Going global has the right FX

I'm sat in one of those chairs with a little side table to rest your notebook on, arranged in a semicircle in a darkened room.

But, far from a typical centre of learning, the room is housed inside a rather faceless industrial unit alongside the railway line in Guiseley town centre.

It seems an unlikely setting for a business which is now attracting interest from some of the world's biggest corporations.

Usually, these 30 seats are filled with directors from huge retailers and major players in the print industry, who actually pay to come and hear about the products MetalFX Technology has developed. Today, there's just me in the audience to witness managing director Andrew Ainge's presentation about the revolution MetalFX is currently stirring in the printing world.

The story began about 18 months ago when Mr Ainge realised that the existing way in which metallic colours were produced by printers was severely limiting.

Until then, they could only be created using special inks created by giant American firm Pantone. Typically, printers had to stock cans of each of Pantone's 204 colours.

Mr Ainge believed that more metallics could be created by adding amounts of the four coloured inks used in every printing press to a single base ink containing a silver pigment. The result was 104 million different metallic colours.

The possibilities were endless. Packaging could be made brighter and more colourful than ever: special 3D effects could be created at no extra cost because of the reflective qualities of the metallic. And it even had implications for security printing because it was so hard to reproduce the effect.

But now the seven-strong team in Guiseley had to convince the world.

Mr Ainge started by securing patents on the product and the software for the designers who would be working with the new metallic colours.

Then, rather than attempting to sell MetalFX licenses to individual printing firms, Mr Ainge decided to approach major users of printed products, starting with supermarkets.

By selling the advantages of MetalFX to companies like Safeway and Morrisons, the firms would then approach their printers to persuade them of the benefits. And rather than Mr Ainge visiting them, one by one, he invited 30 at a time to the new ink 'academy' at the Guiseley HQ.

"If we had a £1 million marketing budget, we could have just sold the product to them, but we didn't," said Mr Ainge. "We were working on the basis that, for every £1 that came in, £1.20 was going out. We had to create an opportunity for ourselves and an opportunity for the brand." At the same time, he persuaded some of the industry's biggest players, such as Kodak, to allow MetalFX to use their logos on its literature, enhancing its credibility. And deals were struck with international distributors which means MetalFX now, in effect, has 7,500 sales agents in more than 200 locations.

Agreements with the world's two leading ink manufacturers followed, which effectively wiped out any potential competition and further boosted MetalFX's distribution possibilities.

Now the bosses of American giant Pantone, the industry's leading name for 40 years, are thought to be interested in making a bid for MetalFX.

Mr Ainge insists he will refuse their advances - and is currently eyeing up new premises in a more rural part of the district for his firm.

"They are kicking themselves because they didn't see the potential of what we have done," said Mr Ainge. "They have never had the need to question what they were doing, but now we have blown their system out of the water.

"But rather than annoying Pantone, we have decided to keep the door open and start talking to them. We want to develop a new Pantone MetalFX system with them, and if we do that, we'll have cornered the whole market."

It's quite a position for Mr Ainge, who worked for direct mail companies in Britain and overseas before being part of a management buyout of a Guiseley-based graphics firm. It was when that business began to struggle that Mr Ainge decided to wind it up and focus energies on his new idea.

"Our story is about something that we have developed from scratch with absolutely no support," he said. "It's been bloody hard work, a real struggle, to get where we are. We have had literally no support from the banks or from Government agencies."

But the sheer scale of what MetalFX could achieve is now winning the plaudits. Hundreds of brand names and major corporations, like Proctor & Gamble, are in talks or have already signed up. And just hours after returning from a hugely successful exhibition in Japan last month, Mr Ainge found himself in front of the judging panel for the National Business Awards.

"All of the other entrants had teams of people dedicated to the practice of entering awards," he recalled. "I think it was unusual for the judges to get a presentation from the managing director and they were even more shocked when they found out that we only had seven staff. They said: 'Do you realise that you are in the final of the biggest business competition in Britain?' But it was just another presentation to me."

They obviously liked what they saw. MetalFX will be at the final of the awards next month, which are to be broadcast live on Sky News. The competition includes Vodafone and P&O Ferries.

"Everybody laughed last year when I said I wanted to go global with this little Guiseley-based company with just seven staff," said Mr Ainge. "But we've done it. It's been tough. It took months and months for us to get even a small overdraft facility. No one was interested in what we were doing. I put every penny that I have into this and it cost me my marriage.

"We've had to delay people's salaries when we've needed to finance something else. But we've gone through the hardest part now which was supporting the business.

"Now we are getting to see some amazing places. My brother Richard (part of the management team) and I were walking down the high street in Tokyo last week and just had to stop and think to ourselves what we had achieved; it has been incredible.

"This is very much just the tip of the iceberg at the moment. Once we get the top designers using our products, it will go so much further."

With that, Mr Ainge draws the presentation to a close. He might not be a university professor just yet, but he could teach a few big bosses a thing or two about business.