Farndon House's diverse range of products key to its success

Chester-based Farndon House's wide-ranging production capabilities and focus on product quality rather than pure price have seen it go from strength to strength â€" even in tough economic times.  The promotional products company is visibly benefiting from a refreshing approach to product diversification with a strong customer base and hard won trade work contracts bolstering its turnover.

“I’m confident in saying that Farndon House offers as comprehensive a range of garment products as you’ll find anywhere else in the North West,” states Mark Ford, the company’s managing director. “The diversity of what we offer sets us apart from our competitors and helps iron out the trading peaks and troughs.”

With screenprint, embroidery, direct to garment and digital print capabilities in house, and the majority of jobs arriving in to Ford’s production team requiring some sort of artworking, the workflow begins with assessing the best route for the production to take.

“We look at each job individually,” he says. “Working out the best way to produce it ultimately benefits the customer as we have such a broad range of techniques available to us.”

The company’s Mimaki CJV30 printer/cutter sits at the heart of its digital print operation and enables it to not only produce the core full colour print and cut garment decoration but is a solution that has taken them into new areas too. Banners, stickers, printed bags and posters are all value adding goods that Ford’s team has added to Farndon House’s product portfolio. “If a retailer comes to us for one requirement, we can offer other merchandise too,” he confirms. “They get to deal with one supplier, making life easier for them and ensuring a consistency of design throughout.”

Ford has grown the business through a combination of strong customer retention, local exhibitions, B2B networking but most importantly, recommendations from his existing clients. “Some of our biggest contracts have come about through word of mouth,” he states, pointing to the power of a positive reputation. “It’s no secret that the way we work with our customers has brought us new business, “he continues. “Providing our customers with a ‘one stop shop’, respecting their trading relationships and regularly looking to introduce them to new products has benefitted both parties in the long run.”

Working with big name clients such as Umbro, Aldi and Sega, the company produces a broad gamut of tools to formulate integrated promotional marketing campaigns. Aldi for example, makes use of PVC banners, posters and t-shirts for its “car park sales” and new store openings. Farndon House works directly with the store group’s Northern office tailoring campaigns to specific stores, delivering a personalised and strongly branded solution.

Taking a different approach, sportswear brand Umbro makes use of Farndon House’s on-demand service, shipping boxes of hundreds of ready made garments at a time, which are then imprinted by the company with specific promotional messages and branding.

Farndon House invested in its latest wide format inkjet printer through Mimaki reseller, Signmaster Systems, and runs it in a well equipped studio alongside direct to garment inkjet technology, additional print and cut kit as well as smaller format desktop solutions for its dye sub work. Using Mimaki SS21 ink on the CJV30 the company not only benefits from the rebate linked recycling scheme run by Mimaki distributor, Hybrid Services Ltd, but achieves the quality of output its become synonymous with.

For more information, please visit www.farndonhouse.com

[photo shows Mark Ford]