Arcadia has made the decision to entrust European production of its ticketing to Northampton-based Gresham. It’s a logical move, given that Gresham has supplied certain of Arcadia’s brands for several years. Steve Ablett, Gresham’s Sales Director, recounts the history: “We’d worked together through some pretty far-reaching changes. We were supplying Miss Selfridge and Wallis for Sears when Philip Green took over. At that time, Sears were paying for ticketing, and Philip Green made the decision to move to billing direct to suppliers. We had to implement a completely new structure within six weeks.”

When Arcadia took over Miss Selfridge and Wallis, Gresham continued to supply ticketing services, later adding Burton and Topman to the list.

In the latest move, Gresham was invited to tender, along with seven other suppliers, for Arcadia’s business. On the basis of a proven service history and overall cost issues, Gresham were awarded the contract to add Dorothy Perkins, TopShop and Evans to complete the Arcadia line-up.

Unexpected challenges were in store, as Ablett recalls: “A significant number of new ticket designs had to be introduced for our established Arcadia customers at the same time as we were setting up over 500 ticket designs for the new brands. Some of this had to be created from scratch, as artwork was not made available from a previous supplier.

“Fortunately we have a pre-press and production team who are prepared to work around the clock to ensure that we meet our clients’ expectations. In respect of the Dorothy Perkins tickets, this meant converting existing artwork, into a format that could be printed on our Digital Press.”

“It would have been impossible to meet the customers implementation schedules, if we had been trying to use conventional printing methods"

Fortunately, Gresham’s digital print facility is now fully operational using purpose-built software designed in-house by Gresham’s own IT resource. The system makes it possible to print new designs without the need to create plates and hold base stock for every ticket type. To ensure capacity for the additional workload, Gresham has recently invested in a further digital press.

“The industry today is all about speed of response, flexibility and overall cost.” Says Ablett, “Without our digital capability we – and Arcadia - could easily have been caught on the hop by the sheer scale and complexity of the task in hand.”