This article was first published in the November 2020 issue of Australian Printer magazine

Terry Mulcahy is a person that has always taken challenges in stride. He was involved in the printing industry from 1963, working for a number of supplies companies, up till 2008 and saw the industry through a spectrum of changes.

Mulcahy left school when he was 15 and first joined Alex Cowan Pty Ltd – a paper merchants and manufacturing stationers company that also sold printing machines and printers supplies.  

“I commenced work there as office boy and because I came from a technical school background, I became interested in the machinery side of the business. I had to wait for many months for a position to become available in the machinery division, which eventually it did, and I then commenced as an internal sales clerk. After a number of years, I advanced to become a sales representative for the company,” Mulcahy said.

“Printing, back in those days, was a craft. To see what people could produce and the work that got produced was amazing. I partook in a number of courses at the Melbourne College of Printing and Graphic Arts, which was a great learning establishment. Most of my knowledge of printing came from attending the college.”

Mulcahy moved on from Alex Cowan in 1975 to join Sidney Cooke Limited. He worked in the company’s Melbourne office before relocating to its then newly-established Townsville office in North Queensland in 1979.

“Sidney Cooke decided to open a branch in North Queensland, based in Townsville, and I was lucky enough to get the position. I was in charge of business in Townsville, travelling down south as far as Mackay, north to Cairns, and out west to Mt Isa,” he recalled.

After six years in Townsville, he returned to Melbourne in 1986 and was still with Sidney Cooke until 1990, when he joined Dainippon Ink and Chemicals.

“In 2008, I was still very much involved in the printing supplies business. That was roughly when the ‘big change’ came about with the introduction of digital printing. At that time, I was still working for Dainippon Ink and Chemicals, but with all those changes happening in the industry, I was made redundant,” he said.

“My expertise in the printing industry was worn out and I was offered the opportunity to enter the garden & landscaping industry – my brother and his wife own the business that I joined, and am still working for, and my experience in sales appealed to them.

“Even though I have left printing, I still have a great passion for it and have many friends in the industry. I also keep myself up to date with what’s happening in the industry and still read Australian Printer today.”

Mulcahy said when he started work, the industry was dominated by letterpress and with that came hard and heavy work to produce four-colour process blocks out of metal. From there, through the ‘70s, he said there was an explosion in the advancement of offset printing.

Going into the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he mentioned that there was a shift in the industry towards multi-colour machines – from two to four colour, all the way up to 10-colour machines.

“On just about every corner, there was a multi-colour press. At that stage, Australia was leading the world in printing. The work that was produced was magnificent and we were right to the fore. I certainly did see the whole spectrum in my time,” he said.

“Moving over to digital was one of the biggest challenges for me, but that challenge was taken from me as I left the industry in its infancy. If I had stayed on in the business, I would have taken up the challenge but that wasn’t to be.”

To date, Mulcahy finds that opening the Townsville office for Sidney Cooke was one of his greatest achievements.

“I took it from a vacant factory to growing it to a branch that had so much business throughout North Queensland. Those were the best years of my life selling printing machinery and printer supplies,” he mentioned.

Regardless of the industry he has been in, Mulcahy stressed the importance of customers and said businesses and executives need to be honest in business.

“Customers are the most important to business. There has to be a partnership and trust between two parties, otherwise nothing will work. That has been my ethos all the way through and has paid me well for 50 years,” he said.

Currently 73 years of age and living in Victoria, Mulcahy thinks of age as just a number.

“I want to keep going and working for as long as I can. I have and I still do love helping people and that’s what drives me every day,” he added.

Apart from working in the landscaping business, Mulcahy is also currently the President of the Balnarring Picnic Racing Club, run under the auspices of Racing Victoria.

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