ANNIVERSARIES
The Lamson Paragon Group celebrates 30 years in operation Company grows from its humble beginnings to become a tradeonly printing industry leader
T
he Lamson Paragon Group is celebrating turning 30 this year, having been inaugurated on the 1 August 1990. The business comes from humble beginnings, and has grown to become a trade-only industry leader in business form printing. The business name of Lamson Paragon itself has been part of the Australian business landscape since 1897. It was originally established to manufacture sales docket books that deployed the then new technology of carbon paper. Invented by a Canadian, Samuel Moore, of Moore Business Forms, the technology was licensed to the English company Lamson Paragon to promote the product in Europe and the British Commonwealth. Factories were progressively opened in France, Italy, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as two in Great Britain. Its group managing director Arthur Frost joined the original company in
Arthur Frost (r) acknowledged for his illustrious print career with the 2016 National Print Awards Industry Legend Award
1966 and was with the business for 16 years. The Lamson Paragon Group of Companies CEO and Arthur’s son, Rodney Frost, said his father put many years of dedication and work behind the business to grow it to what it is today. “Dad was homeless as a young man and first got an opportunity to sell pads and pencils. Success in that opportunity progressed to him selling print, which was his first foray into the industry,” he said. “He moved his way up the ranks in print at the original Lamson Paragon and then joined EFTECH as managing director, bringing the original EFTPOS network to Australia. The major shareholders of that business decided that EFTPOS would never work in Australia during the ‘87 stock market crash, so dad was forced to sell that business and go back to the drawing board. “The sales team of the then Moore Paragon company wanted to start their own print broking companies but they had no printers that they considered trustworthy to buy off. Dad then resurrected the Lamson Paragon brand to service printers, print brokers, mailing houses, and copy shops.” The reborn Lamson Paragon business was registered in 1983 and started trading on 1 August 1990. Starting with one team member, one press and one collator, it gradually created a niche in the marketplace as a trade-only supplier. “When I was a kid, I didn’t see too much of dad as he was busy with the business. My mum was holding down three jobs and trying to raise my brother,
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Matthew, and myself. I grew up seeing the work that dad put in within the business,” Rodney said. “Back when the business started, we only had a processor which turned big rolls of paper into continuous paper. That was the first machine we had; we didn’t even have a printing press. We had to build up enough money to get a press, and our first printing press was a two-colour Ryobi pack-to-pack press. “We also used to share a factory in our old Sefton facility as we couldn’t afford a full factory. We took around a third of this factory and shared it with Precision Printers, who are still less than a kilometre away from us today.” Rodney officially joined the business in 1997 after following his dad around in the early ‘90s, learning the ropes on a broom and making boxes during the holidays. “As a child, it was all I knew and loved what the business was doing. I knew from the start that this was what I was meant to be doing,” he said. “My brother was also with the business – he left about nine years ago – and with dad’s semi-retirement, I became CEO.”
Building the business
As the business grew, it added on three other business entities through the years – Paper Rolls Australia, Cheque-Mates, and Integrated Office Solutions. The growth of the combined group was fuelled by the needs of its partners, typified by the birth of Cheque-Mates – a trade-only mailing and communication business. Within a few years, some customers were requesting a need for a reliable trustworthy supplier of thermal paper rolls, which in turn led to the acquisition of Paper Rolls Australia. The business then expanded its footprint to the Philippines via Integrated Office Solutions, giving its partners the chance to setup teams in Manila. “Over the years, we’ve built the business to diversify across non-core products primarily with our four main entities,” Rodney said. “Lamson Paragon is focused on continuous forms, NCR books and pads, and security print applications. Paper Rolls Australia provides conventional and specialised paper roll products in Australia; Cheque-Mates now focuses on trade-only direct mail, integrated digital print, wide format, as well as physical and non-physical message delivery. As for Integrated Office Solutions, it helps SMEs optimise their own businesses.” In 2019, the company brought the trade business of the Gippsland Trade Printers
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