Speaker Barry Smith - Watmoughs

Barry gave a talk about his time at Watmoughs and the competitors in Bradford. He said that Bradford was one of the main locations for volume printing because of the good transport links that had been built up through the wool trade.

One of the big customers was Cotton Traders where Watmoughs had all the brochure printing business. Steve Smith & Fran Cotton formed Cotton Traders and Fran was a big fan of rugby as is Barry. They always demanded a quality brochure as they said they only had 8 seconds of the brochure falling out of a Sunday paper for it to be either read or discarded. Within 3 months of Barry being made redundant they took their business away. Watmoughs also printed the Sainsbury monthly magazine.

As a high-volume printing site, the Idle factory never let the presses stop. Each machine was so expensive and the workforce on such high wages that it was necessary to be running 24 hours a day to be profitable. But there was one occasion when they stopped every press except one. This was when Vera Lynn visited as they were printing something for her breast cancer charity. All the staff were keen to see her especially the older members who had been in the war and held her in high regard.

Watmoughs started in 1888 because Mr Watmough couldn't get results from Cavies (guinea pigs) and rabbit exhibitions, so he started his own company to publish the results. The company also used to print the Empire Stores catalogue until 1985 when they lost the contract for supporting those against the merger with Grattan.

Barry then listed some of the other big printers in the Bradford area: -

•    Lund Humphreys who had a good training programme from where Watmoughs poached staff. They closed in 1994, but the name still exists.
•    Fields who were originally supplying the textile industry and grew as a big packaging printing company. They floated on the stock exchange in 1993 but in 1998 were taken over by Chesapeake and the name changed.
•    Sharps who were taken over by Hallmark.
•    Hart and Clough started 1885 and still exist today.
•    Herbert Walkers formed in 1946 on Dockfield Road and still exist.
•    Fine Arts who started 1955 sold creative publishing and then became a publisher.

Barry’s worst memory was when he was having lunch with Geoff Brown in his capacity at Lloyds Bank when he got a message that an explosion had blown the roof off the factory. Despite the damage caused the company managed to keep printing all its orders at other sites while repairs were made.

In the mid-90s. Patrick Walker retired and new CEO was appointed. Unfortunately, this was followed by 3 profit warnings. The company was taken over in 1999 by Invest Corp S.A. and the name changed to Polestar. This was a good deal for shareholders but poor for the staff. All the board directors were fired other than Barry who lasted 2 more years. The sites were sold and the company went bust in 2015 and ended up being wound up in 2020. The pension scheme also went bust and was put into the Pension Protection Scheme.

When Barry started at the company there were 80 printing machines. When he left these had been replaced by 5 modern high volume but very expensive machines. Barry was managing director of the Idle site from 1993 to 1998. Today there are only 3 high volume quality printers in UK.