Damien Burchell was promoted from general manager in late October, after taking unofficial charge of the Adelaide firm in June when former chief executive Jennifer Baile moved to Fuji Xerox Australia.
He joined Bowden as an admin clerk in 1994 and later became admin supervisor, finance manager and company secretary. He was appointed joint general manager in 2009 and then took sole charge in 2010. That role has now been abolished with Burchell’s promotion.
Burchell told ProPrint that although Bowden was committed to print, it wanted to deepen its involvement in media, marketing and communications.
The firm implemented a three-year diversification strategy in February, having already changed its name from Bowden Printing in 2010.
He said that part of his role would be to educate clients that Bowden was a “one-stop shop”.
[Related: Burchell named in 2012 ProPrint Power 50]
“We’ve got everything right in the business. We’ve got a good blend of staff and up-to-date machinery and we can do everything in-house from start to finish,” he said.
Bowden is an A2 house that combines Heidelberg presses with Xerox digital capacity. It has a Speedmaster CD 74, Speedmaster SM 52, Heidelberg CTP system, Xerox Color 1000 and Xerox 4127, he said.
Burchell said the firm was currently turning over $5.5 million to $6 million and forecast to grow 5% to 5.5% this financial year – albeit “from a pretty low base”. He added that about four percentage points would come from new business with the rest to come from getting more out of existing customers.
Burchell told ProPrint that operations were his strong point and that he would need to get more involved with the sales side.
“I’m not a salesman. It’s not my gig. I’m more of a hands-on person internally,” he said.
Bowden had about 40 staff when Burchell joined the firm, but that has now fallen to 31 due mainly to the decline of the pre-press business, he said.
[LinkedIn: What clever forms of diversification have you heard of?]
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