DCI’s founder didn’t look back after asking for a loan as part of his business plan, says Andrew Cave
John Studholme’s best deal came when he flew to the US 25 years ago to make a bid to supply typewriter parts to a Californian company. He was cheeky enough to ask for a $50,000 loan as part of the deal – to help him toll up for it – and was sent to wait, thinking he had blown things.
He was wrong. He was called in five minutes later and told he had not been asking for enough. He departed with a $100,000 loan and an order that enabled him to set up Dynamic Cassette International (DCI) at a factory in Boston, Lincolnshire.
Recently DCI switched to making and recycling printer cartridges and it has the capacity to produce more than 2m new cartridges, 300,000 remanufactured ones and 250,000 refill kits a month.
Still wholly –owned by Studholme, it has a turnover of £23m, a workforce of 200, operations in the UK, Germany and the US and contracts to supply printer cartridges for Tesco and other leading supermarket groups. Studholme, 65, still views the deal that began it all as key. “it was my best deal of my entire life, quite simply because it enabled me to set up the business,” he says.
The deal happened in 1983, he recalls, when he was managing director of a London-based company called Graftons and had built up a relationship with an executive at General Ribbon Corporation, a Californian manufacturer of typewriter ribbons.
Studholme wanted to move away from London. He had the idea of running his own firm making typewriter equipment and decided to pitch for business with his American contract.
At the time, he recalls, General Ribbon sold millions of typewriter ribbons per year and had an annual turnover of about £80m.
He went to see his contact. “I didn’t know him closely. He would have had many suppliers. But they wanted someone to supply the cassettes that want on the top and bottom of electric typewriters. I know how ribbons and typewrites worked and I thought I could do it. I flew there on a cheap flight and told the director that I wanted the order but would need a £50,000 loan to set up and tool up. I said I would repay them in a year. I was told to wait outside but I was only there for about five minutes. Then I was called back and told that I had not asked for enough and that they would loan me $100,000 for one year. They didn’t ask any questions at all. The director said: ‘Good. We are glad you can do it.’
“I was so excited. I was over the moon. It was all like a dream.”
Back in the UK, Studholms says he found a premises in Boston for a fraction of what he would have to pay in London.
He started assembling the equipment he would need but soon realised the enormity of what he had contracted to do.
“When I got back to the UK, I realised what I had taken on,” he says. “It’s alright being a cheeky chappie and saying you can do something but I learned very quickly that it’s much harder having to actually carry it out.
“I flew back and forth to Los Angeles many times to make sure that we were getting in right. They were taking 1m cartridges a month and there were ten parts in each cartridge so we were moulding 10m parts a month,” he says. “We did so well that we repaid the $100,000 loan in a year, as agreed.”
DCI carried on supplying General Ribbon Corporation for about 15 years and still makes some typewriters kits for export to South America and Russia.
However, as computers replaced typewriters, it switched to making and recycling inkjet printer cartridges. Eight years ago, it set up Jet Tec International as a subsidiary to market its own brand of cartridges under the Jet Tec name.
These now account for about 60pc of its turnover, with the remainder coming from own-label cartridges that it makes for supermarkets and dealers.
“Nowadays,” says Studholme, “I find that my best sales approach is simply to invite people to come and visit the factory because it is still here in the UK and we do all our own design and injection moulding. That’s our strength. If I get someone to see it, they are usually blown away by what they see here and normally want to do business.”