Taking steps to future-proof your business

Mark Stephenson is the product manager for digital printing and press systems at Fujifilm Europe. He is also the key spokesperson for the company’s digital offering and related workflows.

Mark began his 48-year career in the print industry at the age of 16, working as a letterpress compositor. Following a few ‘wilderness years’ of employment outside of print, Mark returned to the industry in 1989, supplying Apple Macintosh to designers, repro houses and printers.

In the mid-1990s, he became a Fujifilm customer, working as marketing manager for a chain of professional photographic labs. He has been working at Fujifilm Graphic Systems in a variety of roles since 1999.

David has been a director of Compass Business Finance since April 2019, when he took an equity stake in the business to work alongside brothers Mark and Jamie Nelson, who founded Compass in 2005.

In the past five years, David has contributed to the significant growth and market presence that the business currently enjoys, and is also a member of the FESPA UK board.

Prior to joining Compass, David spent the majority of his career at Close Brothers Asset Finance in a number of senior roles, ending his time there as assistant managing director of the company’s Print and Packaging finance team.

Over the past 32 years, David has been focused on new business origination, sales leadership and stakeholder management across the print, packaging & engineering sectors. He’s gained a strong reputation for funding and supporting a significant number of M&A deals within the graphic arts industry.

In addition to leading the print business, he established Close Brothers GmbH in Germany and helped design and create an intercompany innovation platform.

Luke entered the industry in 2004 with Visual Impact at Oxford Circus. The nature of print management, working with clients like Capita, Hamleys and BBC Worldwide, and the ad hoc requirements of the surrounding West End design, marketing and advertising agencies, soon gave Luke true appreciation, and a diverse understanding of the many tranches of the industry.

From here, Luke was hooked, and led to him working with the founders of Cubiquity, at Perivan, and at CDL.

When Luke ‘left’ the print industry, he had seen multiple businesses fail, friends and colleagues made redundant and the winners of the industry becoming few and far between. This helped to fuel his latest passion, working as a print insurance specialist at Howden.

Colin Sinclair McDermott, aka The Online Print Coach, is a fully certified business coach with the World Association of Business Coaches and one of the very few with a focus specifically on the printing industry. He is also the creator of the industry online training platform and community ‘Print Mastermind’.

Following in his stepfather’s footsteps, Colin joined the industry in the late 90’s and went on to run a print management company and online print company before working with one of the largest corporate print firms in the world.

More recently, Colin has been privately coaching print business owners in all aspects of running a printing company and developing an online blueprint for print companies to follow that will allow them to grow and future-proof their business.