Mike Penfold

Although completely transforming your current business model into a climate friendly organisation is the way you want to go, it may not always be feasible for numerous reasons. It could be that the cost of changing core processes and operations may be too high, or the introduction and education across the workplace could be too time consuming and take up valuable resource.

But a viable alternative can be partnering with an environmentally friendly company that can offer sustainability and carbon neutral services – this can give your business the desired green credentials with minimal upfront outlay.

One of the biggest steps to creating a greener business could be to review your use of print. If, as a company, you rely on many paper-based products such brochures, flyers, forms and packaging to promote and run your business, setting an objective of being carbon neutral may feel like an impossible task.

Over the past 5 years, there has been a big push for commercial printers to look at new, more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways of operating, focusing on areas such as minimising waste, renewable resources and, most importantly, climate neutral print solutions.

With investment in new technologies, streamlining business operations and focusing on sustainability, many print solution companies are now leading the way – allowing them to still provide clients the quality of print required but at an ethical standard.

Our commitment to protecting the planet is embedded both within our core values and our everyday operations. With our green credentials you can be assured that all our print services are sustainable and climate neutral.”

Mike Penfold, May 2022
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“We’re not just a printer, we haven’t been for a long time, that was our core business and to a certain extent it still is, but what we are doing now is coming up with different solutions, offering communication packages to our clients.

There are businesses that may already be getting good lead generations from their website but can’t follow up on them. We also have clients that want to generate more leads from their websites but aren’t getting enough traffic. We can offer them a direct mail campaign. For example, let’s say there are 100,000 businesses across the U.K that a client wants to target, no one wants to do a direct mail campaign for 100,000 because it might wipe out their cash flow. So, we can break that down into a monthly or even weekly campaign and from there we can look at the data with the client and plan further.

We use a six-touch approach, there’s a campaign email sent to all the prospects on the database, then there’s a non-responder second email, then a hard copy direct mail piece sent in the post, then a second piece, then they get a phone call and a follow up call. At the end of the month, we come back with the stats, see who has responded on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth options and see who didn’t respond at all.

This is a great approach as it breaks down the communications; it’s not just one big hit that the client mat not be able to follow up with straight away. Hot leads are important, and you need to jump on them straight away.

We can also dial into the same postcodes so that the campaign is all in the same area at the same time.

Print is still a very big part of what we do but it is part of a bigger offering, involving the design, the data and the development of the project and the campaign itself. You’ve also got the print and mailing side which is all done here.

We also offer the leave behind book or brochure, the hardcopy, which has been proven that it can be a reminder of the client company. Social media is brilliant, and it needs to be done and therefore we talk about cross media communications and as a company, we feel we can offer this to the businesses community locally and nationally.

All the things we offer with the direct mail campaigns are all managed in house, so we’re completely in control of the process all the way through and that’s why we can break it down. It’s superb for our clients as it’s a monthly fee rather than one invoice so for cash flow, it’s absolutely brilliant.”

Mike Penfold – January 2022

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“The weird thing is the company is 50 years old and I’m not 50! I started in the industry around 1990, I was invited in to see how a printing company worked, it was like nothing I had ever looked at before, I saw these guys working, which was very ‘arty’ at the time, and I just thought it was really cool and knew it was what I wanted to do, and after doing 2 weeks experience with them I went home and said to my Dad, I really want to do this.

That’s where my first bit of print passion came in with what we call ‘reprographics’ which was really interesting and takes a while to understand. Then I bought into Longridge in 2006 after being the Sales Director since 1999, I was given the opportunity to buy shares in the company which I did and then in 2018 the opportunity came up to buy the whole company, which I did and we’re now in our first month of trading as a new company, which is all very good! I’m really passionate about print, it’s a weird thing to say but when I see something that’s printed really well I get quite excited about it. We’ve got a really good vibe in the company now, it’s a good platform for us to start a fresh from, the guys here have got serious amounts of knowledge but we don’t want to talk terminology, we just want to work with our clients giving them exactly what they want”