Keith Irons, our Account Manager, shares his thoughts on lockdown life in the print world and how he, and the AlphaGraphics team, adapted to the worldwide pandemic:
Whilst I’ve been sat in the corner of a suburban dining room generating estimates and technical specifications, a quiet revolution has been taking place where I used to work. Where I still work. Kind of.
When lockdown hit, our Large Format department were mulling over the purchase of a new press, so you can imagine what an easy decision it was to put it on hold. “We won’t be needing that for a while.” The world faced an uncertain future and clients were unlikely to be purchasing an excess of print over the coming weeks; or was it months? Nobody could be certain, but the UK appeared to be battening-down the hatches.
After a week of online briefings, brain-storming sessions and mad ideas, our Marketing team had put together an outline for a website: www.alphagraphics.co.uk.
We had it up and running within the second week. A simple, easy-to-use online store offering a range of floor graphics, posters, stickers, notices and display items to help businesses maintain social distancing within their outlets, warehouses, stores, offices and factories. It was an impressive feat, especially when you consider it was done almost entirely by AlphaGraphics personnel (one of the advantages of having IT, Development and Design resources in-house).
Initially it was a range of two dozen products that could produced by the small team running our large format machines on a single shift basis. In the first few days, there was a curious mix of excitement, expectation and optimism. Perhaps it could drum-up a little bit of extra work to keep the team occupied? Maybe it would enable us to generate some new clients for when business started-up again?
Being the primary estimator for Large Format, I’d spent much of my time generating the costs for the products on the website plus looking at further products that could be added. Working from home I was somewhat detached from what was happening on the shop floor, but I was acutely aware that social distancing materials, whether for the website or from bespoke enquiries, were dominating my day-to-day work as our clients and our own team came up with more and more solutions to the issue.
One by one, our clients collated their needs and developed their campaigns for re-opening. 
Day by day the orders to the website grew and more staff from other departments in the business were being drawn into the large format department to assist with the rapidly growing demand. By now the website had nearly 100 products that covered schools and colleges, healthcare institutions, retail and manufacturing.
Six weeks after the site was launched, the government announced that more companies should consider getting their employees back to work and we were engulfed by what I can only describe as a ‘perfect storm.’ Despite the Large Format production team having grown from two people working a single shift, to a dozen or more working three shifts, we were swamped.
So we did something extraordinary. We invested. Having sensibly cancelled the purchase of one printer as we entered lockdown, we purchased not one, but two. Having filled the capacity of our Kongsberg flatbed cutter – we invested in another. We had thousands of floor graphics being produced each week and they needed to be printed AND cut.
As more of our clients return to work, so we are beginning to see a rise in the projects that are NOT Covid-related. The run of the mill work. Installations, interior graphics, displays and signs. The work that used to keep us occupied for eight hours a day. I know someone at the office is now considering how we can work four shifts in a day – and I’m quietly confident they’ll manage it, somehow!
I write this not to big up a business that has made it through difficult times, but as a thank you to the management of a business that has; throughout this crisis, remained calm and protected it’s staff. They implemented policies regarding hand-washing and social distancing very early. They arranged for homeworking (and all related IT considerations) to be implemented as soon as there was a suggestion of there being a lockdown and they have been decisive regarding their approach to staffing, marketing and investment. Moreover – they decided to; and succeeded in, reinventing an already successful business when the popular alternative was to furlough and ride it out.
I wait impatiently for the government’s Chief Medical Advisor to tell me when a pat on the back will be acceptable. After all – I have colleagues who are revolutionaries!
