London has to be one of those iconic cities for business, entrepreneurship and new ventures. It’s a city that is always bustling with locals, welcomes a multitude of tourists and is home to many successful businesses.
If you are planning to offer printing services in London there is likely one burning question on your mind: what can you do to make it a success? That’s why we have prepared a few top tips to make sure your printing business can go from strength to strength.
Understand The Challenges
The prospect of starting up a printing business in London may initially seem like a a simple concept. However, the truth is that it is a business venture which can be surprisingly complex and significantly resource intensive. A few of the major challenges are outlined below:
The Challenge:
Equipment can be expensive, especially if you are going to offer offset printing. In addition you need to budget for a premise which will have room for all of your printing equipment.
Our Tip:
Start small to test the market. Rather than put yourself severely in debt by buying a host of top spec equipment, start by offering limited services and let your business go from strength to strength.
The Challenge
Print shops tend to need to have a prime location if they are to succeed, however city center locations are going to cost an absolute fortune.
Our Tip:
Prime location does not need to mean city center. Think about your target market, it may include students, teachers and businesses. This being the case, research areas of London that are close to such facilities, even if they are considerably out of town. Remember, your location should be based on a large pool or people in your target market, not simply a large pool of people. You should consider SEO services in London, here’s a quote from SEO Kent https://seokent.net/london-seo-services/ :
SEO is the process of optimising webpages for the different ranking factors used by search engines. For instance, backlinks are known to have a huge impact on the ranking of a webpage. Because of this, one SEO technique is to build high quality and relevant backlinks to boost the rankings of a website.
The Challenge
To offer print services that people will come back to, will recommend to other people, and ultimately will be successful in the months and years to come, you need to have a strong knowledge within this specific field.
Granted, being able to use Photoshop is good, but you need a whole lot more than this to be truly successful.
Our Tip:
You have two options here. Firstly, get yourself trained! You may need to attend a course, take an online training program, or buy tutor books and teach yourself, whatever approach works best for you.
The second option is to hire an employee who is knowledgeable within the field. Hiring a professional expert is, of course, going to cost you an arm and a leg. However, you may be able to find a student or young person keen to take on a part-time job, and who also happens to be studying print design!
Setting up and running a successful printing business in London certainly has its challenges, including the cost of equipment, choosing a prime location and having the knowledge to please customers. We hope our tips have helped to point you, and your business, in the right direction for success.