A new beginning.
For over 3 years now, the name togsPrint.com has established itself as one of the UK's highest quality printing, framing and canvas printing company for photographers and artists.
At the helm, Lee has pushed the business through a recession, moved premises twice to keep up with ever increasing office-space requirements for newer and bigger equipment. The result - a superb business structure with friendly and helpful assistance 6 days a week. However, the business has reached a point where it cannot develop further without assistance.
As such, Lee approached his fellow business partner Steve (from ISL Studio) if he'd like to come into the business with him and offer UK photographers and artists a one-stop-shop for photographic services.
It's been a busy month of transition and as of today, 1st July 2010, togsPrint.com will be renamed and re branded to ISL Photographic Services.
In what can only be described as an unprecedented deal within the photographic community, both companies have joined together and from July 1st 2010 will trade as ISL Photographic Services. This spectacular move will result in the printing and framing business immediately becoming second to none nationally with a stronger ground force and larger resource to work on processing orders and will develop and strengthen its portrait, wedding and commercial event photography service.
What it will also do is provide an exceptional increase in the level of service to become unrivalled within the printing arena, with new guaranteed response times and additional services for larger orders. For all photographers and artists, this will be your "one stop shop" where the highest quality and professional service is guaranteed. Call today with your requirements and see how much more we can help you!
Our printing service guarantees:
- We will guarantee to call you before we print your pictures if we see anything on our high resolution monitors that may need editing.
- We will ensure each print order will be handled completely before we process any further orders.
- Once complete, each print order will be quality checked twice before dispatch to ensure 100% satisfaction.
- Your order will be guaranteed to be processed within 48 hours of being placed on our system and will be dispatched no more than 72 hours. If the order requires specialist materials or has back-order mouldings then we will notify you immediately.
- We guarantee to keep you updated when your order is dispatched. This will be via email unless we call you to discuss special courier reqiurements.
Picture Frame Mouldings now online!
Our picture framing workshop has gone from quiet this last month to incredibly busy! We’ve finally got our updated products online now - so customers over the internet can view our range! You can do this by clicking here: http://www.islphotoservices.co.uk/store/index.php/moulding
We are by no means limited to these products, however these are by far our most popular sellers. For customers wishing a gallery look for their picture frames, we highly recommend the box black. Perfect for making your work stand off the wall. The Double Scoop materials are fantastic - add a lot of character to your wall art as well as making it timeless! Both modern, contemporary art and portraits look well in this.
New streamlined service
Hey everyone! Well today is a great day for us - we have finally found a logistics company that can meet our demands and the demands of our customers.
For 12 months now we’ve struggled with a service that hasn’t always been as reliable as we would have liked, red tape and slow systems. Well 2010 will see the launch of FedEx being our primary courier service for UK Domestic services (both standard and express).
The new integrated system will be built into our website and on confirmation of the order the consignment will be generated and an order put in to the courier for collection.
This will save us loads of time in the workshop, meaning we aim to be able to produce 20% more orders per day. Great news for you as you’ll get a quicker service too!
We will still be offering standard mail services but all courier based shipments will now go via FedEx.
Perfecting Picture Framing
Hi everyone,
A long time I know since our last post. We’ve had a bit of a clear out of old bits and pieces - out with the old and in with the new!
It’s been a long time coming but togsPrint.com have now taken EVERY bit of production in-house. Before - we were getting our stretcher frames and picture frame cut and built off-site, then finishing them off in our workshop. However, missed production times, increased orders and reduced staff meant that time wasn’t being utilised efficiently. So…we’ve invested in a whole new suite of picture framing equipment to ensure custom orders as well as bulk-items are turned around now within 2 days (used to be 7 days to shipping). This will have a MASSIVE impact for our customers - meaning you no longer have to make your clients wait! We’ve also taken on a new member of staff who is dedicated to framing - and boy can he make them nice!
We’re taking stock in as we speak from Arquadia and Simons. Our popular ranges will be staying - but we’re getting some newer more modern mouldings in too. We’ll be framing up to 3ft x 4ft for the next 6 weeks til we get our new relationships firmed up with suppliers - we’ll be manufacturing bigger items in no time at all! Should there be any item you’d like to try (a particular range for example) - just give us a call and we’ll get a couple of lengths in for you to try!
Workshop now open!
We’ve been busy at togsPrint.com recently - having moved from our small office in Knottingley to a new 4500sq ft Mill in Morley, West Yorkshire.
At our workshop, as well as our photo studio (details here: http://www.islstudio.co.uk) we have an extensive range of products on our walls including Acrylics, Canvasses, a huge range of picture frames and very shortly, a complete display of frame chevrons / mount board which you can configure for your own prints.
Onsite you’ll be inspired by the product ranges as well as a huge selection of wedding and portraiture products that you can sell on to your own clients.
We’re hoping in the coming months to become an established reseller of professional imaging products and hope to start advertising our business to organisations such as SWPP/BPPA members and other large photographic societies where quality is key.
Sorry for such a small update - there’s been a lot of work done here recently and it’s just starting to really show itself off now.
Cheers
Lee Proctor
The world of blogging….
Apparently a blog (as per Wikipedia) is….
“A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”
Well - for us here at togsPrint.com - it’s another way to reach out to our fabulous customers and let them know exactly what’s going on here in our studio. We tend to spend so much time testing products for our own interest and regularly forget to feedback to people out there who maybe interested in what is up and coming. Maybe you’ll find something you think is pretty cool and you’d like to try yourself?! Who knows….?
I’ll try to update this every week - we tend to get new frames and types of paper in every now and then and will post what we think about them - give advice on what to use (we feel) for what application.
Remember - a print is a reflection of your work and is the only real item that people generally interact with. Make sure it represents the emotional response you desire.
Lee Proctor
The failing pound…
Our printers here in the workshop our all, essentially, made in Japan. And this has a massive impact on how expensive (or cheap!) prints are to reproduce.
Over the last few months, the value of the yen to one pound has fallen drastically. The majority of our inks (Epson & Fuji) are imported and the price of these have slowly been rising. There’s been a 25% increase on the price of a single cartridge - multiply this by 10 and you’re into some serious expense!
We’ve been trying to hold off on increasing our prices so that you, our clients, can still receive the very best prints at great prices.
To achieve this we’ve looked into ways of cutting back - and the only way to continue to keep our prices as they always have been is to stop supplying the products which drain the profits. In this case - our small format prints.
As of now, togsPrint.com will not be supplying small format prints (6″x4″ through to 12″x8″) until the value of the pound against the yen begins to pick back up.
We hope this isn’t going to be a long-term scenario and as the year progresses we aim to buy a new Frontier machine which will bring the cost of these smaller prints down considerably and allow us to start supplying them to you again.
Watch this space…………….!
Lee Proctor