A Teesside printing company has acquired one of its clients after diversifying its business during the pandemic.
AlphaGraphics, founded in 1993 as a traditional printing business, has acquired key client Class Fundraising, based in Redcar, which provides personalised mugs and tea towels to local schools. The deal brings 15 new members of staff into the Stockton business.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, AlphaGraphics solely focused on business-to-business clients, providing marketing services as well as printing, display and mailing services, which brought in average annual turnover of £8.5m.
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When the first lockdown arrived in March last year, the business saw most operations stall as its clients’ need for physical printouts and marketing to encourage footfall dropped.
To secure the future of the business, AlphaGraphics launched a new e-commerce business on the Shopify platform, targeting commercial and corporate clients looking for tailored social distancing signs. This new revenue stream generated £1.6m over six months.
While demand for social distancing merchandise has now decreased, the business is now transitioning back to pre-pandemic operations, and expects trading to return to typical levels by 2022.
To support the business during the height of both lockdowns it approached Lloyds Bank.
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It secured a six-figure Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan (CBIL) in October 2020 and received a further six-figure CBIL in June 2021.
Andrew Dalton, managing director of AlphaGraphics, said: “The first lockdown in March last year hit us hard and many of our clients paused their work with us.
“With our traditional B2B offering on hold, we knew we had to diversify and so we launched our e-commerce offering within two weeks of lockdown being announced. Pivoting in this way allowed us to keep operating and enabled us to emerge from the pandemic in good shape and ready to start preparing for our future.
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“The support from Lloyds Bank was invaluable. It meant our overheads were paid and allowed us to quickly pick-up operations again once restrictions allowed. This acquisition represents a significant milestone for our business and will help us to build on our ambitious growth plans over the next few years.”
Carolyn English, relationship director at Lloyds Bank, said: “Recent data from the North East LEP has shown that 97% of business in the North East have been impacted in some way by the pandemic. Firms across the region have had to show exceptional resilience and AlphaGraphics is a prime example of this.
“After the firm’s main source of income came to a halt in March 2020, it acted quickly by tapping into the new demands for social distancing merchandise from the consumer market.
“We look forward to seeing the firm go from strength to strength and will continue to remain by its the side during the next stage of its development.”