Bringing Aycliffe Business Park Together | 5
Richard Mortimer
DOING BUSINESS
ON YOUR TERMS
AGENCY CELEBRATES
£400K HAT-TRICK OF WINS
A Newton Aycliffe design and print
agency is celebrating after winning
a hat-trick of football contracts
worth £400,000.
HPM Group, based on Aycliffe Business
Park, has won a renewed deal to print the
matchday programmes for Premier League
clubs Sunderland and Liverpool.
The firm, which employs 50 people, is
also designing and printing the matchday
publication for Championship club
Middlesbrough.
Managing director Richard Mortimer says
HPM continue to build on its foundations
and history of printing while also
overseeing major developments in the
digital and online divisions of the company.
He said: “It’s fantastic news that we’ve
renewed our contracts with Sunderland
and Middlesbrough, two football clubs
we’ve had a long association with.
“Football is an important part of life in this
area and football programmes are still a
vital part of the matchday experience for
supporters going to games, which is why
we’re passionate about design as well as
print.
”
HPM Group has invested heavily in the last
year. The company splashed out £500,000
on a new Perfect Binding machine last
summer and has also recently spent
£50,000 on new iMacs, servers and stateof-the-art digital printers.
The media group has also noted an
increase in business year-on-year with a
notable amount of work coming from the
local area.
HPM Group has built up a strong client list
which includes regional and national names
including the Royal College of General
Practitioners, Durham and Huddersfield
universities, PWS and the NHS.
But Mr Mortimer added: “We have noticed
an increase in business from a diverse
range of companies and organisations
based on Aycliffe Business Park (ABP).
“There has been a lot of effort to bring the
business community together on the park
with the monthly networking meetings
organised by the ABP steering group, and
Aycliffe Today Business has greatly helped
share news and information.
“There are definitely signs that a number
of businesses are working together and
collaborating on projects and we are
pleased to be an active business on the
park.
”
HPM Group relocated to the area in 2000
and has constantly invested in its people
and equipment and a particular area of
interest is the company’s commitment to
apprenticeship schemes with the business
having a number of apprentices on board
who are developing a range of skills in
printing services.
The firm, which has an annual turnover of
£5million, has also brought Sally Pearson
on board in a senior management role to
work with smaller businesses wishing to
develop their marketing strategy and brand
identity.
HPM Group’s latest investment in
software and hardware was made to meet
demand for digital work on websites and
apps, creative work and high-end printing
services.
The company works with brands and
organisations on developing marketing
strategies, PR, social media and digital
solutions such as websites, apps and
e-marketing, exhibition stands and full
print services.
With Hewitts Solicitors
employment expert Paul
Hargreaves….
What to do when your relationship with
your customer starts to fail?
Just as in any marriage, when you embark
upon a new business relationship, it can
often seem unduly pessimistic to start
thinking about the issues and stresses that
might beset your working relationship in
the future.
Yet few businesses will have been lucky
enough to have never experienced a
situation where an agreement with a
customer or client breaks down due
to misunderstandings over how the
relationship should be conducted.
A written terms and conditions of
business, and one that is tailored to your
business situation and the services you
offer, offers the only real protection from a
variety of costly and damaging situations.
If you just have a standard generic
document downloaded from the internet,
then it is better than having nothing
in place at all, but would need to be
extremely comprehensive to cover every
eventuality which is unlikely to be the
case. If you do not have a written business
terms and conditions then you would need
to rely on your pre contract discussions
being comprehensively documented
and in agreement with the customer’s
recollection of events and conversations.
However, in reality this is where the main
difficulties occur because if two people
are asked to recount what they remember
from a conversation between them, those
accounts will differ in many respects.
The way around this is to have bespoke
terms and conditions of business. Whilst
even these will not cover every single
possible eventuality that might arise, they
are likely to deal comprehensively with
the most common situations that occur
on a day to day basis such that a quick
reference to the terms and conditions will
resolve any dispute.
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