Daniel Yates of IPL Leeds talks about roll-outs, shrinking margins and why he still loves the chase
Daniel Yates was walking past the podcast booth on the last day of The Print Show when Jack called him in. He’s the Managing Director of IPL Leeds, which has supplied installation crews to print managers and agencies across the UK and Europe since 2019.
“I like to call myself the rollout specialist. It might sound a bit big-headed, but I don’t think there are many people in the UK who can cover as much ground with short bursts of work as quickly and as well as we can. I did it myself in a van as a fitter until 2015, and I’ve been in this industry for nearly twenty years, from one side to the other,” says Daniel.
The silent partner
IPL provides a full white-label service to the trade. “Someone sends me a job, and we go out and do the surveys, collate all the information, and put it into a brief. When the final artwork comes back, we’ll print it, finish it, collate it, and distribute it. Our crews fit it, and then we report back in documents carrying the client’s branding. IPL isn’t seen anywhere. The client passes it to their client and gets all the glory and all the high-fives. We get paid a little bit, and if it goes wrong, we get all the grief. I always call myself the bridesmaid.”
That makes marketing tricky, and Daniel relies mostly on word of mouth. “I’m a bit of a dinosaur. Fran in the office handles all our social media and creative. I like pen and paper and speaking to people. I’d get in the car and drive five hundred miles for a coffee,” he says.
Last year was IPL’s first appearance at The Print Show. One new client from that show has since secured ongoing work and has already recouped the cost of exhibiting. This year, he reconnected with a customer he hadn’t heard from since 2015, who now wants IPL back on their books.
Squeezed from every side
Daniel always talks straight, and he doesn’t pretend business is easy. “This industry is up and down day to day, never mind year to year. The cost of fuel, the cost of insurance, everything’s going up behind us, but the margin can’t go up to match it. People think you’re making a lot of money. We’re turning over a sufficient amount, but we’re making less margin year on year. We’re still here, though, and what else are you going to do?”
On pricing he adds, “If I’ve quoted a job with ten or fifteen crew booked, and London crew costs more than crew in the Midlands or the North East, I tend to take it on the chin and accept a reduction. I’m not always trying to put the money up. I think there’s a better way to do things.”
Still standing and still a solid bet
That commitment has come at a cost. Daniel is open about what nearly twenty years of living and breathing the industry has done to his health. “When I was 36, I had a seizure while driving a van, and it nearly took me off the road. At 42, I had stents, and at 48 I had a heart attack and a triple bypass. I’m 50 now and I’m still here, still standing. Someone told me a long time ago that I was very tenacious. I’m a solid bet. If you give me a job, I’ll make sure it’s done, and if there’s an issue on site, I won’t walk away and say it’s your problem. I’ll make that problem mine.”
He’s not planning to slow down; it’s just not for him. “My wife would like me to sit at home and watch Coronation Street with her, but that’s not going to pay the bills, and I don’t like it. I love work, I love the chase. I recently bought a smallholding with some pigs and chickens, a bit of the good life, apparently. What I actually got was another job.”
Asked how he copes, he gives a simple answer. “Life’s fast and the world we live in is insane, so you’ve got to enjoy it. Get good people around you, stay away from the news, and don’t worry about things you can’t change. The petrol pump goes up every time I get to it, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so why moan?”
He concludes in his comfortably direct and honest way, “If you want a rollout in the UK, you will not get better than us.”