Iain Clasper, managing director of FaberExposize UK
Unwavering Passion
On our journey to visit the FaberExposize UK team in Leeds and gain a sneak peak behind the doors of production, we didn’t know what to expect.
Having met managing director Iain Clasper briefly at the VM & Display show prior, we knew we’d be in for a warm welcome and we weren’t let down as he took us for a tour of the site, imparting his knowledge on all things sublimation and textile printing.
Clasper’s passion for the business and enthusiasm were clear as we peppered him with questions along the way, fascinated by the variety and sheer size of the kit housed in the company’s HQ.
Upon entering the building, you are met with a range of applications and it’s easy to see from even the untrained eye the quality of the printed products.
Having been around for about 35 years, FaberExposize UK originally started off as a flag company (Northern Flags) and is part of the FaberExposize network which means the company shares a lot of resources with other sites in Poland, the Netherlands, and Bangkok. This gives the business a unique post-Brexit opportunity for its customers as it is able to produce on-shore, lowering the carbon output and enabling greater accuracy.
FaberExposize UK operates from its Leeds site and is expanding to the unit next door
Having moved from being solely a flag company to a full display company with UV and dye-sub capabilities, FaberExposize UK is arguably one of the most modern print facilities in the UK in terms of its fleet of printers.
This fleet is certainly being put to work with the volume of products produced at the site including print for construction such as heras banners and dibond for new home developers, as well as banners, flags, and graphics for events and sport, and retail.
“We’re quite lucky in that we’re not dependant on one particular category of business,” explains Clasper who joined the business 12 years ago with no prior knowledge of the industry. This is something he says was an advantage due to him asking a lot of questions in the early days.
Mychael Bottomley, production operative at FaberExposize UK was one of four 2023 Printing Charity Rising Stars from the comapny
Over this time, the company has gone from a sales office for the other FaberExposize print operations to probably the largest producing factory within the group.
One of the steepest changes Clasper has experienced is the move from screen printing onto fabrics to digital printing.
“The technology is radically different now and I think it was probably an advantage for me knowing absolutely nothing about print, be it screen print or digital, I just kept asking ‘why, why, why?’ We were quite early adopters in the digital fabric space and I think that’s put us in a really strong position for now.”
Inclusivity And Diversity
Something that stands out about FaberExposize, be it seeing the team at events or reading about the many awards it has now collected over the past few years, is the diversity of the company and its positive culture. This is present in the form of a 70/30 split of women and men in the company, as well as having a range of ethnicities within the team, and a high amount of young people.
This isn’t something that has been intentional and Clasper describes it as having been very much meritocracy, but he says the company has been very fortunate with the kind of people it has recruited.
“We’ve always looked to recruit a team of print operators who really share that passion. They’re not just there to ‘bish bosh’ it out. You met some of the guys today, and I think you can feel that. We’ve been really fortunate with who we’ve found. They’re really energetic, really passionate, and really want to grow.
We’ve always looked to recruit a team of print operators who really share our passion. They’re not just there to ‘bish bosh’ it out. We’ve been really fortunate with who we’ve found. They’re really energetic, really passionate, and really want to grow”
“We like to give people a bit of rope and see what they make with it and I think we’ve been hiring a lot of people who’ve really been ambitious and we’ve been allowing their careers to foster and they’ve either hopefully stayed with us and grown, but others have left and grown elsewhere in other industries. That’s why we work a lot with FESPA UK on other initiatives in the industry to bring youngsters in.”
The list of awards the company has won to date is extensive to say the least and in the past year alone FaberExposize has bagged three UK Graphic Awards including Wide-format Printer of the Year, the Green Award, and a Rising Star Award.
The company has also won a number of Made In Yorkshire Awards including Apprentice of the Year, as well as winning four Printing Charity Rising Star Awards this year; being nominated for two PrintWeek 2023 Awards; and being nomainted for Best Supplier to Exhibitors at the Exhibition News Awards 2023. The list really does go on.
FaberExposize UK has both UV and dye-sublimation capabilities
Reflecting on receiving so much recognition and the impact this has on the team and the wider company, Clasper says: “We kind of look at it in a number of ways. One, I think it allows the team to really be recognised for what they do on a day-to-day basis and that’s a really good motivator for us when we come to work.
"You think ‘Yeah, actually we’re doing quite a good job’. And one of the other reasons we wanted to do it was that we’ve always been known as Northern Flags and that means every sales call we have to explain we’re not just Northern and don't just produce flags. So it’s a really good way for us to get the FaberExposize name out there.
“A lot of the awards that we’ve been going for have really been pushing in the areas where FaberExposize as a network has been working in terms of quality and sustainability.
"So that’s a few of the reasons why we’ve been working hard at the awards. We also like a good party and if we get a nomination we get a really good booze allocation from finance so that has to be a good reason.”
Veins That Run Green
As well as being a diverse and enthusiastic organisation, something FaberExposize has made a name for itself for is its commitment to sustainability and anyone can attest that this very much runs through the veins of the company and is not just used as a buzzword or sales tactic.
Over the past few years FaberExposize UK has changed the way it manages its waste three times, demonstrating its commitment to making sure what it’s doing is right for the company.
“We just keep pushing hard back on different suppliers in the waste management chain because often you find there’s a bit of greenwashing at their level and we don’t want to get caught up in that. It’s great we have an opportunity now with our new scheme whereby we pre-bale it here and pre-sort it out a lot before it goes out into the waste stream, so we can be a lot surer that it’s being treated properly,” Clasper explains.
In addition to this, the company is minimising its waste at the other end of the circle by buying rolls in different thicknesses to make sure there’s no wastage in that production point of view, and buying more and more products that are made from recycled materials. The company also encourages its own customers not to over-specify in weight as this is a great way of immediately halving or quartering the products they’re using.
A Zund G3 Cutter is just one of the pieces of kit housed at the company's Leeds HQ
“We’ve tried to make it part of the culture like encouraging people to bring their Amazon boxes in so we can use them to recycle right the way through to the products that we’re printing on and the inks that we’re using because that’s another thing of course,” Clasper adds.
With so much going on and so much evolving and growing in such a short space of time, we were keen to find out what FaberExposize has in store for the rest of the year and the answer seems to be to take stock of where the company has got to and assess the best way to be as efficient as possible moving forwards.
A factory full of such impressive kit would allude to a company not afraid to invest where needed to boost production further and this enthusiasm for investing by Clasper is something the finance department is trying (in vain) to reign in. Instead, the managing director has put the wheels in motion to rent the unit next door!
For the months to come, Clasper says: “For us, it’s very much a case of bedding down the clients that we’ve onboarded recently. We’ve had a really good couple of years of growth so we want to be really sure that everyone in the business and the building and everything is able to build on that foundation.”
Shaking Things Up
Ensuring the company has a strong and experienced team at its helm, Claire Taylforth has recently been appointed operations director of FaberExposize UK. Taylforth joined the business in 2014 when it was known as Northern Flags.
Having been with the company for nine years, Taylforth has also witnessed the industry shift and change with the biggest being the move to production in-house.
Following her promotion to the new role, Taylforth says she is looking forward to playing a key role in the company’s expansion plans moving forward.
With such a huge capacity due to the range of kit the company has invested in, Taylforth explains that the only real bottleneck FaberExposize is experiencing now is in its administration and automation.
To address this, something Taylforth has been focusing on in recent months is the implementation of a whole new MIS system, CRM system, and accounting package which will enable the company to work more efficiently.
Taylforth explains: “I’ve been heavily involved in a new MIS system as we’re changing all of our systems internally that I’ve been working on for about four months now. We’re fast tracking it, and we’re hopefully about to go live on the first phase of the project in the next couple of months with some of our key clients.
“So that would be automating right from order, quote, processing the order in admin through to studio and automating the proofing so the artwork can drop in, we can tell the customer if it's print ready, and then it will feed straight through to our RIP software in production.
“We’re working really hard to simplify it as much as possible, but also to make a lot of the smaller jobs and the repetitive jobs more efficient. It’s quite an exciting time for us really as this will change the way that everyone in the company works.”
This implementation demonstrates how adaptable FaberExposize is as a company to change which was evident during Covid -19 with the company producing products that it has never produced before and learning on the go.
“We’ve got the capacity and the kit so once we’re able to automate better we’ll be able to push a lot more jobs through quicker,” Taylforth adds.
We look forward to seeing what the company continues to do – we’re sure we won’t be short of things to report!
Statistics
- 35 – years of FaberExposize UK
- 12 – years of Iain Clasper as MD
- 4 – 2023 Printing Charity Rising Stars
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