The next invitation to take out a bargain-rate credit card that drops through your letterbox might have been put together by GPMU members in Leeds. Welcome to the direct mail specialists at Lettershop.

Story: Kath Grant | Photography: Paul Herrmann

A refreshingly rural sight greets visitors to the Lettershop Group's plant on the outskirts of Leeds - sheep and lambs, mercifully free from foot-and-mouth, graze on moors opposite the purpose-built premises in Whitehall Park.

Lettershop provides a complete direct mail service for customers ranging from banks, building societies and insurance companies to the RAC and Comic Relief. They also print and send out publicity vouchers for newspaper groups and material for holiday firms. Lettershop also offers personalised printing, sending brochures, letters, cards and other materials to named customers of financial institutions.

100% GPMU
Three hundred people work at the Leeds plant on three shifts a day, five days a week. Everyone involved in printing and finishing is a member of the GPMU. There are also 25 people working at Lettershop's creative agency in Cirencester and a similar number at the Paris branch, which concentrates on customer relations and is involved in marketing for a number of French companies, including Renault.

At Whitehall Park, files are received from the customers, and pages made up and checked using both digital and wet proofing. Letters, brochures, flyers and envelopes are then printed, the material is enclosed in the envelopes which are stored in the warehouse before being taken to the post office in the company's own vans.

Customers' files arrive on disc in Lettershop's studio where they are manipulated to requirements by the staff. Here proofs are taken and plates made up before going to the readers for careful checking.

For Andrew Brookes, the last 18 months have been a second stint with the company - he was an apprentice between 1984 and 1988 and worked at various printing firms before returning.

"The technology has totally changed since my first time around but most of the people are still here," Andrew says. "The process is changing all the time. At the moment, we use digital or wet proofs for the customers to approve but soon everything will go straight from computer to plate."

The Bad Old Days
Platemakers Graham Kelsey and David Marley can recall the dirty old days of hot metal when compositors kept boxes of snuff alongside the typefaces.

"The dust and dirt from the type literally used to get up your nose," says Graham, a compositor at the Yorkshire Post newspaper for 30 years before redundancy. "I remember being caked in ink, but now the printing process is becoming cleaner all the time."

From the studio, the plates go to the presses. Apprentice Adam Kay is working on a four-colour brochure with varnish for the Halifax and is waiting for the colour to be passed by his supervisor. He has been at Lettershop for three and a half years and will complete his apprenticeship this summer.

Janet Williams does the setting for the personalisation department. She and the others in setting input the details of the mail's recipients into a computer and this is then transferred to the letters and envelopes. Richard Shaw, who works in personalisation, says all details have to go through a careful checking system.

Research & Development
Lettershop has its own research and development department to design and modify machines for special tasks.

"A client might ask if we can attach cards to letters, so we would design a machine to do that," says Stewart Partner.

Direct mail is either put into the envelopes on the enclosing machine or inserted by hand if the customer has requested it. The 16 handworkers are all women and work in pairs, inserting the material into envelopes and sealing them.

Representation
Steve Kemp, a folding operator, has been FOC in the finishing department for 15 years, currently sharing the job with MOC Brenda Coleman (Mick Withers, who works nights in readers, is the FOC for printing). Steve said:

"We have a lot of part-time women workers who prefer to be represented by a woman, particularly if the issue is a sensitive one. Brenda has been MOC for ten years now and we work well together."

An extension being built onto the main part of the works will contain a new eco-friendly press and a 60metre long finishing line. Chief executive John Hornby says the company has invested a lot of money in providing a clean environment for its workers.

"We have also worked hard to reduce our emissions, we are much more aware of our social responsibilities these days," he adds.