INDUSTRY
S T R AT E G Y I N T E R V I E W
About turn: repositioning a brand to cope with COVID What do you do when your entire business model is threatened by the impact of the pandemic? One CEO shares what it takes to turn things around
T
he pandemic shock made many
go to the office, it was
dealers reconsider their ways of
a very thin time for
functioning and doing business. As
everyone concerned.
restrictions relaxed, and the world
We came out of that in 2022, but it soon
opened up, many looked forward to
became very obvious that we needed to become much
returning to business as usual. Steve Weedon, CEO of Print-Rite Europe, was hopeful that 2022 would bring with
more agile.” Although, as people trickled back to the workplace,
it a return to normality - however, he was disappointed.
Print-Rite was seeing an uptick in business from the
“What’s transpired is that there’s no such thing as going
drought of 2020, it wasn’t back to where it once was. Steve
back to normal, because that normal has gone.”
had a desire to future-proof the business from sudden
While many businesses are coping with the new
shocks like this in the future – and he knew this would be
hybrid ways of working - with people at home some
a challenge. “We ended up changing our whole business
or all of the time, and offices less well-populated - for
model. We’ve come from a direct distribution model which
most, this is just a case of figuring out logistics. For a
we ran for many years with our own warehouses, and our
company like Steve’s, reliant on selling consumables to
own staff, right around Europe.
offices, the impact of this transition has been far greater.
“We closed all that down, and spun it around. We now
“Traditionally, our business has been manufacturing and
have an authorised distributor model, where we authorise
supplying consumables for office-based printing.
distributors in regional territories, regional countries -
“You can imagine, during COVID when people didn’t
[10] MARCH 2023
www.dealersupport.co.uk
sometimes more than one in one country, depending