Collins and Darwell Printers Ltd

Collins and Darwell Printers Ltd was first established in 1891. Since then, it has always been a local family printing business that strives to offer speedy service at a competitive pricing.

Having been around for over 120 years, Collins and Darwell Printers Ltd has become an important part of the wide format and digital printing scene in Leigh, UK with anyone that wanted something printed stepping into the door, from leaflets to brochures or all other things print. However, in March 2020 their prepress manager left the company leaving a large gap to fill.

Chris Travers, Managing Director at Collins and Darwell Printers Ltd: “When our Prepress Manager left the company, that was a bit of an issue. In the recent years the demand for good prepress staff has always been much higher than the supply. Therefore, we knew that it could take quite some time for us to find a new prepress manager, and that was time that we did not have as the orders would keep coming in.”

Fast implementation and user friendly

Chris heard around with fellow printers in the vicinity to find a solution. One of which mentioned trying to solve the problem with software and directed him to callas pdfToolbox Desktop and the experts of Four Pees.

Andy Banks: Sales UK & Ireland at Four Pees: “We saw that Chris had a very acute problem, which had to be solved as quickly as possible in order to guarantee the continuity of business and not keep customers waiting for their print jobs. When listening to what Chris needed, we quickly saw that pdfToolbox Desktop was the best and most flexible solution that we could help Christ out with. It would be easy to install and with the right checks, profiles and fixups integrated into the solution, he would be able to handle most of the print jobs coming in himself. This would avoid him extra costs in needing to go to freelancers to add bleed, margins or to change colors from RGB to CMYK.”

"With the pdfToolbox Desktop that Andy and his team helped me implement, I can fix the issues quicker myself than that I can write the email to the designer to help me”, reports Chris Travers.

Altogether, the Four Pees team implemented the pdfToolbox Desktop license at Darwell and Collins Printers Ltd and through a careful needs analysis of incoming jobs, created around 25 fixups that were built into the system. “With these fixups already present in the system, I can do pretty much all the prepress fixups myself without having to get in touch with a freelance designer that has to change everything in Indesign or Illustrator. With the pdfToolbox Desktop that Andy and his team helped me implement, I can fix the issues quicker myself than that I can write the email to the designer to help me”, reports Chris Travers.

Strong partnership

This was the start of a partnership between Four Pees and Collins and Darwell Printers Ltd that still goes strong today in which Four Pees is available to help and advise where needed.

“Sometimes you get a job that our setup can’t handle yet, so I discuss this with Andy and he helps me set up the necessary profiles to make it work, growing that ‘library’ as well, which keeps me learning about it. Also if there are errors of something isn’t working properly, I know that Andy and his colleagues are just a phone call away and that they can quickly resolve the problem”, states Chris Travers.

Andy Banks: “I think our main strength is not just in the software, but in our relationship with the customer. We keep a short line of contact with all of our clients so we can quickly react if an issue occurs.”

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