HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Fermor Data Systems was started in 1982 by Geoff Fermor. Geoff was a phototypesetting engineer and was originally employed by Monotype Systems who were one of the two leading companies worldwide in the pre-press print industry.
Back before the digital era, pre-press origination was a great deal more complicated process than it is now. The typesetting systems of that era comprised of paper tape readers which fed data into typesetting systems that used lasers and a complicated series of optics to etch the plates used in the printing of newspapers, magazines, books, etc.
Geoff’s job was covering the UK, ensuring any downtime of this equipment was kept to an absolute minimum, as these machines were responsible for entire factories running. If the pre-press side stopped, so did the entire shift.
Very soon he was working across the whole of Europe and further afield into Russia and Iraq. The volume of the travelling and living out of a suitcase very quickly became untenable and he then decided to start out on his own and work solely in the UK with a smaller number of clients.
THE DIGITAL AGE
In the 1990’s, the first glimmers of the digital age shone over the horizon. With the transition to digital systems, the older typesetting systems slowly became obsolete and the newer laser systems took precedent.
Geoff had to steer the business through this period and he decided to become a user of the new technology – as demand for repairs on the older equipment diminished, he bought his own laser typesetting system and provided a bureau service for print factories who either didn’t have pre-press facilities or preferred to outsource it. This is when computer aided graphic design was really born – Geoff was an early adopter of CorelDraw (and was actually a Beta tester for them) which naturally drew him into signmaking systems, which he then started selling.
In the very late nineties Geoff’s son Simon became a partner in the business – he’d been working in another typesetting business Geoff was a partner in which had contracts with large publishing houses for designing paperback books. This had given him a good grounding in typography and single colour design, but after Geoff started selling signmaking systems he became very interested in getting involved with full colour design. Between them they both had the same idea – stop selling the signmaking systems and start using them.
Fermor Data Services became FDS Graphics and with Simon now working on sign business generation and fulfillment, the business grew three distinct streams – signmaking, pre-press origination and print. With the advent of the internet, this threw up new opportunities and further revenue streams as both Geoff and Simon taught themselves html and launched their first e-commerce site which went live in 2000 and sold printed postcards to customers worldwide.
THE NOUGHTIES TO NOW
Throughout the early 2000’s we slowly accrued more customers on the signmaking side of the business and at that time negotiated our first big sign contract with a franchised retail business called Calendar Club. CC specialise in the seasonal sale of calendars and associated products via short term pop-ups around the UK. We worked with them from their proof of concept year through to a point where they had well over 150 stores nationwide and supplied all their point of sale and signage.
In 2004 we moved from Marsh Barton to Greendale Business Park into much larger premises as we also had another business selling new boats from a Miami based manufacturer and also second hand imports. All the graphics on our second hand boats were refurbished using our signmaking experience until 2008 when Lehman Brothers/Bear Stearns’ demise triggered the GFC. This dramatically affected the boat industry – couple this with hurricane Katrina a couple of years prior (which took out 30,000 boats from the Florida second hand boat inventory) and a detrimental shift in USD/GBP currency rate meant the boat side had to be shelved and a move to a smaller premises was made once our lease was seen out 3 years later.
During that time however, we had continued to speculatively build a small library of boat and outboard decals which we then started selling online in small quantities. In late 2016 we launched our marine website at outboardgraphics.com and we slowly started increasing sales and continued designing new products. In 2019 we targeted the US with increased advertising and experienced 80% sales growth. The following year our sales grew another 45%.
Fast forward to today and we are now Europe’s largest producer of decals for the marine industry and we are just about to launch our new Shopify based site, now with over 500 product lines. We continue to develop that side of the business and also enjoy working locally on projects large and small for a customer base which spans everything from sole tradesmen and women to large corporates.
