Print company P+D celebrate reaching 50 years in business
By Maurice Garvey
TALLAGHT print company P+D Visual has survived high levels of attrition in the industry over the years, but after reaching their 50th birthday milestone at the end of November, Managing Director Ronan Conway is excited at the prospect of another 50 years in a fast-changing environment.
Conway says the traditional print industry is pivoting to support a client base that is “more demanding and more diverse than ever.”
Staff outside the Cookstown premises
“We have witnessed an unbelievable amount of change in a relatively short period of time, and are very much accustomed to moving the dial when the need arises,” said Conway.
“It’s only ten to 15 years ago that our industry was primarily analogue, and best suited to churning out large volumes of the same thing.
The move to digital was an expensive one, and involved a level of confidence in your own ability to survive that put a number of well-known companies in printing out of business.
Quite simply, they couldn’t make the numbers add up.
“But for those of us who’ve made a full transition to digital, the payback has been exceptional. And if I had to encapsulate that payback on a single thought, it’s that we have become partners to our customers rather than mere suppliers.
Thirty years ago, we put ink onto substrates – now we collaborate in the planning, design, printing and execution elements with our clients.”
The Cookstown based company produce anything from a single sheet to thousands of copies, and in a range of formats and finishes “we could only have dreamt of ten years ago”, according to Conway.
“This level of flexibility means, among other things, that marketing companies across a wide range of industries can trial different offers or different campaign ideas at will, without making a major investment in print or production.
“When I first entered the industry over twenty years ago, we generally joined the marketing process further down the line – simply to produce the material,” said Conway.
“We are now seen as a much bigger part of the marketing discipline and enter much earlier in the process. A highly respected Irish client we work with, Green Isle Foods, is a great example.
For Green Isle, we provide everything from design service for press and online to basic traditional print right through to the show-stopping store makeovers we love working on.
A significant amount of our design work, for example, is for digital platforms that never go near a printing press.”
P+D also specialise in 3D structural design and deliver design services into media where there will be no print output, such as online advertising or digital displays.
“This point is particularly important when working for clients in the FMCG and pharmaceutical sectors where standout is essential in a crowded marketplace,” said Conway.
“For many of our clients, we estimate that we can replace three or four of their traditional suppliers across design, consultancy, manufacturing, delivery and implementation.
The bottom line is that we can become part of the glue that helps them stay sticky with their clients.”
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