June 7, 2021 Reanne Duffy

Dorset based Vertiworks found itself with quite a job to deliver for international tea brand, Clipper. Who doesn't love a good cup of tea? Without getting too lyrical, tea makes everything better. It brightens up the dullest day, and it just seems to hit the spot wherever and whatever that spot may be.

One of the most respected names in tea circles is Clipper. Today the company has over 150 different products and they can be found in upwards of 50 countries. It all started around a kitchen table back in 1984 with a tea-obsessed husband-and-wife team and two chests of finest quality Assam. The tea was sold through local health food shops and cafés. Now, despite needing the scale to cover 150 products in 50 plus countries, Clipper is still blended in the factory in Beaminster, in beautiful Dorset.

None of Clipper’s products contain anything artificial and, according to the company, they never will. In 1994 Clipper became the United Kingdom's first Fairtrade tea company and in fact helped write the Fairtrade standards. Sitting squarely on its commendable ethics, taste is at the very centre of what Clipper does. Thank Dan and James, Clipper’s master tea blenders for that. 

Clearly, Clipper is a company with real personality at the centre of an industry where customers have a highly individualised relationship with industry’s products. Clipper wanted to put that personality to the fore, and radiate the very essence of its brand through the very outlets where a cup of quality tea is available. That meant elevating it's visible presence at the point of sale and beyond in cafés.

Signs and graphics seems like a good place to start with such a mission and, when you’re located in Beaminster, paths of enquiry after signage and graphics production lead naturally enough to Bridport based Vertiworks where Colin Crabb and his team produce and deliver in the county and way beyond.

Clipper’s plan is to surround its brand with elements radiating a local personality. ‘Available locally, nationwide,’ is the abiding principle. Thanks to some very creative work by the Vertiworks team and Clipper, the idea has now seen the light of day and is attracting grateful tea aficionados to Jimmy’s, a well known and much loved local cafe.

Framed posters promote Clipper’s tea in a very Dorset-like context, highly personalised to the county’s distinctive geography. The cuppa occupies the subject foreground against a backdrop suggesting rolling green bisected at the horizon and transitioning into a blue sky dotted with gulls. The posters are framed in rustic wood and occupy various sites at Jimmy’s. Branded awnings complete the ensemble and it all does a wonderful job of extending the brand’s reach beyond traditional point-of-sale in the cafés interior.

The intention is to create hyper-local, bespoke campaigns along the same lines on a much more widely distributed basis. Digital print as provisioned by the team at Vertiworks is of course ideal for such an application. Vertiworks can economically produce promotional print, personalised to geography and application, in quantities of one and up. Vertiworks also has a well proven project-management expertise, so keeping track of the campaigning as it hits significant scale is a given.

Quite aside from its expertise as a printer, and its proximity to Clipper’s HQ, Vertiworks’ own story resonated when Clipper was looking to find somebody to take on the branding job. In particular the conscious decision that Colin Crabb took in specifying HP Latex inks and hardware because of their environmental credentials sat well. So to did the decision to use Metamark materials because they are UK manufactured and have relatively few road miles under their wheels before they are used at the point of conversion.

The printed graphics produced by Vertiworks and used to brand Jimmy’s were made using Matt laminated Metamark MD5. MD5 has become something of a staple with Vertiworks, and its MD-Class credentials will really help with the Clipper project. The product is absolutely consistent from roll to roll and batch to batch, and, coupled with Vertiworks accomplished print management and production skills, will yield results that tightly adhere to a very well-managed brand specification.

Living as we do in an age where pressing a button results in a print issuing from a wide format printer, it is easy to forget that a great deal of operational expertise and technical capability actually underpin the successful delivery of a project with corners as widely distributed as Clipper’s. Those elements are founded on experience and a conscientious approach to business, neither of which submit to automation.

The benefits of using Vertiworks, a company with a razor sharp eye for detail, and which makes itself accountable for the very high standards it sets, can't be overstated when applied to a project as complex as multi local promotion on a national scale. The delivery of this project will be like a long running serial. Who knows, the promotional works Vertiworks makes might themselves become collectable.

Anyone fancy a cuppa?