Why it is important to have a good relationship with your digital printer

Slightly random post this week but very topical in terms of our business at the moment.  Dave (yes I can't be bothered with that "Itinerant Poet" anonymity any more) has been working his little socks off down in The South for the last few weeks.  Performances, workshops, parents evenings, INSET/CPD sessions...you name it!  The upside is that schools and students have been buying loads of books.

Managing the stock levels is always tricky when you run on budgets as tight a ours.  Fortunately we have built up an excellent working relationship with the digital printing company we have been using for several years now - Orbital Print Services (they also offer litho printing and many other services).

Last week they helped us out of a very tight spot when we had to place an order for reprints of three different titles for delivery on the Friday of the same week.  They did it!

Sarah, Mark, Oliver and Leon
at Orbital

Sarah at Orbital

Orbital's digital print room

I need to ask them for more reprints this week after a primary academy in Merton bought a full class reader set of "Mr Smile investigates...Ten Ways to Happiness" for use in PSHE yesterday.  This cleared out most of our remaining stock so I pinged Jo and Sarah at Orbital again this morning - at least I won't need the delivery for Friday though.

If we have occasional issues with quality (and these are extremely rare) e.g. sometimes a page may be smudged or wrinkled they replace the affected copies without cost or quibble.  They are always cheerful and yet remain thoroughly professional.

They also do special offers.  In February, they offered ten free A5 spiral bound notebooks (with your own cover art if you supplied it).  In April, orders came with 6 free Cadbury's Creme Eggs - shame the kids ate them all before we got a look in.