Custom Planet have seen a lot of growth over the years, and here the founders Andrew Dark and John Armstrong will take you through how they started, and their story.
Starting a business is always a big undertaking, but hearing the story of how Custom Planet started might offer some inspiration if you’re thinking of beginning your own venture — or it might just be an interesting journey to get some insight into!
The beginnings
Custom Planet wasn’t always a custom printing business. While at university, the founders Andrew Dark and John Armstrong started printing t-shirts from Andrew’s bedroom. The t-shirts would be printed with funny slogans, and sold on eBay using cheap iron-on transfers. What the founders discovered is that although their own slogans didn’t sell well at all, they received a lot of requests for custom designs.
So, they rose to the occasion and put a ‘Custom T-shirt’ product on eBay. The orders came rolling in, and soon they were getting more work than they ever had. They dropped their own slogans and concentrated on the custom prints.
Choosing custom printing
After a while of selling the t-shirts online, the pair took out an advert in the yellow pages and saw their sales quadruple. They received more and more calls, and began outsourcing different types of printing and embroidery to other companies to keep up with the work. Eventually realising they were paying over the odds for various elements, and seeing some mistakes in orders they received, they decided to bring all the work in-house, and Custom Planet was born.
Expanding equipment
Originally, they had a single head embroidery machine that cost £9,000, using all of their savings and a little finance to make it work. They worked 24-hour days to get out huge orders on their single head machine. This was a huge task, considering one logo could take 45 minutes, and many of their jobs included 250 items.
The screen printing was meanwhile causing lots of problems — it was all outsourced, and the founders consistently felt the quality wasn’t high enough. So, they searched for a screen printing machine that would fit into the garage and took the £13,000 plunge of learning to use the six colour manual machine. This equipment expansion led to them taking on their first employee to help with the screen printing, as well as giving them enough extra confidence that they started advertising the screen printing options more.
But there were still 16-hour days, and the business really needed more equipment. They ordered their first four-head embroidery machine at £24,000, and as it wouldn’t fit into the garage they discovered they needed new premises too!
Their first premises
A month later, they were in their first business premises. They took on another member of staff and became a limited company. Their factory was small, basic and cheap, and they outgrew it within a year due to the business’s fast growth. They moved into their current business property in 2010, and bought a second-hand automatic screen printing carousel the same year. They took on an apprentice and another screen printer, and by 2011 Custom Planet had six members of staff. They had just won North Tyeside’s Young Entrepreneur award and were now turning over £500,000 per year. Taking on a new printing manager and making use of this experience, they looked towards the future.
By 2014, they had doubled their factory space, expanding into the factory next door. They invested in more, higher quality equipment, and grew their team to 12. Then, they launched their promotional product website that allowed them to offer clients a full print solution covering anything from lanyard and pens to t-shirts and hoodies.
Now, at a turnover of 2.5 million and 30 members of staff, the pair have doubled their factory space since 2014, and been awarded the ISO 14001 for environmental performance. They have also invested a further £150,000 into their equipment this year alone. There are big plans for the coming years, and plenty of space to grow more in the future!