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for a sustainable future

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a sole trader is the many different hats you get to wear. To give you an example, here are some of my current titles;

Director, Sales Manager, Sales Person, Production Manager, Production Assistant, IT Administrator, Marketing Manager, Graphic Designer, Account Manager just to name a few.

The only frustrating thing about having all these titles is the small amount of time I get to dedicate to each of them. I’ve found that the decisions I’ve made while wearing the appropriate hat are very quickly deliberated.

On the flip side however, it means that all decisions are based on a single big picture or outcome. Various aspects of the business have been brought together quite quickly and conscientiously. Others have required more effort and reworking, our website for example has had its 3rd reincarnation in as many months.

By wearing many hats also prepares one for when a business grows and begins employing dedicated staff experienced in those fields. Having an understanding of each individual job means that you’re more likely to find someone suitable and be in a position to mentor and develop. It’s important to remember to step back and let that person do their job, after all that’s what they are employed to do in the first place. No point bring in someone new if you’re not prepared to let go.

Starting out as a sole trading is a great and humbling experience that I would change for anything.

Being a new start up business venture I often wonder about the sacrifices, long hours and stress that business owners go through to get their businesses up and running. Especially now, during these uneconomic times.

Lots of family and friends tell me that it could be up to 2 years before a business starts becoming profitable. Everything made gets poured back into the business to help it grow. And at the end of the day it doesn’t leave much for anything else.

I have alway been a frugal person anyway, so going without hasn’t been a drama for me. I don’t go without necessities, but everything else I’m willing to fore go without a second thought. All comes back to the big picture doesn’t it? At the moment I would find it very difficult to go on a holiday when those funds could purchase new equipment that could help out my customers.

I don’t watch every cent, but I do have a number of excel spreadsheets that do!

So what is a new start up business ventures best friend?

Baked Beans.

I’ve been looking around at various business models to use as a template for my business and have come across the slow grow business model.

This is a very striped down explanation but it will give you the gist;

Essentially a slow grow business model is were equipment is purchased outright and its products and services are offered in a stepped fashion. This provides peace of mind to customers due to the low risk nature of the business. A business with low debt and high asset ownership makes for a very safe and stable environment for management and employees alike. A business operating in this fashion will always have a high cash position tucked away for new equipment purchases. It also means that in the event of a turn down, that cash can be used to weather the storm.

I really warm to this kind of business model, it seems to be the safest and surest method of ensuring longterm success.

I’ll keep looking, I’m sure I will find something that will work for me.

When I’ve been sending out print jobs to clients the go out wrapped in brown paper and sealed with plastic packaging tape. I’ve never been happy with using plastic tape but didn’t have any alternative. That was until one night when my wife and I had my brother, his wife and 1yr old son over for dinner one night and we talked about all manner of things.

We always talk about printing, it’s inevitable I guess, but when we got to that topic my brother asked me to produce a plain sheet of A4 paper which after a bit of a scrounge I managed to find a sheet. While we were talking he was folding, unfolding and creasing until finally he handed me a small booklet, A7 in size. I’ll post the design when I get around to it, but the booklet contained 8 pages, 4 creases and one slit.

So simple yet so effective. And this got me thinking about my packaging, surely there was a way I could wrap, fold and tuck the wrapping paper in a way that didn’t need tape? After a few attempts I succeeded and the result was better than expected. My tape gun now sits on a shelf slowly gathering dust. Now when my print jobs go out I get a sense of satisfaction knowing that I’m contributing to the environment albeit in a very small way, but contributing non the less.

Sometimes these small ideas turn out to be big things.

I am a green printer that loves the opportunity to provide the market place with a product that is much greener than the alternatives currently available. One of the biggest hurdles I’ve faced is perception. First, let me explain a little about our green printing.

Our commercial printing machine is inkjet based and uses up to 95% less energy than conventional laser printing and even more energy is saved in comparison to offset printing. But what drew me to purchase this machine is the minimal amount of resources and materials actually required to keep the machine running.

This link will take you to a chart comparing the three most commonly available printing methods, their energy consumption and material/resource usages. It’s a powerful insight into the behind the scenes requirements that laser and offset require. This is something that the print industry do not want you to know about. Printing on recycled paper is green enough isn’t it? Sure, to the uninformed consumer it is. But this is something I want to talk about in another post.

Back to the topic about perceptions. One of my customers was having a dilemma about the print quality of their flyer, they were holding our inkjet printed flyer in one hand, and a laser printed copy in the other. The concern was that our inkjet printed flyer didn’t look as bright and as sharp as the laser printed copy.

Long story short, having brought this customer around to the environmental benefits, they decided to conduct a test within the office. Our inkjet printed flyer was taken to various people in the office and they were asked to comment on it. Surprisingly, the comments received were only on the content of the flyer, not the quality.

This encouraged them to proceed with the job. Unbeknown to me, they had taken this method of inquiry one step further, by contacting various people who had received the flyer and asked them what they thought of it. Again, comments were on content as opposed to quality.

The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes perception can be easily influenced or changed. The print industry has us too fixated on quality that we’ve forgotten that the most important thing about any print work, regardless of it’s method of print is always going to be content.

Sure our environmentally friendly printed flyer won’t look like a laser or offset printed flyer. But you can’t compare the two, it’s like comparing chalk and cheese.

It all boils down to this; One is for the environment and the other is against.

When it comes down to that I know which one I would choose without any doubt.