Dear Visitor

My name is Mark Tomlinson and I thank you for taking the time to log on to my new website                           ../

Over the last ten years in the Gift Industry I have had experience of running both small and large companies. Whilst both positions each had their own challenges, one priority in my mind was always trying to offer a quick and efficient service to my valued, distributor customers.

With all the complexities involved in successfully supplying Promotional Gifts to the trade, monitoring an order from quote to delivery is a vital part of any supplier’s work.

To meet increasingly demanding lead times it is imperative that they are no delays in the Process Life Cycle of a Job, as all delays cost both money and more importantly, maybe even Your Reputation.

Whilst analysing the Life Cycle of a Job through my business, and any possible delays, I was constantly reminded by my findings that the Art Room was nearly always The Problem Area.

Nearly everyone in the business said that "there was never a problem in the Art Room, jobs always out within 24 hours", yet I found that the average time a job spent in the Art Room was closer to three days! It is not necessarily your staff’s fault as fluctuation in order levels sometimes makes delays unavoidable through unmanageable workloads for your artists.

However fluctuation of order levels is not the distributor customer’s problem and so I set about achieving a maximum 24 hour turnaround on all proofs in the Art Room. We achieved it by outsourcing some of our artwork proofs in a simple and cost effective way. Our artist’s still controlled and retained responsibility for the artwork being outsourced but the outsourcing saved them lots of time and enabled them to accomplish every proof within 24 hours. This in turn enabled us to offer shorter lead times and achieve those demanding deadlines.

I hear you saying "we do proofs within the day anyway", Do You? Check it and see - I would be very surprised if you do achieve that every day! The quicker a job is out of the Art Room then the more time you have to print it and despatch it - simple.

On this website I would like to share with you the benefits of outsourcing a task, or even part of a task that is a very, very important element of what we do. Another advantage of ../ is that it is based and controlled in the UK personally by myself, which will be beneficial for communications and with my industry experience this will hopefully give you the peace of mind that you require.

Thanking you, looking forward to hearing from you soon and Good Luck

Best Regards
Mark Tomlinson