Image Reports speaks to the founding director of Media Village, a collective of five Lancashire-based businesses to provide a true all-in-one media service. So how can you learn a thing or two from this strategy?
Nick Oakley, together with partners David Hogarth and Steven Shread started in the printing business 20 years ago. 18 months ago they formed Media Village, the umbrella title for a group of five companies that span design, print, mailing, Web solutions, PR and exhibition services to provide a fully managed range of services to clients. So how and why did they make that move, and should you be considering a similar path?
IR: Nick, on the Media Village website it claims to “represent a unique concept in the supply of printed and digital related media”. But other companies claim to offer a wide range of services too. What makes Media Village so unique?
NO: We’re unique in the sense that we actually deliver those services in-house. We don’t just claim to do that and sub-out the work to someone else and lose control of it. It’s an approach that has resulted in numerous advantages for clients – improved quality, faster turnaround, savings on their media spend and an integrated approach to their marketing. For the five companies operating under the Media Village brand it means we’ve been able to streamline our resources and finances, effectively cutting our collective overheads, as well as reversing the fortunes of two of the companies – Academy and GSN – which have grown with the collective support.
IR: Things have come a long way since you and your partners founded the company 20 years ago. How did you start and what was your vision then?
NO: There were three of us in the Royal Navy together (Oakley, Hogarth and Shread). We were good friends and decided we wanted to go out and work for ourselves. We went to get our CV’s printed at the local copyshop and the owner was ex-services. When he realized we were Royal Navy he started chatting to us about print and the opportunities there. So when we left the service we decided to buy a Kall Kwik printing franchise and ran that for two and a half years before breaking away from that to form Academy Print.
Our vision then was just to be a High Street copyshop. But the market then was completely different to what it is now. We were doing lots of photocopying and had a substantial revenue stream from faxing! As that market changed we pulled away from the copyshop model and moved into industrial premises and became a commercial printer.
IR: How has that vision changed and how has the management team realigned its thinking and focus to deal with that?
NO: It changed gradually as the Internet developed, plus there was a real flood of start up printers around the Lancashire area. We were finding that the clients we could get the most out of were those that were offered more of a service rather than just pure print. And that really changed our thinking so we then started building up the design side. And it became like that – looking for wherever we could strengthen the business by providing extra services to out clients.
IR: So were there companies in specific sectors that you particularly went out and sought as part of Media Village as it’s become?
NO: Before we even thought of Media Village we had started to offer more services for our clients and if we couldn’t do something in-house we’d outsource it. We had good relationships with those partners. What’s happened in the last three years is that some of the companies we used to outsource to have fallen away due to the state of the industry. So we had to pick up new partners and it isn’t easy when you’re just outsourcing to build really strong, trusting relationships. Hence the decision to form real strong alliances.
So the five companies we have now forming Media Village are:
Academy Print and design – a graphic design agency with in-house digital and litho printing capabilities.
GSN Display – a specialist in large-format printing.
Action Mailing – experts in fulfillment and mailshots.
Redfern Media – specialists in the design and development of Web sites, e-commerce, e-marketing and search engine optimization solutions.
Viva PR – a new addition, which is a public relations consultancy.
IR: So can you tell us a bit more about how the five companies that make up Media Village work together?
NO: On a simple basis we share our customer lists and try to sell each other’s services. Whoever makes the first point of contact with the customer controls the workflow for all the services and we do that through monthly meetings of all the partners, and also talk on a day-to-day level as specific jobs progress. But the way we’ve improved profit is that we’ve started to share resources and everybody uses those services. Design is one, administration/accounts another.
There has had to be a lot of in-house training so we all understand each other’s products. But we don’t get out of our depth. If we feel it’s necessary we’ll bring the other partners into the client conversation, but the job is not handed over and the client point of contact remains the initial one.
IR: Do you use electronic management systems across the Media Village then?
NO: The MIS system we use is specific to the print industry so it works well for managing print jobs – and to a certain degree the Web design runs through that. But the PR – we just don’t know yet. Media Village is still new and its only really started taking off in the last year when we’ve started to cross sell. It’s early days, and whether we’ll have a centralised system I don’t know yet. For accounting we use Sage and all run through that one system and invoice from that.
IR: Are there mistakes you made; things you wish you had done differently with hindsight?
NO: Definitely. In the earlier days we delved into areas outside of pure media. Whereas our background was in print we looked at completely different areas where we had absolutely no knowledge and that was a problem. Also, perhaps we didn’t initially react quickly enough to changes in the market. On the wide-format side I don’t think we are as reactive to the influx of Chinese pop-ups and things like that.
IR: How much onus do you think print managers need to place on strategic business development as we go forward?
NO: I think if they don’t they’ll be in trouble. If I look at the printing companies around Lancashire that have gone, they had all their eggs in one basket and hadn’t really adapted to changing circumstances. They would tighten their belts wherever they could but they hadn’t looked at other ways of marketing themselves, other products, of how they could improve their services and provided added-value of the products they were delivering.
IR: Media Village was recently shortlisted for a ‘Creative Business of the Year’ prize. What do you think being a ‘creative’ business means?
NO: With that award, for which Redfern Media was actually shortlisted, what they were looking for was not just creative work but creative thinking. What they liked was that Redfern, via Media Village, had diversified to offer new services.
You could argue that the Media Village concept was an innovative step born out of necessity. Like a lot of companies, my partners and I felt we had to do something because business as under pressure. But we firmly believe you can’t stand still. The Internet, email marketing and so on have all brought new challenges but they are opportunities too. I guess it depends on your thinking.
What we’ve sought to do is create a really tight partnership agreement, which has been difficult and not without worry because what you’re basically doing is opening up your client base to them and vice versa. So you have to have real trust and a real open relationship. Thankfully it’s worked really well.
IR: What do you consider to have been the most ‘creative’ thing you’ve done?
NO: Developing the whole ethos of integrated marketing is the thing I’m personally happiest with. Working with Redfern has opened up whole new opportunities – and the link up with Viva on PR is a promising one. It’s been interesting pulling everything together and getting different bits of the business to understand each other – there’s had to be a change in mindsets.
IR: Are there any other areas you’d like to see Media Village move into?
NO: We’ve recently added the PR company to the mix as I mentioned. The area where I think we’ll move further is marketing. We haven’t got a marketing specialist but we’re talking to one now.
With the mix we have we’re selling print to companies we didn’t previously sell print to, we’re doing Web design for companies we’ve only ever sold print to, so we’re really benefiting from cross selling
IR: What do you think the future holds for print companies in general and Media Village in particular?
NO: I think there will be fewer companies offering pure print services, unless they’re in a niche market. The Media Village has only been established for 18 months [at the time of going to press] so it is still a relatively new baby. In the course of the next year we intend to market it much more aggressively. There’s a new Website on the way, regular e-shots and, fingers crossed, more awards. Of course, the whole point of this is to impact the balance sheet. We are looking to grow in the next 12 months and forecast turnover up by around 15%. The real proof of success will be it we can improve our profits but we’re on course and there’s a real mood of optimism.
IR: So you would say it’s crucial to have a management vision of where you want to be in 5 – 10 years’ time and act on that?
NO: Oh yes. Customer loyalty was not what it was and the only way to engender that is to offer them everything so they keep coming back. We formed the Media Village because margins were going down, overheads were going up, and we had to rethink with the aim of making more profit. Whatever we do we maintain that focus. It’s not just about growing the Media Village; it’s about making sure all the companies within it are making more money.