Technology has been driving big changes at Perth-based international printing franchise Snap Printing.
Annual growth of 5 per cent is modest by the standards of many industries but Snap Printing chief executive Grant Vernon reckons that is a good outcome in the printing industry.
He believes the industry is shrinking in size and therefore Snap’s growth equates to increased market share.
The Perth-based business has Australia’s largest printing network and is opening about seven new franchises each year as it seeks to take even more market share.
That is in addition to the 145 owner-operated printing centres it has in Australia and the 26 franchises in Ireland, China and New Zealand.
This growth has enabled the company, owned by the founding Watt and Reed-Smith families, to build annual turnover to more than $150 million.
Mr Vernon said Snap’s growth focus was on the domestic market.
“Even though we operate overseas we’re not looking for international expansion and we haven’t been for the last four years,” he told WA Business News.
“We made a deliberate decision that there was plenty available for us in Australia and we needed to be better at what we were doing in Australia.”
Mr Vernon said this meant building on Snap’s strong brand and adding more value to its existing customer relationships.
He emphasised that Snap’s business model had to change rapidly to keep up with technology trends.
This theme was echoed by Charlie Corr, group director of US-based printing industry consultancy CAP Ventures, who was brought to Perth for Snap’s annual conference last month.
“We think the industry is going through a real transformation, which goes with an industry that is in many places contracting,” Mr Corr said.
He said many smaller players did not have sufficient capital to keep up with technology trends and were falling by the wayside.
“The good news is that for those who are left, it’s a stronger industry,” Mr Corr said.
Mr Vernon, who is also known as an AFL umpire, said most franchise owners recognised the significance of technology trends.
“Franchise owners used to say the print room was the engine room of their business; now it’s the design room because that’s where all the value is added and you differentiate yourself,” he said.
“And then, the extension to that is adding more value through mailing and digital asset management.”
One of Snap’s key initiatives in recent years was the opening of seven printing hubs, including three in Perth, that give franchisees access to the latest technology and economies of scale.
Mr Vernon said the efficiency of the hubs was still developing, and it was “only logical” that the Perth hubs would merge.
“The important thing is that we have made the transition in the mindset of our franchise owners away from having printing in the back of their centre into participating in production hubs,” he told WA Business News.
“It’s opening up so much for us, not just in terms of return on investment but in terms of capability and capacity and what we can offer the market.”
Snap’s decision to establish printing hubs puts it on a similar path to industry rival Worldwide Online Printing, which has just two printing hubs for the entire Australian market.
Mr Vernon said there were two critical differences between the com-panies. One was that Snap’s printing hubs are owned by franchisees.
“That’s a very significant difference both culturally and in terms of the outcomes it produces,” Mr Vernon said.
Nearly all WA franchisees, and half of all franchisees nationally, were participating in a printing hub, he said.
“The other key difference is the positioning of our brand. We are deliberately positioning ourselves further up the market, at the corporate end of the market.”
Snap’s penetration of the corporate market was illustrated by its client list, which includes Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, Microsoft and Nestle.
Mr Vernon said the focus on the corporate sector reflected market changes. In particular, he said, the basic printing and copying work that underpinned a Snap franchise 10 years ago had largely disappeared.
This was partly because individuals and businesses could now buy printers costing about $300 that were capable of doing the kid of jobs that were sent to Snap a few years ago.
The industry was also affected by the online storage of documents like training manuals, which previously had to be printed.
Mr Vernon said a big focus at Snap was having the right technology to make it easy for customers to do business with the firm.
This meant everything from online ordering to offering national customers a single, coded invoice that covered all jobs performed by all Snap centres.
Mr Corr believes the increasing use of production colour, its integration with workflows, and the ability of the industry to offer a complete solution, represents a major change.
He said the proliferation of digital images was another big change that was creating many opportunities for the printing industry.
Mr Corr expects to see more use of “complex personalisation”, for instance through the printing of personalised promotions on individual credit card statements.
“We find a lot of customers want a print provider who can help them through that, which is not just about printing, it about how do you get the data, how do you put the program in place, how do you measure the effectiveness of it,” Mr Corr said.
The focus on franchisees remained central to Snap’s strategy, according to Mr Vernon.
“The whole culture of Snap is really focused on our franchise owners and wanting them to succeed,” he said. “I know every franchisor would say that but we’ve got a lot of history to back that up.”
In fact, Snap pioneered quick printing in Australia, with the opening of its first franchised print centre in 1967. That was a major step for the company, which had operated a commercial printing business since the 1920s.
The family ownership of the company has not changed, but it has put in place a board of directors and appointed independent management.
The company is governed by a five-member board comprising chairman Haydn Crystal, independent director and former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Alan Good, managing director Mr Vernon, and representatives of the Watt and Reed-Smith families.
