Ross Read/ Read Labels & Packaging Profile
The Read Labels & Packaging story is one of those ‘overnight successes’ that took around 20 years to realise. We began in 1998 as a small industrial graphics business in North Carlton, building the business steadily over ten years. Then, the global financial crisis began to hit and three of our top four manufacturing customers shut up shop in Australia and moved to China. We knew we had to diversify fast.
We pondered our navel for a little while, wondering what the hell to do. Then it hit us – branding. Designing domed resin labels for machinery was primarily a question of branding anyway. We gave embroidery branding a red-hot crack for about 12 months until we realised it wasn't for us. Finally, we decided to invest in an emerging industry at the ground level – digital label and packaging printing.
So, in 2008, Read proudly became the first Australian label and packaging company to go digital-only. The last 11 years have been an enormous learning curve, but we've been lucky that – as the first business of its kind in the country, we were able to create the market we wanted to serve. Our maxim isn’t to slavishly follow industry trends – instead, we like to jump in feet first and set the standard in innovative new markets.
Read Labels & Packaging is focused on fulfilling a need that's always been around but never serviced effectively. We look after the small to medium-sized producers who are just starting their product journey and want to use their flexibility to take on the big players in their field at their own game.
We understand this sector because we are them. We have small business issues, too – we’ve jumped through the same hoops as most of our customers. We know it’s hard yakka. And we’ve been around a while now and come through to the other side, so we’re in a position to offer some sage advice to new companies on how to navigate the choppy waters of setting up and growing a business.
The great thing about digital presses is that they really open up the market for pioneering new brands because suddenly you no longer need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on large print runs to look as professional as the big guys.
Now you can do shorter packaging runs with multiple SKUs and variants for less – so you can be more agile than established brands and more responsive to your customers’ demands. You can now trial new product lines relatively affordably. That means you can jump onboard new buying trends with more flexibility than the big players who are happy to keep doing what they do, spending the big bucks on colossal packaging runs with little variation.
Over the years we've invested a lot in new technologies. We began with a HP Indigo series one, and we've now upgraded to the state-of-the-art series 4. We've been through every iteration of this technology, and we've got the scars to prove it! Our series 4 is purpose-designed for flexible packaging with a wider 750-millimetre press that means we can do even more for less.
In the end, building customer relationships over their entire business journey is the genuinely rewarding part of what we do. We've had early adopters who've been with us from the start of our digital transformation, and we're proud to have helped give them a step up along the way.
Ultimately, we're here to help our customers. We've got their back. I'm always interested in having a face-to-face chat about how things are going with them. I'm old fashioned that way. I like to ask a whole bunch of questions about how they got to this point in their business and where they want to go next. And if they're at that point where they need to smarten up their image to get to the next stage, well…we can help with that.