith, managing director of Dynamic Print, when asked about the day-to-day operations of her business. This answer creates quite the picture for Dynamic Print, which is quite a unique business in the industry thanks to its historic finishing systems and unique paper options.

While the business has a lot of history and interesting aspects, Smith, who bought the business back in 2018, has a long history in print and paper across a 37-year-long timeline.

In order to find out more about how the business operates, how it stands out, and the experiences and changes Smith has brought, we delve into this “dynamic” print business.

Making the Right Impression

Having taken on Dynamic Print eight years ago, Smith had a lot to prove, especially when weathering the various storms faced by UK businesses in the past few years. Established in 1990 and based in Norfolk, the business specialises in hot foiling, embossing, debossing, die-cutting, and print. The company’s tag line is “be different, be dynamic” which can certainly be seen through the various products and services it provides.

Providing a range of products such as wedding stationery, certificates, envelopes, and postcards/greeting cards, it’s the personal touch that clearly make Dynamic Print the company it is, with the website offering phone, Zoom, or ‘popping in for a coffee’ as ways to contact and collaborate with the business.

Describing Dynamic Print, Smith says: “Our values are putting the customer first, making sure we have numerous processes in place to ensure consistent quality control, and when things go wrong we try and understand how this happened and put things into place to avoid this happening again. Our ethos is hands on, responsive service, communicating clearly with reliable quality – we try to hold every customer’s hand throughout the experience of working with us.”

Dynamic Print was founded in 1989 by Barney Philips, who was actually one of Smith’s first customers when she was selling paper for James McNaughton Paper in Norwich. Philips later went on to become one of Smith’s most loyal print customers for over 30 years. “During this time, I began to realise just how different his little business was compared to all the other printers I would visit around East Anglia.This appealed to me and I remember jokingly saying to him that if he ever wanted to sell his business, he should let me know… Little did I expect that in 2016 Barney approached me with this very idea and in 2018 I did just that,” explains Smith.

While the transaction sounds simple, the purchase meant Smith had to sell her home, leave a successful career behind, and move 60 miles to be closer to the business. “Having to learn everything from the start, at the age of 47, and pre-menopausal it was never going to be easy to get my head around VAT, payroll, websites, blogs, cost control, marketing, vintage machinery, balance sheets, and profit and loss,” says Smith, which she says was all before even getting started on learning to print.

When discussing purchasing the business, Smith says that Dynamic Print had a “modest turnover” of around £125k which was operating in a “declining market”.

“With my strength in sales I was able to grow the business to £200k within 18 months. However, after a few years of getting established and then navigating the challenges of the pandemic, sales tumbled to below 100k, and I knew I was in deep trouble, so I had to think quick […]”

Staying Dynamic

With sales falling, Smith knew she had to find a new way to create revenue, especially in a market that was changing and facing several issues separate to the pandemic. “After brainstorming I remembered the seeded paper that I had stored for three years in the cupboard, and started to play around with it. Eventually I would grow and document it – using social media like LinkedIn and Instagram to promote this unusual paper which literally saved the business by generating over 75k in that first year.”

Since investing in the seeded paper, Smith has evolved the business by diversifying its paper offering and providing specialist papers that can be embellished. “The biggest surge this year has been the use of sustainable papers with a background story to tell, for instance a film company was using us for hot foiling invitations. This came about after being sent an eco-paper swatch showing the full range of all of the quirky papers we could now offer print or embellishment on. We now produce some of their event menus using 100% agricultural waste.

“Another client which is a stationery company uses our recycled paper for its wedding invitations or table name cards and get the bride and guests to guess what the paper is made from. The Elephant Poo paper is by far the most popular.”

Dynamic Print offers a wide variety of different recycled papers including Agricultural Waste, Coffee Husk Waste, 100% Cotton Fibres, Confetti & Recycled Paper, Blades of Grass & Recycled Fibres, Seaweed (which smells of seaweed), as well as a range of services and products like eco-friendly signage, carbon capture, and paper sleeves for flowers.

Today the company operates with five team members, which includes self-employed designers, printers, and social media professionals. Mark Critten, who has a wealth of experience on all the vintage machinery, has been with the company since 1996.

When it comes to Smith’s favourite thing about the company, she says it’s “100% vintage machinery”. She adds: “I’ve always been captivated by how, with the right pressure and dwell, each press can apply intricate embellishments. I’m also passionate about paper, my nickname by friends has always been Sarah Paper Smith. I get genuinely excited when I find a new one that has just been launched. For example, the seaweed paper that actually carries the scent of seaweed was definitely a first for me.”

Smith says that the company has nine machines that date back to the 1940s and 50s, meaning that not every job is suited to the presses, such as blind debossing in which Dynamic Print insist on chunky fonts in order to get the best debossing results. This then leads to the business largely doing hot foiling which leaves a minor deboss on the card. When it comes to working with its unique papers, Dynamic Print is able to use the experience of its staff and a “very understanding Konica Minolta technician” to offer prints on paper made from biproducts like seaweed, rose petal, cotton, grass, bamboo, and “ellie poo”.

When it comes to what Smith is most proud of, she says she is lucky to have several important moments she can think of during her 37-year career. “Number one would be keeping Dynamic Print going for the past eight years despite many people doubting me from the start, overcoming issues like the pandemic was especially challenging. This leads me to number two – if I had not been the lady who introduced seeded paper to the print industry, I wouldn’t be able to draw on my knowledge to then use this product to help keep the business from collapsing. Number three would be helping pioneer the Carbon Capture scheme with Premier Paper back in 2012 after being headhunted in 2016 to a paper mill in Austria.

“Jump forward to 2022 to Dynamic Print being the first company to work with Norwich BID, which is an organisation that helps companies upcycle their waste to other businesses – for example we sent our paper waste to the Norwich Puppet Theatre to make scenery and puppets.”

A recent stand out moment for Smith was when Dynamic Print turned part of its industrial estate unit into an eco-conscious garden which is filled with flowers, trees, vegetables, and mini ponds. This led to Norfolk Wildlife Trust, Wild East, and National Geographic reaching out to Dynamic Print after seeing the work the company had done, and the effect it was having on the area and local wildlife.

Speaking about the future, Smith says: “We are now starting to turn away work that doesn’t suit our presses, which is very frustrating, as I don’t always have to time to outsource and find reliable printers. I would love to explore the idea of a collaboration which could result in a merger, allowing me to go back to doing what I do best and that is selling… Part time at least.”

It is understandable that Smith sees a future in merging or combining her strengths with others – as many print businesses have done in recent years in order to best utilise resources and solutions. Regardless, it is clear that the beliefs and ethics of Dynamic Print are firmly rooted, and it will be very hard to disrupt the solid foundation that both Philips and Smith have established with their classic presses and eco-friendly products.

Statistics

1990 – Company officially started trading
1996 – Mark Critten joined the business
2016 – Previous owner Barney Philips proposed selling the business
2018 – Sarah Smith purchased the company following a 30-year career in
the paper industry