Driving in the fast lane

A Rolls-Royce, they say, is for life. Though for many of us, the idea of buying a Rolls is a lottery-winning day-dream, clever advertisers know that owning a car like that is not about the money: they know that once you step through the doors into that world, it is hard to turn back. Quality shines from every inch of the car, from its interior trim to the iconic Spirit of Ecstasy stretching from the bonnet into the open road. It stands out as a rare breed and it is for a good reason the Rolls-Royce is known as ‘the best car in the world.’

Noel Palmer of Preston-based Palmer Publicity Services (PPS) has captured and produced enough images of the emperor of the automotive world to know whether that is true. Palmer started his career as a photographer for Rolls-Royce and TVR Sports Cars, travelling the world to catch the beau-ties in their natural habitats. He knows what makes the machines so enticing, despite their hefty price tag and he has found that, when it comes down to it, price is always second to quality.



Palmer started PPS in 1989 with his wife, Lesley, almost exclusively as an automotive publicity service before later expanding into the large format and sign industry. Though cars are no longer top of the bill, the ethos of Rolls has stayed with him, with quality at the centre of the company.

He explains: “Put it this way; in an exhibition, I can always spot our roller banners because ours are standing straight up, and everyone else’s are curling at the edges and bending in the middle.”


Striking out

It is this stand-out quality and loyal customers that come with it, which has seen PPS celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

However, like many business stories, PPS started as something totally different. Having spent seven years as marketing director for TVR, in the areas of sales, publicity, exhibitions and everything that included graphics, Palmer decided to take a chance and strike out on his own. Lesley and Noel left TVR and set up their publicity service in their own home, designing and marketing from the front room and farming out the print work.



It was not until a few years later that PPS took its first steps into the realms of production. Palmer recalls: “The move into the large-format side came around about 1995 when we started taking on a lot of work for a local house builder. We designed their brochures and site plans; at the time we used to do black and white prints and stick coloured letterset over the top of it.

“When digital printing arrived, we farmed out a lot of this kind of work to a company in Manchester. After a couple of years of doing and with the amount of work we were outsourcing, we thought it might be worth doing it ourselves. So we bought an Encad printer and laminator, put it in the garage and began producing our own prints.”

Jumping hurdles

Today PPS has nine members of staff and an 8,000sq ft (743.2sq m) production space and offices, but Palmer explains it has not always been like this, recounting tales of a time when there physically was not enough room for more production workers.

Palmer, who likes the close family aspect of the business, laughingly remembers the early days with some amazement: “When we had our first printer in the garage, Vic Hodgson, who is our studio manager now, was our designer and would also help print and produce.

“An 8 x 4ft (2.4 x 1.2m) panel—which seemed so big back then—didn’t quite fit into the space we had around the machine, so as the panel was pushed through, the laminator had to be pulled backwards and as it went through Vic had to duck as the whole thing went over her head.”

Times have certainly changed, for PPS and the large-format industry, as Palmer recounts: “At that time you could sell an A0 print on paper for about £120 and now you are lucky if you get £10. But that type of work increased, and people started wanting larger prints. So we installed a 60" Encad and laminator, increasing our staff to four. By that stage we were getting out of automotive PR and in 2002 we moved over to HP printers. As we were producing more graphics, we were then being asked for more outdoor work and signage.”



It was not all rosy for the company though, as they were soon to discover: “By that stage about 35 percent of our customers were design agencies,” says Palmer, adding: “That was starting to be a bit of a problem because we were always at the tail end of the chain. They wanted things for nothing and the payment was often problematic, so we took the decision to reinvent ourselves and become a one-stop-shop. We already had our own design facilities, our own production facilities, and our own fitting facilities so there was nothing stopping us.



“By the time we moved to our current premises, about 70 percent of what we were producing was large-format and the other 30 percent was other types of print work. We learnt the hard way that doing a lot of work for a few customers was not sustainable, on the basis that when one of them pulled the plug, you lost a huge chunk of your revenue—that happened two or three times to us.”

Secret weapon

Behind every good survival story, there is usually a secret weapon, and this is no different for PPS. Though the recession was looming, and the company started taking great hits as their main customers—the agencies—began collapsing, Palmer had a trick or two up his sleeve, which came in the shape of schools.

He explains: “We got into producing and designing school prospectuses about 24 years ago. We would photograph school activities and then produce the glossy brochure that was given out in open evenings. Now, 24 years later, we are still producing the brochures, and working with some of the same schools that we started with years ago.

“It is a seasonal market and only three months a year during the summer but we’ve developed that market by offering signage and different kinds of graphics. We do the photography, we design and we produce them, and schools are very reliable customers. Unlike others, we have never seen a school go down during the recession.”




















Palmer continues: “Today, if you put all our school customers together, it accounts for a third of our work. That is a big chunk but they are all separate and are never going to go bust or not pay. We have made sure that there is no single customer which accounts for more than 8 to 10 percent of our total turnover. Now only 2 percent of our customers are agencies, the rest are end-users.

“We developed that side of things on the sales front because, with the design and ad agencies we just got the production work—in other words, the hard bit. But with our own designers here, we could sell the design work which could be for brochure, for an exhibition stand, for signage, or point of sale. Nowadays, we can do the artwork, the production, and we can go and install the signage if needs be: that gives us far more security.”


New lands, new ideas

Another characteristic of PPS is its surprisingly bold pioneering attitude. For example, while many were struggling to stay ahead in the mid-noughties, PPS had already set its sights on places further afield. Palmer and some of his key staff travelled out to China to see what opportunities awaited in importing low-cost, yet high quality products from reputable exporters.

Though the company was pleased with the quality and price of the materials they sourced, logistics and storage was a continual problem. Palmer also knew that going into the distribution market was not something that they had the time or the resources to do. However, they did come face to face with a vision of a future that would soon be taking not only them, but the world by storm.

Palmer takes up the story: “We discovered a very early version of a flatbed printer by a Chinese printing manufacturer. We did a deal with them and brought one over, got a stand and exhibited it at Sign and Digital UK. The problem was that it only arrived the day before, and though we had sent one of our production managers out to Shanghai for two weeks to be trained in how to use and service it, we soon realised, again, that, unless you had huge facilities and a lot of commitment, it wasn’t something we wanted to do at that time. We eventually threw a sheet over it.

“However, we saw its benefits and a couple of years later we bought an Agfa Anapurna for production, which revolutionised the way we worked and the way we produced graphics: we could produce more, we could cut our costs and production times, and we could do more of the custom work, which was far more profitable.”


The flatbed may have worked out, but, as with all experimentation, PPS has had its fair share of setbacks. Having spent years getting to grips with the complexities of laminating, Palmer was overjoyed at the news of solvent printers, which were advertised as ‘no need to laminate’: “Our immediate thought was, ‘great, finally we can get rid of that laminator’. The first print we did came out like bubblegum. It turns out you had to laminate it after all.”

Quality is all, and, despite the occasional mishap, Palmer is fully confident in the new technology emerging and is not afraid to keep reinvesting: “We got rid of the solvent printers two weeks ago and replaced them with latex printers. We still are learning new bits about these machines. They give brilliant quality, the quality straight out of the machine for labels, signs, and graphics is superb, and the running costs are a lot less.”

Driving into the future

In the last two years, says Palmer, the company has seen a steady increase in turnover. A lot of this could be down to the addition of the Palmers’ daughter Katie to the marketing team.

Palmer says proudly: “After completing a degree in fashion and textiles, Katie worked in London for Dolce and Gabana in press and marketing. Following that, she came to work for us and immediately saw that our website was ancient and that we had no presence on Facebook and Twitter—she developed all that.




“Because of the range of services we provide, one of our biggest problems was that our customers did not know the extent of what we can offer. Now, every time we do something new, there will be something on Facebook and on Twitter advertising it. This alone in the last twelve months has generated £80 to £90,000 of business, all new customers.”

Aside from a burgeoning online presence, Palmer still has his pioneering pedal to the metal, with a view to expanding further into the digital market in the coming years: “We are getting into digital signage, especially the TV screen side of digital, though it is still early days. We have worked with a lot of fast food companies, and when we do the exterior signage, we also put in TV screens for the menus.”

For now though, Palmer’s loyalties are to his present customers, and especially delights in meeting some rather more complex customised orders: “That’s the kind of thing we like doing. For example, a customer phoned up the other day and asked for six, life-sized, double-sided sheep with wheels. And we said, yes no problem, and asked if he had a photograph. He was stunned, saying, ‘you’re the first company that hasn’t put the phone down’. The lads like the challenge!”



The company recently its its 25th anniversary in style, with their own customised graphics, an Apple Mac cake and a newly invented cocktail named after Palmer himself. With 90 or so customers and suppliers turning up to celebrate with them, it is clear that the company is enjoying a healthy relationship with its clients. Palmer says it is almost as simple as that: “The customers that we have are very loyal to us. The difference is the quality. Part of our ethos is to provide a very good service at a competitive price, make a profit on it and still be here in another 25 years.”


Like the immortal Rolls-Royce, Palmer Publicity Services knows that only the best will do, and that people who have experienced great quality will never again be able to sit in an inferior vehicle.

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