Perfect Colours Profiles: Simon Landau – Graphics and Colour Director

Describe your typical day at Perfect Colours?

I tend to only be in the office on a Monday and I start off by making calls. I have sales meetings and then I’m out on the road visiting up to three or four clients a day, and the rest is trying to put together wide-format opportunities with the bigger kit.

My job is to fulfill our clients in terms of larger machines that are up to 3.2m wide. This includes the latex printers and flat-bed printers from Jetrix and Durst. In addition to providing support and sales for the RIP software we sell from Caldera, Onyx and GMG, I’m also a colour management specialist.

What is the best thing about your job?

I like the variety. I like fulfilling clients’ needs in terms of the offers that we have. If there’s an issue or problem, I can provide them the right solution that fits their requirements; we can sort them out with a gantry-based flat-bed or a hybrid flat-bed or roll-to-roll latex printer.

How does Perfect Colours enable you to carry out your job?

The biggest part that helps is the fact that we’re very much an engineering-based company, meaning that we install and service and repair all our machines. From that perspective, I know how the product works and I understand the software, therefore, I know the right solutions to the clients’ needs and it instills a lot of confidence in our them. I have been in the graphics, wide-format and colour industry for about, 27 years and I put that knowledge to good use.

What is one interesting thing about Perfect Colours that people on the outside wouldn’t know?

One interesting thing that people may not know is that we supply and support all the Staples outlets in the UK. We put the large format printers and solutions into every single Staples in the UK.

What would you want customers to know about Perfect Colours and what differentiates you guys from other resellers out there?

We’re not a box shifter. We don’t just sell printers and shift boxes. We provide solutions to clients: we pride ourselves on identifying their needs and providing them with correct equipment rather than something that they may initially ask for. We like to dig a bit deeper to make sure they get the right piece of kit for their requirements.

How would you describe the team dynamics?

From what I’ve found they’re all professionals and they all enjoy what they do. It’s a good team with really good people and we have a lot of banter. We all work together well as a team and there’s not one negative at all. We get on really well with each other and we’re all for the progress and growth of the company. Everyone works hard and people play hard as well but we keep it professional when we need to. It’s a lovely place to work.

Whose job would you borrow for the day and why?

To stretch myself I would probably do Mark (financial director)’s job for a day – something that’s out of my comfort zone. I’m mainly in sales but I come from a technical background, I know how to operate the machines and install the software, so I do a lot of the demos myself so that area wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for me.

Do any particular memories stick out of when you’ve dealt with customer?

Digital Factory near Woking, which was previously a client of one of our competitors, had a range of kit there being driven by different RIP software packages. The owner was quite skeptical at first so it was quite a hard sell to have them install the GMG production suite of RIP solutions to drive all their big kit but, now, they absolutely love it. It’s been implemented and they couldn’t speak more highly of it. It has balanced colour throughout their machines and saved their pre-press drive loads of time in file preparation. They rave about it.