DPC Limited - Just Seventeen
Being seventeen years old doesn't make Dave Taylor's DPC company an unruly teenager; indeed it's maturing very nicely as a highly respected screen and digital print supplier, with great capabilities and impressive capacity.
With his initial acquisition of a Mimaki JV3-160, the company entered a new phase, which brought about substantial growth and expansion - and a burgeoning customer base.
Expecting to fund the purchase over three years or more, Dave was naturally delighted when he broke even on the Mimaki in well under a year, and with his constant drive for satisfying the excellent service and products that his customers demand, he and his team got to grips with the machine from the off. "We project manage every job," said Dave, "and with the JV3 bringing us some major new customers, we've ensured that they stick with us for all the right reasons."
Having landed a substantial (and worldwide) chain of clothing stores on the back of his digital business, he was able to utilize all the other facets of his business to meet their creative needs, mixing high quality digital output, solid colour screen print and even vinyl lettering. "We finish and lay-up all the jobs here, then package them off around the world," said Dave, clearly very proud of the standard of work that his team produce.
Dave Taylor (2nd right) and his JV3 Team
New JV3-250SP
Earlier this year - and on the back of the work that he was already doing with the JV3-160, Dave took the decision to purchase the wider, baby grand format Mimaki JV3-250SP from Hybrid's North West based reseller, Granthams Graphic Technology, in order to meet his needs for larger format work, yet at the same quality as his customers were used to from the smaller machine.
This now sits next to the original machine, producing metres of highest quality photographic, in-store work, which they laminate onto foamboard. Dave says of his decision to go down this route; "We considered a large, pricey flatbed, but opted to stay with the high quality JV3, and add on a laminator, which together not only cost a fraction of the flatbed, but retained our existing workflow and kept the quality where our customers expect it."
Things are now so busy on the 2.5m machine that he's looking at working two shifts, and with the Colorgate software from Granthams allowing him to queue jobs up for printing overnight, he's able to handle work for up to fifteen stores a fortnight - vastly in excess of how their previous supplier managed it.
"I find it unbelievable that we can do this amount of work compared to what we were doing a year and half ago," smiled Dave, recounting how not only he has seen an increase in turnover of at least 40% since he installed the first machine, but also how during one recent quarter, the digital part of his company accounted for more than 60% of his total business!
Creative ideas
Whilst they're a very creative company - DPC have been know to screen print onto bricks and the bottoms of frying pans - they're not forgetting their core business, so in conjunction with their 10' x 5' screen print and 6 colour T-shirt carousels they are now approaching customers for their trade, wide format banner work - and with up to 2.5m width available from the new JV3, it will encompass a huge range of possibilities.
Dave's most recent purchase is the Mimaki CG-160FX vinyl cutter - having spoken with Sue Wright at Granthams again in recent weeks, he added the perfectly matched cutter to his inkjet printing capabilities, tied together by the cracking free Mimaki FineCut software, that allows his designers to cut directly from their vector graphic creation programs.
"We've gained accounts purely through the quality of work that we've produced on the Mimaki printers," says Dave, "and as a company that lives and breathes through consistently producing work that exceeds our customers' expectations, it's the kind of tool that we'd been waiting for."
