In a bid to extend its reach into the retail, exhibition and live events sector, Twocan Graphics has stepped-up to its first flatbed printer with a swissQprint Nyala.
“Anybody can buy a flatbed and use it to produce average quality work, and this is what most of our competitors are doing,” says Twocan Graphics co-founder Mark Wheatley. “Having the Nyala sets us apart from the rest of the pack.”
Achieving the impossible
“When we told our clients about getting the machine, they were really excited for us,” Mark continues. Most of their work comes from other graphics companies that have contracts with the end clients, and they were very impressed by Twocan Graphic’s investment. “As soon as they heard it was a swissQprint machine they immediately started asking us to quote for jobs we had never been able to produce before. Now they are sending all of their work our way,” Mark says. “We never thought for a moment that our first flatbed printer would be a swissQprint, but now we’re producing work we never imagined possible.”
Outfoxing the competition
Business partners Mark Wheatley and Roy Farmer are already considering a move to larger premises amid plans to invest in a digital cutting system to sit alongside the Nyala. “Roy and I like to be cautious about our approach to growing the business and tend to take small steps, but with the Nyala we have taken leaps and bounds,” states Mark. “We are now one of the big fish in the small pond because our competitors don’t have the same advantage we have with the swissQprint machine.” He concludes: “It’s a small club to be in, but it’s an elite position, and for clients to give us all their work tells us we made the right decision.”
From schoolroom to boardroom
The partners started out as school friends, growing up together and later working in Mark’s father’s family run sign & graphics company. When the family business closed its doors in 2009, the friends founded Twocan Graphics with a view to becoming an established name in the graphic installation sector. During the intervening years the pair graduated from installing other people’s graphics to producing them.
Today Twocan supplies a broad range of clients with graphics products from advertising hoardings, giant banners, corporate signs and building wraps to printed backdrops across the retail, live event and commercial sectors in the UK and overseas.