Tuesday, 7 June 2011

A New Month.

It has been a good couple of weeks here at Apple Print, after beating our sales targets by 16% in April we continued the good form and hit a 9% over target in May, June is also looking good so I hope the rest of the summer follows suit. All this with a lack of marketing, we have been active on the Social Networking but our traditional marketing got stalled because of the amount of work we have coming in.
With this in mind we have put resources in place and created our next 6 months marketing plan, this will include an update to our Brand (watch this space), website re-design and a bringing together of our printed materials under one common banner design. The Creative team will be presenting this to our sales and marketing team tomorrow at an offsite at Sheepdrove Eco Conference Centre, we are all very excited and look forward to posting the visuals and our Plan. Rebecca and Michelle have just come back from a Web Design course with loads of fresh ideas so if you would like to know more then bung them an email.
With the Social Media and stuff we are going to try and promote a Site / Business in each blog, this week because they were shameless in asking for blog plugs J - I give you Light Stalking, from their web site I understand Light Stalking is a site about beautiful photography and much more.
“We appreciate beautiful photography and our intent is to spread the word about the awesome photographers who produce it. We want to put great photographers in front of an audience so they get the recognition they deserve. We also try to impart a little knowledge about the techniques behind the art. Most importantly, we try not to take ourselves too seriously and endeavor to keep this whole project fun.”
Design and print always needs quality photography and it’s a shame to see so many jobs supplied with low res pictures when there is such a great wealth of quality photography our there. Check our their showcase and give them a tweet.
This month will be very busy with print, it’s the time of year we start producing School Homework Diaries, does not make us that popular with the Students but it’s great work to get our teeth in to, we also have up to eight editions of Classic Illustrated comics to produce, these are great quality products that make great gifts, they sell in book shops and online at their website. Jon Brooks, Director at Classic Comic Store, had this to say when I asked him for a few words:
“Classics Illustrated are a great way to introduce kids to the great works of literature and to encourage them to take up reading as a true hobby - an achievement every parent would like to see”
Check them out if you get a chance. Classic Comic Store.
Our continual growth has a lot to do with the success of print on demand, this week has seen another Quality Estate Agent come on board, Jones Robinson join Davis Tate using the system and also ESA who have a similar requirement to the Estate Agent market....great businesses and we are really pleased to be working with them. I also had an email from Richard at ECEX yesterday about something he wants to do, this may also suit the technology behind our POD system. Mark is also now working on a new backend we are calling PIPS (Personalised Interactive Print System), this will enable the user to get real time updates on the progress of their jobs, check proofs and see tracking numbers for delivery. Mark is also working on a Generic POD demo so you can all see the benefits.
I have 2 weeks to go for the London To Brighton bicycle ride and this coming weekend I will be doing 60/70 miles as a final preparation – I am ready for it and I will post my times once I have them, should be quite easy as I have been throwing myself at the training. Maybe it’s time to start a work based competition for bike riding?
Have fun and contact me if there is anything you’d like to discuss from my blog or in general.

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