Hartwood Digital has consistently demonstrated a wholehearted commitment to go above and beyond in order to achieve success and make a significant impact for its customers as well as its staff, which explains why the print operation celebrated its 30th birthday and is still going strong.
Situated in Midrand, Gauteng, Hartwood Digital was founded in 1994 by Mike Wood and Greg Hart, followed a few years later by Tony Muir. Greg later exited the company, leaving Mike and Tony to continue to grow the business into the reputable supplier of digitally printed products that it is today.
Mike emigrated to the United Kingdom approximately 6-7 years ago after selling his shares to Tony, who in turn invited Donavene and Graeme Hodge to join him, with a view of them taking over the company.
‘It’s really a family business and we like to call ourselves “the big little printer” because we try to add all of our family values and look after our guys. We really are just a small printing family,’ explained Graeme Hodge, Director & Owner at Hartwood Digital. ‘Tony officially retired earlier this year, and we’ve been directly involved with the company for a while now, with Donavene and I handling the day-to-day running of the operation, as well as now having purchased the company from him.’
Mike was originally a sales representative at Xerox, so when he decided to start Hartwood, it was a no-brainer for him to bring Xerox printing equipment into the business. ‘Hartwood has always had Xerox equipment in different forms, shapes and sizes. It’s been a partnership from the start, actually,’ added Elton Abdinor, Managing Director of XBC Group.
XBC was founded in 1998 as an authorised Xerox Partner, with Elton, initiating what has grown to become a fruitful relationship with Hartwood. Elton reminisced, ’Twenty-five years ago, I was a young salesman who walked into Hartwood and met Mike, which led to me finding out that he used to work for Xerox. Over the years, we have worked on building a strong relationship by assisting the operation wherever possible – it’s quite an amazing story.’
‘It’s just a great relationship overall,’ interjected Graeme. ‘The equipment itself is high quality and even when we do have challenges, which is understandable, XBC is always willing to come to the table, talk to us and iron out whatever issue we may have or get to some sort of resolution.’
Donavene Hodge, Director and Owner at Hartwood Digital added, ‘They will always come up with the best solution possible whether it is purchasing equipment or issues that we are having – anything in general – we’ve always kept an open relationship and it’s been a two-way street. It’s great that we are all on the same page because at the end of the day, it all comes down to us giving our customers the best quality and the best turnaround, with XBC being aware of it and thus helping us achieve it. We pride ourselves on our reputation of always delivering.’
Hartwood’s core business caters to the needs of the educational and self-publishing sectors. ‘We are big on the education and training side by printing educational books and training material,’ Graeme stated. ‘And then we’re also very involved with self-publishers; we do a lot of small print runs, with 10 books here, 20 books there and even 2 or 5 books for people who have written their books and don’t know where to go in order to get their manuscripts into the print environment.’
The team at Hartwood has the expertise to guide self-publishers through the process, offering advice wherever necessary. Graeme said that it is gratifying to see their successes when they have a book launch, ‘They will start with us by placing a 10 book order, then they’ll order another 10 books six months later and then all of a sudden they will have their books on Exclusive Books’ shelves, where they are then ordering 200-300 books at a time. It’s awesome to be a partner with them through the process,’ he raved.
Hartwood’s offering is supplemented with a full spectrum of digitally printed products such as certificates, business cards and brochures, as well as banners or posters and labels or stickers. ‘Whatever the Xerox is capable of printing, we are happy to print it – we don’t say no,’ Donavene emphasised. ‘We will always make it happen because we don’t like to let our customers down. We’ve got our small self-publishers, our larger publishers, large corporates and also the man on the street. We like to provide a customised experience by offering a full 180 degree perspective for everybody.’
Quality, quick turnaround times and a hands-on service environment distinguishes the print operation in the marketplace. ‘As stated by Donavene, we will talk to a walk in customer the same way that we’ll talk to a corporate and they will get the same level of service from us,’ Graeme concurred.
He continued, ‘Printing companies are a dime a dozen, but if you can offer good quality and good turnaround times at a good price, then you’re halfway to doing good things.’
‘We like to be a little bit different as you would see with our social media posts, otherwise it’s easy to get swallowed up by the generics of the world. If we can just add a little bit of quirkiness or just a little bit of something different to make us stick out a bit more, it goes quite far for us,’ Donavene shared.
‘We definitely have a great foundation and platform to work from and we don’t believe in messing with something that’s always worked, so we keep wanting to build on that. It keeps us going and the referral rate is great. If we keep on offering our clients a really good service and they are happy with the outcome, they will refer us to their network. The referrals that we receive are what keep us going and grows our business,’ she acknowledged.
As a small family printer, it goes without saying that human capital lies at the heart of the business, with some of the staff being with Hartwood for over 20 years.
‘We’re not just about output and making the customer happy; it’s also about making our staff happy and keeping our turnover down, because we have a loyal crew and without them, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The same applies to our customers as well as our suppliers because without the full team, we’d have nothing; it’s like a symbiotic relationship and we all need each other,’ she added.
‘Some of our customers have been with us from the start and are still with us,’ Graeme began. ‘Without your customers, you are nowhere, so we are massively grateful to all of them. They’ve been an absolute blessing to us and we’ll do what it takes to keep them on our books,’ he concluded.