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Mother of MerciaFor more than a quarter of a century, Amanda Strong has been at thehelm of Mercia Image Print, through good times and bad. She tellsRobin Johnson how her business has emerged from the downturnstronger than ever and is now investing in the future.

Amanda Strong is a mother of three butshe has another offspring that she de-scribes as her “fourth child” – her busi-ness, Mercia Image Print. For morethan 25 years, she has been at the helm

of this Little Eaton print and design company.Like with any member of the family, you go

through both good times and bad but whateverhappens, you stick together. And that spirit ofsolidarity has been key to Mercia’s longevity.

The print industry is perhaps one of the

toughest sectors to be in. During the downturn, anumber of such businesses fell by the wayside asclients tightened their belts.

Invariably, one of the areas where many re-duced their spending was on printed marketingmaterials. This, in turn, had a knock-on effect onprint businesses but, thanks to Amanda’s stew-ardship, Mercia Image Print rode out the storm -and is now reaping the benefits of the upturn.

The downturn struck not long afterMercia had moved into its current ➤➤P60

premises at Duffield Road Industrial Estate, relo-cating from Perkins Industrial Estate, in Mans-field Road, Derby. It was April, 2008 and, as wellas investing in new premises, the company hadalso spent heavily on fitting it out with the latest

printing equipment.Amanda recalls: “By the October, the

downturn had started, so the crystalball hadn’t worked very well.

When we bought our premisesthey were just two huge shells.

There was no office space atall so we had to pay local ar-

chitects and builders to getoffices built. This was ontop of buying the unit.

“We had spent in ex-cess of £750,000 by thetime it was all finished.Alongside that we haddecided to upgrade ourexisting B2 press, whichis the larger machine,

and buy a brand new five-colour Mitsubishi press. It

was a pretty scary time. Nobody knew that thedownturn was going to happen, so it was just badtiming.”

When the downturn did arrive,Amanda wasted no time in imple-menting measures that would helpinsulate the business from its im-pact. She says: “It’s all about cash

flow, which is key to any business. The advant-age that we had over other companies was that Imanaged the financial side and the cash flow ona daily basis. I evaluated all of my purchaseledger, negotiating more competitive pricingand, if needed, changed suppliers to make everypossible saving.

“Employees didn’t have pay rises, some ofthem actually took a reduction in pay in order tohelp. We were on two shifts a day before the reces-sion and went back to just a day shift. It was lotsof little things and really tightening up on ex-penses. It’s being sensible and acting quickly.You can’t bury your head in the sand and thinkthings are going to be ok.”

Thanks to her swift action, Mercia got ➤➤P63

Sales director PaulRoss examinesprint quality.

Adrian Hunteron one of the

presses.

Phil Mitson andDan Kinnerley.

Paul Ross andmanaging director

Amanda Strong.

Production managerMatthew Hurst workson the new laminator.

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through the bad times and the impact was min-imised. Amanda says: “In terms of the down-turn, it wasn’t as bad as people made out, at leastnot for us. The turnover probably did go down byabout 10%. We did see some of our competitorsfall by the wayside and that’s probably becausethey didn’t act quickly enough or make thoses a c r i f i c e s. ”

Key to Mercia’s survival was having a loyalcustomer base spread across the sectors, includ-ing public and private.

Amanda says: “We have many local clientswho have stayed loyal to us for years and yearswho we work closely with and have a great work-ing relationship. These include Derby City Coun-cil and South Derbyshire District Council. Forthe past 15 years we have been selling patient

menus to ISS, which supplies the NHS. We printexamination sheets for universities and collegesall over the UK and Europe. Throughout thedownturn that business remained static so ourbread and butter was still there.

“Thankfully, we had a mix of solid, long-estab-lished businesses and niche customers that wereimmune from the recession. After all, everyoneneeds patient menus and everyone needs exam-ination papers that need to be marked.”

When the upturn finally arrived, Mercia wasin a good position to take advantage, thanks tothe investments it had made before the down-turn struck.

Amanda says: “We were fortunate when therecession hit that we’d actually only just made ahuge investment in equipment with a brand newpress so we had everything we needed to secureus for a number of years.We started to see thefirst signs of recovery in 2013 so the downturnlasted for about five years. It really started pick-ing up around summer last year.”

Today, Mercia, which employs morethan 20 people, has the technology andcapacity to take on a range of printwork. Amanda says: “We do absolutelyeverything which is printed on paper.

Obviously, there are some things that are just notsuited to us as the quantity would be too large,such as newspapers. We can do magazines, bro-chures, including the designing of brochures,and print anything from 10 business cards to1 million leaflets.”

The business also continues to have a goodspread of clients, and not just in the local area.Amanda says: “Our clients are nationwide. Oneof our larger clients is a major leisure manage-ment company and they’ve been with us for over20 years. If you go back 15 years they probablywould have supported 40% of our sales, whereasthey now represent about 5% to 7%, which is afar more comfortable position to be in.”

With the good times back, Mercia is investingin the business once again. The firm has recentlyinvested more than £100,000 to buy three newpieces of machinery. These include a state-of-the-art B2 Foliant Laminator, which will allow thecompany to do all its laminating in-house.

It has invested in a Pitney Bowes InkjetAddressing System and Mail Crafter, which willsee the firm able to deliver in-house printing andmailing and it is also buying a fully automatedplate-maker, which makes the plates for print-ing, producing a higher definition finish. At thesame time, the company will be investing inskills by taking on more apprentices.

Amanda says: “Over the past 12 months, stafflevels have increased by 20% and we have made ahuge commitment to the apprenticeship scheme,both internally and externally. One of ourapprentices, Dimitri Frixou, was thisyear named a runner-up in the East

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Mercia Image celebrated25 years in business with avisit from Mid DerbyshireMP and Pauline Latham.Above, cutting the cakewith Amanda Strong.Below, with Paul Ross.

Call us on 01332 830 552or email us at info@merciaimage.co.uk

Mercia Image Limited The Sidings Duffield Road Industrial Estate Little Eaton Derby DE21 5EG

Printing with flying colours

At Mercia we pride ourselves onbeing different from most printers.Different because we offer a fully integrated service which includesgraphic design, digital print, lithographic print and print finishingall under one roof - ensuring all print media has a consistent lookas well as saving precious time and money.

Litho printing is the very cornerstone of Mercia Image and a partof our heritage of which we’re immensely proud of. We have beenproducing high quality litho printed material for over 25 years andremain Derby’s most established and successful litho printers.

With a wealth of experience and total in-house production, you canbe confident we will deliver an efficient and reliable printing servicefor you and your company.

Call us on 01332 830 552or email us at info@merciaimage.co.uk

Midlands Chamber’s Young Business Person ofthe year category.

“We also invested significantly in Derby Col-le ge’s When I am programme, which was a greatsuccess. Our commitment to our staff is very ap-parent. The majority of our senior staff havebeen with us for a large part of our 26 years inbusiness. We are hoping that our investment intoyouth also pays off and we get more and moreyoung people into the industry.”

Amanda believes that the print in-dustry continues to have a rosy future,despite the rise of digital marketing.She says: “I’m not overly concernedabout the printing world. I’m sure

everyone will have their own opinion on that. Istill think it’s got a large number of years to go.People still like to hold something and lookthrough it and pick up a nice glossy brochure.

“I think it’s changed a little bit in that peoplenow want a higher quality product, as opposed tojust a leaflet run. They’re going for somethingthat will have more impact. If anything, the lam-ination side of things is coming in house becausewe ’re getting more clients asking for it. I thinkpeople are spending more on their promotionalmarketing side to get a higher quality product.”

Now that the good times have returned, Aman-da has found she now has more time freed up totake a leaf out of the book of her clients and getM e rc i a ’s name out there.

The first step was becoming a MarketingDerby bondholder. The bondholders support theefforts of Marketing Derby to attract new invest-ment to the city. In exchange for this support,

they have access to various networking eventsand marketing materials.

Amanda says: “Until last summer, I was in theoffice almost 24/7 sat behind my desk. I thenmade a conscious decision that we needed to getMercia Image Print out there. A lot of peopled i d n’t know we existed, which is shameful after26 years in business, but because we had our reg-ular clients we haven’t really needed to push thebu s i n e s s.

“I really wanted to tell people about Merciaand it’s story. I’m really proud of the businessand the team that I’ve got and that’s why I joinedMarketing Derby, and it’s been a great success.We have got so many clients from being a bond-holder and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting outthere and I’ve met some fantastic people in theDerby business community.”

Her bondholder membership has certainly putMercia back on the map and even resulted in avisit from local MP Pauline Latham, who repres-ents the Mid-Derbyshire constituency. Amandasays: “Pa u l i n e ’s visit last November was the dir-ect result of a bondholder event we held here,when 40 companies attended to help celebrateour 25th anniversary.”

At the core of every successful business is adedicated workforce and Amanda concedes thatMercia would not be in the position it is todaywithout their contribution. She says: “I’ve got anamazing team around me. They are so motivated,putting in extra hours to get the job done. In thisbusiness it’s all about deadlines and there is a lotof pressure but my workforce is really flexibleand committed. Together, we are looking forwardto even more success over the next 25 years.” ❏

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Above, Mercia Image andPrint managing directorAmanda Strong in the printroom. Below, outside thecompany’s premises in TheSidings, Duffield RoadIndustrial Estate, LittleEaton.

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