High Street Print Shops in the UK
How times have changed. Remember when there was a need for letter headed notepaper and some business cards in order to promote a small business. This was the height of sophistication – and the pride when collecting the aforementioned items was enormous. Before even getting to the point of ordering the stationery, there was the time taken to find a suitable printer, the phone calls needed to ask for a quotation; time waiting for them to either phone back with the quote or even worse – waiting for the information to arrive in the post – the decisions about where to put the company name and address and was it required in a bold typeface? The decision making process went on for days, but the excitement felt in sorting it out grew – until by the time arrived to collect the precious items it consumed nearly every waking thought.
There was always one sheet of headed paper and one business card attached to the outside of the brown wrapped parcels. These were passed across the counter for scrutiny and woe-betide any customer who didn’t effusively thank the printer and the staff for their outstanding efforts even though the account presented to the customer was always higher than the quotation. Imagine the praise which would be necessary to thank the printer when the larger orders of catalogue printing were delivered.
During more recent times there have been print shops popping up across the country; several can be seen on most High Streets. The diversity of items which can now be printed is enormous – however the length of time required for the work has reduced significantly. Not only can items including mugs and cds have photos printed on them it is also very easy to print photos and poems on items of clothing such as T-shirts and Hoodies. Event organisers arrange for details to be printed on a myriad of different surfaces in order to publicise the big day or weekend.
High Street printers are swamped with many different projects and various new machines have been designed in order to manage both the quantity and quality required to sustain a growing business. Gone are the days when it was a major decision to order a ream of letter headed paper and 100 business cards and it took ten days before collection. These printers have needed to diversify from their core business otherwise they wouldn’t exist. There are still the mundane, small bread-and-butter jobs for them, and these will probably continue for some years. Many small businesses are themselves, doing simple printing work from their own computer in order to save money; however the larger work including catalogue printing will still need to be left to the experts.