ImagesMagUK_Digital_Edition_March_2018

DECORATOR PROFILE www.images-magazine.com 28 images MARCH 2018 While all the artwork is checked on computer screens in the offices for resolution size, contrast, colour etc, down on the factory floor, each T-shirt is checked as it comes out of the dryer. Any concerns and it gets put aside for the quality control manager to assess. This attention to detail extends to measuring every aspect of the business. “Every business is unique, and you need to know everything about your business. How can you make money if you don’t know what’s going on?” asks Andy. “It’s all very well me saying this though, but you have to be able to get to a certain size to be able to afford to automate everything so it’s easy to measure. I couldn’t have done this five years ago. The bigger you grow your business, the more resources you have, generally.” For many decorators, scaling up a business, let alone growing it to the size of T Shirt & Sons, is a challenging proposition. Andy believes part of the secret to successful scaling up is specialising in a particular area or process and sticking to what you know. “We’re a good, old-fashioned business- to-business printer. There’s always going to be a market for shops doing their own brand, of course there is. But the really successful people are the ones that don’t do both. A marketer is not a manufacturer, and a manufacturer isn’t a marketer. I don’t have to do all the customer services, I don’t have to host websites or anything. But I am delivering to up to 20,000 customers each day.” And the rapid growth achieved by T Shirt & Sons isn’t for the faint-hearted either. Deciding to buy the two Avalanches in 2014 may have been a calculated risk, but it still required sturdy nerves to get through the first few months. “It was terrifying,” admits Andy. “It was almost seven hundred grand’s worth of kit. And we needed a new dryer as well, so we bought an Adelco. Adelco are the best dryers by a country mile. Mark and Leigh [Smith] have been in the industry a long time and are the only owner-owned manufacturer/distributors in the industry. They’ll actually look at what you need and will then create a solution for you, rather than trying to find a product to fit you. That makes a huge difference. We’ve got six Ecotexes now and three Duals. The Dual is just amazing, you can get a huge volume of digital through a very small area. And Steve, who’s their main engineer, he’s just brilliant, he really knows these machines.” The right people for the job The biggest challenge the company has faced, however, has been recruitment. “We’ve gone from having a small business that we could really understand, to suddenly going places very fast. We’ve had to recruit some really high level people into our business that I would never have thought or dreamed of employing a few years ago. Director of finance, an HR department, even a health and safety officer. Four coders. It costs a lot of money. You realise that, yes, your business is growing and turning over lots of money, so now you have to employ the right people or you’ll fall over. “Our management team is amazing. Our facilities manager ran one of the big grocers’ distribution warehouses for years. We’ve got some really very special people in the mix who understand about scalability and running shifts 24/7.” As for the future, Andy sees only continued growth and expansion. “This segment of the market is growing at a phenomenal rate,” he confirms. “In the last four years, we’ve probably grown six times more than we did in 25 years. We doubled our turnover last year, and expect to increase turnover by 30-40% this year. “We know exactly what our capital expenditure is in the next 12, 18 months, we know what the projections are, the profit for next year… Five years ago, if someone had said, ‘Do you know actually how much money you’re going to make next year?’, I’d have said, ‘No idea’. Well, we do now. We know, everything’s right on budget – there are no surprises.” Additional European facilities are one likely area of growth. Having chosen to set up in Holland thanks to the country’s accessibility, language and tax advantages, Andy is also well aware of emerging markets in Spain, France and Italy. “I’ve got no plan on the table as such. But the fact that I’ve done it once means that I probably will do it again.” www.tshirtandsons.co.uk On a busy day, we might send out 20,000 parcels The Avalanche R-Series machines, seen here at the Venlo facility, will be upgraded this year to the new HD-Series QC is critical with every shirt being quality-checked as it comes off the dryer