Monster Impact Graphics
Hollywood Monster is a powerhouse within the wide-format print and signage industry having produced a number of well-known and recognisable projects. Living up to its ethos of ‘Monster Impact Graphics’, chances are you will have seen work by Hollywood Monster, even if you haven’t realised it yet. Some notable projects in recent years include graphics for the 2022 Commonwealth Games with CSM Live held in Birmingham, and the graphics for the Birmingham Festival again with CSM Live 12 months later.
When it comes to producing graphics of this scale, you need machinery and operations to meet these demands and walking around the HQ of Hollywood Monster on a November afternoon, we were struck by the calm atmosphere, despite new machinery being installed as we walked around the site. The company also has a strong focus on sustainability and is implementing this in a number of ways both within its own operations and in the solutions it offers its clients.
[L to R] Jo Worton, Steve Allen, and Laura Huggins
We caught up with Andy McKenzie, director and shareholder at Hollywood Monster who welcomed us in, gave us a tour of the business, and told us all about the journey the company has been on since its inception.
The Joining of Two Forces
Hollywood Monster as we know it today was formed when sister companies Hollywood Signs and Monster Digital merged. Back when McKenzie first joined Hollywood Signs, it was a signage company predominately working with property and development companies.
The name was an ode to being based in Hollywood (Worcestershire not Los Angeles!) and from 2000 to 2005, McKenzie explains that the company was spending a lot of money on wide-format print so decided to invest in its own technology. This is when Monster Digital was born with the business situated in Halesowen, Dudley.
This business grew over a two-to-three-year period and by the time the 2007 property recession came, Hollywood Signs was seeing a lot of reduction in turnover due to clients not being active. Because of this, in 2009 the decision was made to merge the two businesses and Hollywood Monster was born.
“We were trying to come up with a name for the new company and all the Hollywood staff liked the Hollywood name, and the Monster staff liked Monster so in the end we just thought, Hollywood Monster it is!” McKenzie explains.
The business is now headed by Andy McKenzie, his brother Simon McKenzie who is chief executive officer, and Tim Andrews who is one of the original founders of Hollywood Signs having started the business with his father John in 1991.
[L to R] James Josephs, Faye Ganderton, Manjit Khala, Laura Huggins, and Simon McKenzie
“Simon and I both traditionally worked in the steel industry supplying automotive steel to automotive companies,” McKenzie says. “That was our background for a number of years and I got to know Tim through my fiancé at the time. Tim wanted to grow his signage company and my background was in sales and commercial so I got interested in talking to him about that.
“Twelve months later Simon joined and before we knew it we were doing wide-format print and signage which is not something we thought we’d ever end up doing.”
Continued Investment
McKenzie says a big positive that came from the merger was the bringing together of some really skilled and talented people and since 2009, he says the company has enjoyed a long period of stability and growth.
“We’re really focused on our growth. We don’t want to be the biggest, we want to be the best at what we do and be sustainable and secure as a company,” he says. “We’re not afraid to invest in new opportunities, machinery, or plant, in fact in our industry you always have to keep up to speed with what’s coming out and what’s available.”
Hollywood Monster has made headlines over the past couple of years due to this continued investment with the company having installed an EFI VUTEk 5r 5m LED roll-to-roll printer with support of a £97,000 grant from bodies including the Greenbridge Supply Chain Programme in 2017.
We’re not afraid to invest in new opportunities, machinery, or plant, in fact in our industry you always have to keep up to speed with what’s coming out and what’s available”
This investment was followed up with the purchase of a 3.4m-wide EFI VUTEk FabriVU in-line dye-sublimation digital printer in 2022. Reflecting on the company’s long-standing relationship with EFI for its large-format machinery, McKenzie says: “We’ve worked with EFI for a long time now and they’ve been a very good partner to us and we’ve benefited from that relationship.
“From our point of view, we always like to have capacity. A lot of the clients in the sectors we work with don’t always work on the longest lead times, quite the opposite in fact a lot of the time!”
To facilitate these needs, Hollywood Monster doubles up on most of its machinery for optimum capacity but also to have backup machines if there are any issues with the kit. This ensures continuity which is important to the company, as well as capacity and service.
Whilst the printing side of things is speedy with the company ensuring it has all the necessary hardware to roll graphics out fast, it’s the finishing side of things that can cause the most bottlenecks and due to the nature of the work Hollywood Monster produces, this is something it needed to consider.
Again, the company has this covered. “For a lot of people in our industry, we’ve all got similar kit in terms of printing and printing is always getting better and faster and more efficient, but finishing is a bottleneck a lot of the time,” McKenzie explains.
To counter this, the company recently invested in a 5m-wide cutting bed as well as a MEEVO silicone edge automated stitching (SEAS) machine. The latter, McKenzie describes as 25 times faster than doing the edging the way the company was before. “This will give us a lot of capacity and efficiency and puts a very good finished edge – far better than you can do by hand using traditional methods,” he says.
In addition to investing in machinery, 2023 also saw the company expand its operations with the acquisition of Sygnet Fabrications in May. The acquisition saw the entire Sygnet Group team retain their employment, saving 25 jobs in total. The new addition to the Hollywood Monster portfolio meant that it could expand its offering to trade partners whilst drawing on Sygnet’s 45-year experience in property, construction, events, exhibitions, and retail.
Protecting the Planet
Alongside producing Monster Impact Graphics and optimising its capacity and efficiency, Hollywood Monster is heavily focused on another area – the environment. Whilst the company traditionally supplies a lot of flat sheet and roll-to-roll products and substrates that the industry expects it to carry, the industry also expects it to carry a wider range of eco alternatives and this demand is something McKenzie says has increased over the past four to five years.
“Now a lot of our clients are working with us to improve their sustainability footprint on flat sheet products and on the roll-to-roll products we’ve got an option for every single item. I don’t think there’s a product that we don’t supply an eco option for now,” McKenzie says, adding: “We’re working heavily with clients on that on a day-to-day basis.”
So far, the company has alternatives for 80% of its product range and is working towards achieving 100% by 2025.
It’s not just substrates that Hollywood Monster is focusing on and the company in fact invests heavily in sustainability in all areas of the business. The company has two recycling partners that it works with to ensure everything that’s used or produced that’s not going to a client is being recycled in some form or other.
In early 2023, the company launched its recycling scheme with FESPA-accredited provider, Reconomy which supports its target of becoming fully sustainable by 2025 and reduces its landfill contribution by 80%. Hollywood Monster also encourages its customers in Birmingham to return any used signage it provided to its Tyseley production facility to be added to the bailers and saved from landfill.
In addition to this, the company announced at the end of 2023 a new partnership with Clean Air by RESYSTEN.
This is a spray that can be applied to signage during production which has been proven to remove dangerous pollutants that are more harmful to our health than CO2 emissions.
“In an urban environment it can have a massive impact,” McKenzie explains. One example he gives is on a construction site where you could have hoarding in a city centre site that has Clean Air coating on it. Clean Air can absorb up to 222mg a day of NOx (nitrogen oxides) from just 1m2 of a coated surface. According to RESYSTEN, air pollution costs up to 4,000 lives a year in London alone.
“The actual process has been known about for a number of years but it's only recently been launched as a viable option that we can offer from an in-house point of view,” McKenzie says, adding: “I think we’re going to see more and more companies wanting to take a stance on improving air quality. It’s all well and good wanting to reduce PVC and plastics are all something we see but nobody thinks about the air quality because it’s not something we see.”
Big Names, Big Projects
As previously mentioned, Hollywood Monster isn’t shy of producing big and wonderful work with its list of customers ranging from Mcdonald's, Adidas, Aston Villa, Sainsbury’s, Mullberry, Cineworld, the list goes on! When quizzing McKenzie on what his most memorable job has been over the years, the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games was high on the list. So, what goes into producing such a huge project like that?
“A lot!” he replies. “It was really great to be involved with CSM Live and the Commonwealth Games. Being a Birmingham company at heart, it was great to play a part in that and see what it did for the city. But it was also great to see what it did from a legacy point of view as 12 months on we did the Birmingham Festival again with CSM Live at the forefront of that.”
The 2022 Commonwealth Games was a memorable project for director Andy McKenzie and was completed with CSM Live
For the Commonwealth Games, Hollywood Monster produced a lot of different graphics and McKenzie explains that the ones that were very labour and time-intensive were the building wraps. “Again, talking about the plant and finishing, we print the building wraps pretty quickly in comparison but actually finishing them and welding them together and doing all the reinforced webbing and edges and doing all the special finishes that’s required for the install guys on-site, it's time-consuming and it takes up space as well. It was challenging but it was good and great to see it installed in the final instance.”
With the whole project starting eight to ten weeks before the event with work really ramping up in the final four weeks, one thing McKenzie is keen to highlight is the expertise of the team at Hollywood Monster. “It was a lot of man hours but the great thing is, and I can’t say it enough, we’ve got a great team of people here.
“A lot of our staff have been here a long time and are used to the fact that we’ve got to ramp things up and the hours are longer than normal and there’s overtime, but it’s a great team effort all round.”
The end of 2023 saw the company busy investing in kit and finishing and when asked what we can expect to see
from Hollywood Monster in 2024 and beyond, McKenzie answers: “More of the same!”
“We’ve got a lot planned for this year and have some new things that are happening in terms of partnerships that we’re teaming up with which we’re excited about. But more of the same – working with good clients, good sectors, good people, and providing a good service and good products,” he concludes.
Statistics
- 2009 – Hollywood Monster was born when Hollywood Signs and Monster Graphics merged
- 2023 – Sygnet Fabrications was acquired in May 2023
- 2025 – Hollywood Monster aims to be fully sustainable by 2025
- £97,000 – Investment in an EFI VUTEk 5m LED roll-to-roll with support from a £97K grant in 2017
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