I sold my way into my first print job with no clue about printing. I sold ad. space for a newspaper to start with and fancied a change. The fact I had ‘blagged’ the experience became apparent after a couple of days but my new boss said he admired my tenacity so trained me up. Two years later I fancied another change so I left that company on the promise of a new diesel Golf and an extra £5k a year and poked two fingers up at the guy who had taken me under his wing. I feel guilty about it now but that’s the thing; salespeople have a fire in their belly and quite often want to be company owners so beware.
For the last two years I have taken advantage of the HMRC’s more liberal approach to the collection of corporation tax as they have allowed me to pay a small lump sum and then contribute a percentage of the debt monthly for ten months.
The Widthwise Report 2011 has come out stating that number one priority with us printers is that we would like the machine manufacturers to spend more on R&D to bring running costs down. Personally, I think there should be more transparency in cost. I bet my last pound that if every person who took part in the Widthwise survey had shopped around for ink and other consumables they would have found that the running costs of the machine they had bought could tumble.
Large-format digital imaging is still really a pioneering growth industry in this country. We, as print producers, are constantly striving to find new and innovative ways to create new products, find new ways to solve display problems and answer ever more demanding clients needs.
I’ve had a bit of a spend up over the last couple of months and software seems to be where my money has been going.
First on the list was a GMG colour server and smart profiler, the magic wand of colour management. For those of you not familiar with it, it removes the need for icc profiles on your Rip and by using the smart profiler with a spectrophotometer it enables you to make your own profiles that are specific to your printer and media.