Worldwide Online Printing managing director Rob Dallimore is clearly proud of the company. In his office at the group’s new Sydney HQ, he speaks candidly about the invigorated culture within the franchise operation, Australia’s third largest after Snap and Kwik Kopy. He comes across more like a team captain than a manager, discussing the achievements of the group from the perspective of someone working on the ground not in some ivory tower.

This time last year, there was no head office. Dallimore was holed up at a desk in the Bondi franchise as administrators McGrath Nicol searched for a buyer to save the group from collapse. Dallimore, who had only just taken on the managing director mantle a month before for the former owners called in the administra-tors, was taking each day as if it could be the firm’s last. Worldwide’s digital production facilities in Brisbane and Sydney were closed. Numerous executive had been axed. 

Today, as part of the team that successfully steered the business out of choppy waters, Dallimore has the luxury of being be able to laugh about a period he would rather forget. When he reflects back on those frantic months, the emotion in his voice makes it clear things were
sink or swim.

“A few of the people closest to me said I was mad to take on the task,” he says.

“But when Navis asked me if I wanted to act as director, it only took me a couple of seconds to say yes. I’ve been with Worldwide for a long time. I’ve seen it grow and then watched it fall over. There are a lot of franchise owners out there I’ve developed very good friendships with. I couldn’t just walk away.”

What went wrong?

When Navis Capital Partners put Worldwide into administration on 25 February 2010, it was clear things had slipped a long way from 2006, when the Malaysian investment company bought the business from founder and former owner Clive Denholm. In four short years, Worldwide had spiraled beyond the investors’ control. Debts were mounting. Staff and franchisees were anxious. The fall into administration was by no means an isolated case, coming in the same six months that the likes of Chippendale Printing, Pettaras Press and Paragon Printing also collapsed.

To put things into perspective, you need to go further back to Worldwide’s heyday between the late ’90s and mid-2000s. During this time the company grew from a solitary offset operation in Western Australia to become a dominant force in print franchising. It was a better time for print in general; margins were much fatter and expansion was easy. By 2006, some 11 years after it was established in 1995, Worldwide had 82 franchises and the hub-and-spoke model was proven. The hub-and-spoke approach is based around a centralised offset facility (the hub) producing work for franchisees in small retail operations (the spokes) that offer design, pre-press, digital printing and finishing. These spokes are defined in terms of ‘franchise territories’ – the country is split into distinct zones to avoid fellow franchisees’ from marketing to the same area. One store owner may have control over a number of territories. 

The opportunity to own their own printing business has attracted people from all walks of life. Andrew Robertson bought his first franchise in Spring Hill, Brisbane in 2003. He now owns three outlets across the city. In 2007, he won the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Franchisee of the Year award. Despite not having a print background, Robertson was drawn to the group because of its position as a market leader.

“I liked the entrepreneurial nature of Worldwide and that it was a leader in terms of business practice and it also embraced new technology. Worldwide came from a traditional offset background but was one of the first to embrace digital and it was and still is a leader in web-based print management,” he says.

“You can look at it like this: a lot of printing businesses are an offset printer that happens to have a couple of digital machines or a digital printer with offset connections, or they are an advertising agency that does graphic design and dabbles in print. Worldwide has three legs planted firmly in each of these three areas,” adds Robertson.

The store owners that ProPrint spoke to all agreed that the early success centered on the idea that the strength of the franchisor depended on the strength of the franchisees. When, in 2010, Worldwide Online Printing slipped from the grasp of its Malaysian owners, it seemed this simple theory had been forgotten. 

One franchisee puts it bluntly: “They were just a bunch of capitalists looking to make a quick buck.”

How did it go so wrong? Franchisees say that the company continued steadily in the wake of the 2006 takeover. Two years after the Navis buyout, a survey by topfranchisee.com.au found that Worldwide’s franchisees were the 10th happiest in Australia. But some franchise owners say cracks had started to appear as early as 2006 when the culture shifted from hands-on management to the more aloof direction from foreign investors. 

“There were lots of great ideas, big ideas and so many of them, but did they amount to anything?” asks one franchisee.

These big ideas and forward-thinking philosophy came from a corporation
that had some runs on the board. Navis Capital had steered franchises such as Europcar, Wendy’s and Dome Coffee to big things at the start of the decade. For Worldwide, however, business took a turn for the worst as the global financial crisis battered the industry. 

Too many balls in the air

Rob Dallimore had built a strong reputation with Worldwide in his 13 years with the company. It’s likely he could have walked away with his hands clean when things went pear-shaped. However, he says this was never an option. He had only just been appointed managing director as the company careened into administration, so was in the kind of privileged position to know that poor leadership was just as much to blame as the GFC. 

“It was definitely a combination of external and internal factors. I honestly believe that Navis had the best intentions, but they had too much on the go, too many balls up in the air and some of the changes that they tried to make were too sudden or too extreme. They were only getting things done to about 80%,” says Dallimore.

A number of franchisees agree that Navis was trying to expand Worldwide at a time when the industry was contracting and that this was a major decider in its downfall. One of Navis’ plans, to open up two digital production hubs when each franchise already had its own digital presses, also baffled some.

“They were a franchisor that forget they were a franchisor and thought they were a printer,” says one franchise owner.

“The first couple of years I thought things went really well. When Clive sold out his holdings, from then on it kind of went between average and not so good,” adds another.

After three months and an administra-tion that seemed to stretch on forever, the company was rescued on 3 June by Doublewest Corporation. This was an acquisition vehicle led by Arnold Whiteside, owner of Worldwide offset supplier Crystal Printing Solutions, which doubles as Worldwide Online Printing Cannington. 

Dallimore says: “I must admit it was a big relief when the administrators told me Doublewest was acquiring Worldwide. Arnold is someone I have a built a strong business relationship with over the years.” 

After the buyout, the daunting task of taking the helm and steering the franchise group  away from stormy waters was handed to Dallimore. 

“When we went into administration it was simply ‘batten down the hatches’ and try to keep the business alive. It just happened so quickly I just went into survival mode. Any day it could have easily just gone. I look back now and it is just a blur. It seems like so long ago now,” says Dallimore.

As the owner of Crystal Printing and a major shareholder in Doublewest, Whiteside has the most to gain – or lose – as Worldwide climbs out of administration. His relationship with Worldwide began over 10 years ago when his production hub, Crystal Printing Solutions, became the primary offset supplier for the Worldwide franchises (the ‘hub’ in hub and spoke). Toward the end of the Navis era, the company actually leased part of Crystal Printing from Whiteside, a move some franchisees criticise as overcapitalisation always bound to fail.

Crystal Printing now boasts around 80 staff, who operate a number of Heidelberg presses: a six-colour CD 75 with coater, an eight-colour Speedmaster 74 perfector and a number of A3 machines. It also operates a small digital production site, which is currently being upgraded with a Kodak Nexpress.

Separate production

Production management is firmly back in the hands of a separate printing entity. While Whiteside is still involved at a corporate level, he is regularly found on the press room floor, watching over accuracy, monitoring colour, quality and overseeing delivery.

“My day-to-day business is over here in WA with Doublewest and Crystal Printing, making sure things run smoothly behind the scenes. It’s up to Rob to run Worldwide,” he says.

Whiteside believes that a company such as Worldwide can only be run by somebody with industry knowledge and respect. 

“It is pretty tough out there in retail printing land. People forget that concentrating on the basics is always the most important thing for the client – quick turnaround, consistent high quality and keen pricing.”

“During the first week of administration there was a belief by the both the previous owners and the administrators that they could just cease operation here and the franchisees could just pop down to their local printers and get their work done there. They thought it was that easy.” 

Whiteside has worked hard for his strong reputation in printing industry. It certainly helped ensure suppliers would get behind Worldwide’s new regime. 

“We can’t hide from the fact that in the past six or 12 months, Worldwide has had its problems. What we can do is concentrate on dealing with those problems and make sure they don’t happen again,” he says.

In the weeks following Doublewest’s acquisition, Whiteside and Dallimore put their heads together to ensure that the problems of Navis’ management would not reoccur. He says the business is leaner, more focused and more open. 

“The first thing we said in our first round of meetings was that the most important thing was increasing the franchisees’ profit and satisfaction,”
says Whiteside.

“In the old days somebody would occasionally drop in to meet a franchise owner and see how things were going. Now we make sure we work with each franchisee and nut out everything. We look at financials, we look at staffing arrangements and we look at the finer details of how their business is running and how we can develop proper business strategies.”

Dallimore admits that stabilising such a large business has not been an easy task, but Worldwide is beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The first major change comes in the form of a complete overhaul of its management information system. The group turned to local vendor Quote & Print. Worldwide instantly became the MIS developer’s biggest contract in Australia and hence biggest customer anywhere in the world. It has been a major undertaking for Worldwide. Dallimore said that replacing the previous system has been in his sights since the Bondi days.

“When I spent six months working out of the Bondi franchise, I sat across the room from the owner there and I watched his frustrations and anger with the system. That’s when I realised something had to be done. We tried to fix the old system, but we quickly realised it was a lost cause.

“This became our primary concern and we have spent many months determining which system is right for our franchisees and have gone through a copious testing phase in a number of our stores,” says Dallimore.

Shanti Kumar, managing director of Quote & Print, says: “We have a thorough understanding of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems used by Worldwide’s competitors, so can state
with some authority that Worldwide’s franchisees have an MIS system that will give them a distinct advantage over their competitors.” 

Kumar says that Worldwide was “very futuristic” in spec’ing out the MIS. “Without giving too much away, that included the ability to expand their marketing from B2B to B2C with little difficulty.”

The roll-out of Quote & Print will begin in July, with 14 stores acting as beta sites before the system is installed across the network. Three franchise owners have been heavily involved in the selection process. 

Time is money

One is Phillip Adler from the Bondi store. “Time is money and money is time. Although functional, the pitfall of the previous system was that it was internet-based so it could be slow at times and inflexible. We also had to duplicate a lot of information for our accounts,” he says.

“The major benefit of the new system is it is fully integrated so we don’t have to duplicate invoices and accounts. Another major plus is the simplicity of being able to drop our suppliers’ pricing into the software so we can quote on-the-spot.”

Marketing is another focus for the head office team. The franchisees ProPrint spoke to were quick to praise changes made in the past nine months. Worldwide is currently running a successful footy tipping competition as part of a branding exercise and has shifted its marketing focus from unaddressed mailouts to online brand promotion, data capture and magazine advertisements.

Dallimore says: “There is a long way to go and we are only just scratching the surface of what we want to be doing in terms of marketing, but we are still just taking baby steps and making sure we are heading in the right direction.” 

While future growth is certainly part of the plan, Dallimore admits that expansion isn’t foremost in his mind. In this economic climate, he acknowledges that the company isn’t necessarily out of the woods. 

“There is a hell of a lot to do still, and we are going to take this one step at a time. If someone wants to come along and buy a franchise we might entertain that. But, really, the short answer will be no. We need to get our kitchen in order. We need to make sure the basic business model is sound and rebuilt. Our goal is to have a model that is an easy sell. 

“We have to go back to basics and create a simple model that is an attractive proposition,” he says.

Business briefing: Coming back from the brink

· In 1995, Worldwide Online Printing was established in Perth by Clive Denholm.

· By 2006, it had 82 franchises. In that year, Malaysian investment company Navis Capital Partners acquired the group, with grand plans to double the network of franchises in five years.

· In February 2010, Navis called in administrators McGrath Nicol.

· During the administration, digital production hubs in Queensland and New South Wales closed down and executive-level staff were cut. 

· In June 2010, Worldwide is bought by Doublewest Corporation, an acquisition vehicle led by Arnold 

· Whiteside, the owner of Crystal Printing Solutions and existing supplier to Worldwide. 

· Changes post-administration include a ‘flat’ management plan and more attention given to franchisees. 

· Other improvements noted by franchisees include a more effective marketing system and quicker turnaround times at the offset hub.

· The regime’s first major endeavour is the roll-out of a brand new management information system. The Quote & Print system, which replaces an older internet-based system, has been spec’d out to meet franchisees’ needs.

Comment below to have your say on this story.

If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.  

Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter