Banners For All flies the Mimaki flag

Farnham, Buckinghamshire-based Banners For All has become an acknowledged expert in the field of soft signage during its 14 years in operation.  Run by father and son team, Ralph and Ashley Ballhatchet, the business prides itself in its family oriented values but has worked hard to diversify, with some innovative and unusual business development strategies.

Established in 1999, the business took advantage of new technologies to print direct to polyester cloth with water based sublimation inks to produce colourful flags and banners. Eliminating the traditional screen process of cloth printing enabled them to remove setup costs and increase the colour range to full photographic, whilst dramatically reducing the price to their customers.  By continually embracing ever developing technologies, Banners For All quickly moved from simple flags and banners for birthdays and anniversaries into the wider commercial and retail markets, with a number of high profile names on their client roster.

The right equipment has always been key to the company's continued success and growth, and Ashley Ballhatchet is keen to extol the virtues of the Mimaki kit that they have run for many years, commenting, “One of the first machines my father ever purchased was a Mimaki TX1600S textile printer, later upgrading to the TX2, which was an incredibly reliable machine. As customer demands became more challenging, we invested in a Mimaki JV33 coupled with a CG-FX Cutter in 2008 to undertake vinyl banner, exhibition graphics and decal production, which previously we had to outsource. The sheer quality of Mimaki’s production output has certainly helped us to keep ahead of the competition and enabled us to expand our offering to customers.”

With expertise developed over many years in the soft signage industry, the company has become something of a specialist in producing bespoke flags for football clubs and supporters across the country, even setting up its own website (www.footballflags.co.uk) providing customers with a ‘one-stop shop’ from which to design their flags from custom templates and order the printed article, all on line.  Premiership and League clubs regularly use their services to produce bespoke promotional flags and banners for their stadiums, as do a host of supporters clubs across the land.

Banners For All's Mimaki kit was further upgraded with the addition of a high speed TX400 volume production textile printer in early 2013 and more latterly with a new UJF-6042 flatbed LED UV printer. Ashley explains, “The needs of our clients have continually changed and evolved, and we have had to look at ways of meeting those demands. The addition of smaller scale flatbed UV printing to our portfolio enables us to produce all manner of PoS items, including an exciting range of personalised faceplates for tablet PCs, used for display and promotion purposes.”

Promising quick turnarounds and working all their machines hard, the importance of excellent service back-up was one of the reasons the business continues to invest in Mimaki kit.  Ashley continues, “Whenever we’ve needed technical support, the backup service from both our supplier Granthams and Mimaki’s UK distributor Hybrid Services has been excellent and provided much needed continuity of operation.”

For more information, please visit www.bannersforall.co.uk and www.footballflags.co.uk

[Photo caption: Banners For All’s Ashley Ballhatchet (R) and Stephen Wheeler (L)]