Personalised book tech transforms print firm
Wakefield-based Charlesworth Press has seen its fortunes transformed, from a business entering into a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) to a firm with £6m turnover in profit – thanks to diversifying into the children’s personalised book market for the UK’s leading publishers including Wonderbly, Mrs Wordsmith and Hooray Heroes.
Due to the huge seasonal demand for personalised books, the businesses has seen up to 36,000 books per day rolling off the presses. Last week it produced 20,000 one-off books per day thanks to Black Friday.
Over the past 12 months Charlesworth has invested £3m in state-of-the art printing and binding equipment that has the capability to produce 1,800 individual or short-run books per hour.
Mark Gray, managing director at the company, said: “We used to publish a lot of long run publications but have changed markets to stay in business, mixing traditional bookmaking with personalisation and print on demand.
“Winning contracts like Wonderbly, Mrs Wordsmith and Hooray Heroes, means we can continually invest in our personalisation offering, which has been pivotal in shaping the future of the business. In the last five years, we have seen year-on-year growth in this area and the exciting things is that customers from all over the world are seeking us out to carry out personalised printing and to work in partnership on product development and fulfilment.”
Looking ahead, the Wakefield firm plans to expand its services into the US market and harness the opportunities that its publisher partnerships have brought in order to become a global expert in book printing and binding within the personalisation and print on demand market, including giving access to their personalisation services to high value personable product manufacturers.
