on the press since 1987

The dispatch lad

I left college at 17. We lived in a pub, and my mum asked every customer who walked in if they had any jobs going. One of them did: a print factory half a mile up the road, printing for the big British high-street names.

I started as the dispatch lad, booking stock in and out and stretching wooden screens in my spare time. The printers got paid more, so I asked to be trained. The answer was no. So I stayed late, and the old hands taught me anyway. Before long I had my own press, and I realised I loved it.

Learning it properly

Then I got too big for my boots. I moved to a one-man shop and found out I knew nothing about printing beyond the green button and the red one. Malcolm taught me the darkroom camera, hand-drawn art, making screens and pulling a squeegee by hand. I learned more in six months than in five years on an auto.

From the floor to running the show

Back on automatics, I worked up to print manager, until the factory closed one Christmas Eve and I had to tell a team of 75 they weren't getting paid. I've never forgotten what's at stake when a print room goes wrong.

That same night I found a small embroidery company a mile from home, with an old press in the corner nobody could run. Over 15 years we grew it from 9 people and under £1m to £5m: three autos, eight embroidery machines and a sublimation department. I went from "just a printer" to operations manager, building departments from scratch.

I've worked the equipment side too, so I know how the sales pitch works and which kit actually pays back. Then I became production director at a business that was great, just a little broken. We took it from £4m to £10m, and sales and production even started talking to each other. Trouble was, I'd fixed it so well it didn't need me.

Why Palmprint

In 2018 I spent a weekend on a trade show booth in Long Beach, California, teaching printers and sales teams. When I got home my wife asked how it went. "Best thing ever. If only there was a way to make money doing that." She told me to do what I tell the kids: find something you'd do for free, then work really hard to make money doing it.

Palmprint started in April 2019. Since then I've worked in print rooms across the UK and Europe, the USA, Central America, the Caribbean and Asia.

I learned on bad machines with one flash, so we printed wet on wet. The art was drawn by hand, so we looked after it. Our screen room made 240 mesh screens for the paper and board floor, so ours had to be perfect. Those skills are slowly disappearing as the generations change.

We can buy operators, but we make printers. That's what I'm here for.