It’s 23 years since Listawood started out supplying the magnetic components for games such as Travel Scrabble and Monopoly. Successful though that was, few back in 1987 could have predicted the company’s meteoric growth.

Having diversified its product offering, award-winning Listawood are now one of the big three promotional merchandise suppliers in the UK, with an annual turnover of more than £10 million and an ever expanding portfolio which ably serves the demands of more than 5,000 distributors here and countless trade customers throughout Europe.

Much of that growth can be attributed to fridge magnets and mousemats, but a significant turning point in the company’s history was a management buyout in 2006. Since then, the company has invested more than £1million in equipment enabling Listawood to stave off competition from the Far East and turn around orders in days, rather than weeks. In-house automation certainly gives them the edge. But investing in people – including native German and French speakers to serve European clientele, and having “job champions” who progress chase on behalf of customers – is all integral to the company’s success.

Listawood have not only survived the recession but have continued to grow their business – always looking for the next big seller. The once cottage industry is now a massive operation, with more than 100 staff employed in 70,000sq ft of industrial units on a former military airbase in Norfolk.

This hive of industry within the sprawling industrial buildings belies the sleepy rural setting, although there are plenty of clues to the site’s past.

The peaceful surroundings are sometimes shattered when fighter planes use the neighbouring airfield for military exercises!

Managing director, Alex Turner explains: “This was an American airbase and the U2 spy plane used to fly in here. It still has one of the longest runways in Northern Europe – if not the longest. It’s one of the few runways in the world that is capable of taking the Shuttle.”

Having cut their teeth on magnetic components for board games, it wasn’t such a big leap into fridge magnets and the world of promotional merchandise.

“All we were doing was printing the top sheet, putting a laminate on top, gluing it to magnetic rubber, then punching it out to shape,” says Alex.

“We got into mousemats about a year before I joined. A local litho printer had been asked to produce mousemats but had failed to get a good lamination between foam and plastic. They knew how to print plastic but didn’t know how to put it together, so they asked us to sort out the problem.”

Having sorted it out, Listawood realised that mousemats were the future.

“We launched them into the trade and within two years, the company grew from an annual turnover of £0.5 million to about £4 million – largely on the back of this product. We were doing 10-15 million mousemats a year!” recalls Alex.

“At the time, we were sub contracting print and just doing assembling and cutting. But we bought a digital offset machine about 10 years ago, which enabled us to print the plastics for the first time.

“We also brought dye sublimation in house about 12-13 years ago, so we could start to offer textile mats.”

The company was then asked to produce WoW mugs under license, which led to further diversification into promotional mugs – now one of Listawood’s biggest sellers.

“And that led to us getting coating facilities in house,” says Alex. In fact, Listawood is the only UK company exclusively offering the patented Duraglaze mug coating, which is dishwasher proof.

“Mugs are a real growth area for us. They’re a very good commercial product.”

Another Listawood innovation is the Aquamat product. Available in various guises – including a mousemat, coaster, business card, CD wallet, or keyring – coloured liquid sits underneath the top layer, allowing it to be moved around.

Wary, however, of putting all their eggs into one basket, Listawood began looking at other products linked to technology.

“We were asked for computer mice to go with the mousemats, so that got us into electronics,” recalls Alex. “Latterly, and more importantly, we launched the flashdrive.”

Lanyards recently joined the portfolio, with smaller orders being produced in-house and larger runs manufactured by a partner in the Far East.

“One of the other areas where we have been growing is in Northern Europe,” says Alex. “We have a sales office in Amsterdam, with business development in Germany and France.

According to Alex, those markets have many similarities with the UK, but mug styles are an issue.

“And we can’t sell fridge magnets to Germany as, for the most part, they have wooden panels over their fridges,” adds Alex.

During Listawood’s lifetime, the promotional merchandise market has grown substantially.

“The strongest year was probably 2008,” says Alex. “Marketing budgets were healthier – the banks were spending; pharmaceuticals were spending. But when the recession hit, promotional merchandise was treated as an area of discretional spend and it came under heavy review, particularly with banks.”

With new products and a varied product range, Listawood was able to mitigate what was happening in the wider industry.

“Talking to trade bodies, I think the UK market (for promotional merchandise) contracted by about 25% during the recession,” says Alex.

He is convinced, however, that there is still plenty of opportunity for promotional merchandise to be used more widely – particularly at a very local level.

But even larger corporations can benefit from recognising the value of branded merchandise as opposed to expensive television advertising, he says.

“You could pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for a TV campaign, but for a mere sliver of that you can do a direct mail campaign with a fridge magnet or a coaster,” Alex suggests. “Theoretically, that fridge magnet or coaster is retained for months, reinforcing your message.”

Promotional merchandise does get overlooked, he adds. “It is not as widely recognised as a good way of getting brand recognition.”

Because Listawood are a trade supplier, Alex says it is hard to get that message across.

“The message needs to be preached to the marketing managers, the brand managers, or the small business owners who are our customers’ customers.”

Listawood’s marketing department devises e-shots that are specifically designed for their customers.

“What we are trying to push in those messages is the value of promotional merchandise,” says Alex.

“We have got one that extols the virtues of the fridge magnet, saying that your target customer will see it X number of times a day. It’s a very compelling argument.

“With the mousemats, we say: don’t think of it so much as a product but as a 200 x 235 chunk of advertising space that’s sitting right there on the desk. If it’s a promotional calendar, it stays there all year round with those messages.”

In these troubled times, diversification is definitely the name of the game, says Alex.

“Whereas 20 years ago, we produced fridge magnets, the market for them is only so big, so our range now includes USB flashdrives, mousemats and more. Our mug business has grown something like 200% in the last few months alone.

“If something crops up that we are continuously being asked for, then we will put that into our product development cycle. An example of that is lanyards. A lot of people have told us they can get lanyards that people are importing from China, but what they can’t get something that can be delivered in three days time.

“We launched that last week as a product. There are other lanyard producers in the UK, but they have not got the market penetration that we have.”

For buyers of promotional merchandise, timing is a key selling point. With buyers leaving it later to order, inevitably, the order is needed by yesterday.

“When we got into ceramics, the average lead time was five to six weeks, but we are offering three to five days,” says Alex. “With computer mousemats, the industry lead time was four weeks. We can turn them around in 24 hours, but three to five days as standard. We can do that because we have invested in digital technology.

“We can nail those fast turnaround, short run orders, so when people leave it to the last minute, that’s perfect for us. That’s exactly what we hope for although obviously, it’s better if you can plan ahead as much as possible.”

While Listawood has a sophisticated customer service team – including those job champions – customers can also buy on line.

“We are just about to relaunch our website with greater functionality,” says Alex. “We have invested in a new management information system and we will be getting our website to link into that. We have a distributor area where customers can log on and see their quotation history. They can pull up previous jobs. It saves time and access is 24/7. Given that lots of our customers are small businesses, they are not necessarily working 9 to 5. They check the progress of their jobs even at 4 o’clock in the morning.”

The company are proud of their customer service team. “Customers can build a relationship with the team, which is important to them and it also means we can understand what the customers need. There’s a lot of relationship management going on,” says Alex.

“Our job champions make sure the customers’ needs are advocated internally. They are fighting the customers corner to make sure they get what they want.”

Since the management buyout, Listawood have made excellent progress.

“We have automated the production of fridge magnets, so we are actually competing with China on price,” says Alex.

“We Invested over £0.5 million last year on the automation project and a quarter of a million pounds on the management information system.

“The business is growing now, so we are doing better than standing still. Given the trading environment, that’s not bad. And we are investing heavily right now in new products.”

Alex is pleased that Listawood have managed to double their fridge magnet sales in a depressed economy.

“A million magnet orders were going to China,” he says. “Now, we can turn around a million magnets in two days.”

The new machinery has enabled Listawood to pick up new jobs. An example is an order from a Dutch client to help launch Google Earth.

“We produced 5,000 mousemats for Google and every single mousemat was a different shot of someone’s house, and every single mousemat had the name and address of that property on the product. You can’t get that in China!” Alex tells me.

Listawood are keen to support customers as much as possible. Their Business in a Box initiative is a classic example. It includes unbranded product catalogues, sales presentation kits for all product ranges, access to an unbranded website, email shots and full product training and support.

It gives distributors access to more than 300 promotional products without having to spend hours searching on the internet for a reliable supplier.

“Our business model is designed to make it as easy as possible for distributors to make very healthy profits by selling our products to the end user."

For more information visit www.listawood.co.uk

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