Post-press

How many times have you felt that your job is not enough of a challenge, dreamed of throwing down your ratchet or pen and storming out the door to set up on your own and make your millions? And how often have you picked up that pen or ratchet again, got on with what you were doing and forgotten about that dream?

Meet Graham Harris, managing director and founder of finishing equipment manufacturer Tech-ni-fold. Harris was a long-time print finisher who decided he wasn’t happy with what he was doing, so he decided not to pick his ratchet back up and headed out into the big, bad world all alone.

His company now sells a machine that is known across the globe, and with more than 250 other products, and more on the way, it has achieved a turnover of £2m.

Despite his, some would say, overwhelming success, Harris remains very much down to earth; there is almost an innocence to the way he runs his business. He prefers overseas distributors to deal solely with his products, rather than selling them alongside other finishing equipment – he wants them to care about his “baby” as much as he does.

Harris started his career at Senator Print Finishing at the age of 16, and spent 16 years there before moving to Streamline Press, where the Tech-ni-fold dream began to unfold.

“I became manager there,” he explains. “But there wasn’t any challenge in it for me. I wanted something to push me and decided that I would like to set up on my own. I just didn’t know what to do.”

Harris decided to tackle one of the challenges he had constantly come up against: cracking. He says: “The effort that went into creasing covers was ridiculous. I thought if somebody could devise an idea to make it easier, they could be a millionaire. I gave myself six months to come up with something.”

The story of the first Tri-creaser has been told many times, and is best left to Harris. It led to him designing and patenting a product that uses metal and rubber to crease book covers of all thickness without cracking.

Proud father
He developed the idea, had it made and then became a salesman, travelling around sceptical print finishers proving that the Tri-creaser could do what he said it could. Perhaps because it is his own product, Harris is a very emotional salesman. He says: “When I see people gathering around the machine to see it working, I always feel very proud. But you have to hide it, you have to stay professional.”

And his pride is understandable. In 1999, his company sold 200 Tri-creasers; in 2007 it was up to 5,000 a year.

Nowadays, Harris is taking his product around the world. Paul Barrett has been brought in as national sales technician for the UK market, leaving Harris to dedicate his time to finding new distributors elsewhere. By leaving the UK in Barrett’s capable hands, Harris is allowing others to achieve similar success to the kind he has enjoyed through Tech-ni-fold. One example of this is Tech-ni-fold USA.

He was approached by someone in a similar situation to the one he found himself in before starting up Tech-ni-fold: Andre Palko, a finisher in New Jersey wanting to distribute the Tri-creaser in America. Palko now runs a very successful arm of the company, and is enjoying success equal to that of its creator.

And the distributor can be safe in the knowledge that the man that supplies his livelihood is loyal to his followers, to the point of turning down a big pay-day. Harris has been approached on more than one occasion by finishing manufacturers looking to buy up his business. “If I sold the business, it would probably kill off the distributors we have, and I don’t think I could do that to them, so I have always turned down any approach.”

It sounds like a manager giving his best for the company speech, but hearing him talk about something that he clearly feels passionate about, you get the feeling he really cares about the people he works closely with.

So what next on the agenda for Harris and Tech-ni-fold? The company is looking at China as a potential growth market, although he perceives it as “difficult”. In addition, Tech-ni-fold is always looking for other products that it could introduce to the market.

In typical fashion, though, Harris says he is not looking to compete with products that are already out there, but looking for solutions to other problems, so watch this space. And he remains as thoughtful as ever about the future. “Opportunities fly at us all the time. You have to grab what you can, but some you have to let go of. But if we do something, we make sure we do it right.”

Whatever happens in the future, Harris can say that he lived the entrepreneur’s dream. He decided to stop what he was doing when he wasn’t enjoying it, and he has been rewarded for heading out there by himself. We could probably learn a thing or two from him.