Catalogue printer Franklin Web has beefed up its point-of-sale business as it moves to become a bundled print supplier to big retail clients.

Chief executive Phil Taylor says focusing on the wide format venture, which has more than doubled its sales this year, is complimenting the catalogue side of the firm.

“Marrying point-of-sale and catalogues gives us a strong offer for retail clients, and it is winning new contracts on its own,” he says.

Franklin has added new staff and installed Agfa Anapurna wide format printers to keep up with demand, along with three digital print centres for ticketing.

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The core catalogue business is having a solid year too, maintaining volume and on pace to be up by more than five per cent from new contracts and the continuing resilience of the product.

“Catalogues are one of the few printed products retailers can directly measure the financial impact of, with clients often telling me they get sales boosts of more than 40 per cent after one goes out,” he says.

“For some retailers, one third of revenue is sourced from customers buying straight off the catalogue. This is particularly important for niche retailers as they can hone in one a market and let people know about them.

“There has always been a happy side of the catalogue industry, as many catalogue campaigns are promoting events like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Christmas.”

Taylor says there has been a change in the way retailers are ordering catalogues and organise their campaigns, spending more in the second half of the year and varying page count.

“In previous years they might do 36-page weekly issues and bigger ones around Christmas or sales, but now they do 16 or 24 pages in the first half and up to 56 in the second half of the year,” he says.

“Retailers are really appreciating the power of catalogues to help their business and are getting creative about using them.”

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