Steven Kiernan Marshall, can you give me an example of the kinds of different formats you use at Goa Billboards and what you hope to achieve in the outdoor market?
Marshall Scott Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) is one of our partners and they require a wide range of print. There’s a lot of volume and all different formats, whether it’s on paper or on canvas, whether it’s hanging on a wall or stuck behind a light box. They want
all their marketing material to achieve its objective. From an operational perspective, they also want to save money.
Steve, tell me about your background in signage and the trends you are seeing?
Steve Lambourne Our family has been involved in the signage industry for 45 years. I’ve been here for about 23 years. We started from traditional sign writing and screen printing, through to the first digital printer, which printed 1m2 per hour. It has taken 15 years for digital to really give screen print a nudge. I believe it’s going to keep going and going. It’s only a matter of time before screen print gets pushed aside. Then we’ve digital LED screens, which are also going to have a huge impact.
What about white ink technology, which some vendors are marketing as a ‘killer application’ for their machines?
Steve White ink technology has been around for a long time, but I still haven’t seen a white ink that’s acceptable enough to run within your business 24 hours a day. Between clogging up heads, not enough opacity – there’s all sorts of different problems. There’s a new Latex machine out right now from one vendor, which is the latest and greatest. We looked at it yesterday and there’s still not the opacity there for the white ink. Yes, it’s great in certain circumstances, but it’s one of those things that I think is always getting pushed back to screen print.
Aaron, is print quality a given?
Aaron Spooner It is certainly expected. Generally if it’s not there, you don’t get a second chance.
Do you think the general standard of quality coming up?
Aaron Generally, I would say so. Suppliers’ machinery and capabilities have improved – and so the quality has too. It’s less of an issue than it was 10 years ago.
Would you prompt a supplier into making an investment in machinery?
Marshall It depends. We’ve got to build a robust pipeline of opportunities for suppliers. I don’t expect people to come to us and go ‘I can do six different things’ if I haven’t told you what work is on offer. It’s different if we’re talking about a million dollars’ worth of opportunities or $10,000.
Suppliers will say ‘If that’s going to be on offer, maybe I will acquire some other assets or inventory or plant and equipment to service that need’. I will show them the full spectrum of what’s on offer, and they can make a decision as to whether or not they think it’s worthwhile investing.
When a customer does decide to use an approved supplier panel, is there a risk of losing touch with the market?
Marshall That’s always a risk. You think you’re onto a good deal and all of a sudden two years go by and someone else walks in the door and you think ‘What have I missed out on?’ But a supplier panel is great because you’ve lined up a pipeline of work, and you don’t have to go out and source 20 different suppliers every time.
How can a supplier communicate innovation to the end client, especially when there are middlemen involved?
Steve I find it difficult because our products are new and don’t fit in with the agencies’ models. So we’ve steered away from the agencies as much as we can. They’ve got a list on their desks and they just tick it off. We are outside their box, so they have to work a little bit harder.
Are you ever worried a client will cut you out and go direct to the supplier?
Marshall If I ever turn up to a client and they say, ‘Marshall, we just happened to go and speak to the bloke who came here last time to actually install that product, and he mentioned he could do it 20% cheaper’ – well, that happens. But clients know there is a margin on top for project management. They don’t want to be running around asking ‘How do I install it’ or ‘What do I do if I’ve got an issue’.
Steve, entry-level wide-format machines are relatively inexpensive. Is that all you need to get started?
Steve In theory it sounds very easy. Go and buy a digital printer and start printing, but unfortunately it’s not that easy. You’ve got to worry about profiling, colour matching, what materials to use etc. If you don’t know all the materials, you will have failures. It will blow up in your face and it won’t be worthwhile. You really need to know the industry before you can jump in. When we price vehicle wrap jobs, it is often inclusive of the removal in three or four years. So that’s almost as big as the installation. So if we’re not looking three or four years in advance and selecting the right material, we made a lot of money three years ago, but when we go to remove it, we just lost everything. That is the sort of thing that can send people broke.
What do you think about the movement away from handshake deals towards confidentiality agreements?
Aaron As a business, we’d be silly not to protect ourselves in some way, shape or form. Confidentiality agreements illustrate to our panel members that we’re serious about what we’re doing and that we’re serious about our relationship. The suppliers on our panel have been there a long time and they will tell us if the client approaches them directly – 99 times out of 100, they’ll say, ‘Sorry you can’t deal with me directly, you’re one of PMA’s customers, you have to go back through there’.
Are confidentiality agreements actually enforceable?
Steve From my experience, no, I don’t think they work because if you breach it, it costs too much to enforce. It may be a $100,000 job, and if you’ve got to put three months into the legal issues and follow it through for the next 12 months, it’s not worth the time and effort. It’s more of a scare tactic from our point of view.
What does a trusted or approved supplier have to do wrong to be removed from a panel?
Aaron We don’t lose a lot of them as panel members. Over the period of time I’ve been at PMA, I can probably count two or three that have, shall we say, ‘been sent from the field’. They were fairly major breaches. One of them was a repeat offender in terms of quality. We looked at the processes and put new ones in place but in the end the quality just didn’t come up, so we parted ways.
Steve The technology is the biggest thing for us. If our suppliers can’t keep up with technology and put better equipment in, that what lets them down. The technology is moving so fast it’s hard to keep up, especially on the high end.
How far have electronic displays come?
Marshall Printers in this room can breathe a sigh of relief, there will always be room for both. But our digital network is 5% of inventory and 20% of revenue. It’s very high yielding, and it’s obviously been able to provide a nice complement to conventional wide-format print, because of the engagement factor and the flexibility.
Steve LED screens are great, but when you get to really high resolutions, they’re hideously expensive at the moment. The only thing that’s really viable at the moment is the long-distance viewing outdoor screens really. Marshall, I doubt Goa will ever convert a ‘second tier’ or ‘third tier’ site to a digital site – it’s not viable. That’s increasing from one space to six and you’ll never sell it. In the back streets of a suburb, why would you convert to an LED? You won’t get the approval anyway.
Marshall You’re right, there’s always going to be a place for both
Go to www.proprint.com.au/GoldCoast for the full transcript plus photos and video from the event
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