Images_Digital_Edition_February_2020

IS DECORATOR PROFILE www.images-magazine.com 40 images FEBRUARY 2020 Mark Ludmon visits Dan Blake at EasyPrint and discovers a rapidly expanding business whose future growth is in the bag A fter a year of change and investment, EasyPrint has entered the new decade ready for a roaring twenties. With new staff, new machines, new branding, a new website and a new textile supplier, the 14-year-old Essex- based print shop has ambitious plans for the future. “It takes money to make money,” says founder Dan Blake. “We have put it all together, from the price to the product to the service. If you have all three of those, what else does a company need to succeed?” After starting out in 2006 specialising in screen printing for T-shirts, EasyPrint has a new focus for the future: bags. This follows its acquisition of the bag business of leading promotional merchandise group KeepMe at the end of 2018, taking on its clients and equipment. Although the deal did not include the name, KeepMe’s founders Kevin and Steve Anderson continue to provide support and business. “We are putting our expertise in printing T-shirts on to bags,” Dan explains. “We are still a T-shirt company and we’re not going to alienate our existing business, but our main focus this year is to really look to grow the bag side of the business. Our Easy does it Anyone in the industry should be embarrassed not to be using our bags aim is to be as big as the industry leader, if not bigger. We hold as much stock with the same amount of equipment but with a more personal service. If we took 20% to 25% of our competitor’s market, we would be in dreamland. There is a hell of a lot of work out there. We have only just started.” All around the world To support this, Dan travelled to different countries last year to find a supplier that fulfilled EasyPrint’s criteria for quality, ethical trading and sustainability. “I have been all round the world multiple times. We have found a genuine company that gives us genuine product with everything backed up behind it. It shows the industry that we are serious.” Established in 1976, the factory in Rajapalayam in southern India specialises in cotton canvas bags, with a capacity to produce a million per month. Accreditations include the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which provides environmental and social guarantees throughout production and distribution, and the Oeko-Tex standard to ensure that products contain no substances that are harmful to human health and ecology. The partnership also means that a penny from the sale of Dan Blake – founder and owner of EasyPrint EasyPrint acquired KeepMe’s bag business in 2018