Amazing News! Display Equipment have been celebrating what is a wonderful milestone of 65 years in business!

Display Equipment celebrated their birthday on 10^th October and here’s a little bit about them from their current owner – Ian Holmes!

My Grandfather Arnold Berry (Mums Dad) set this company up after WW2, he was a rear gunner for the royal air force on a Lancaster bomber and got his inspiration from the Americans he was based with, he opened the first ‘walk around’ in Bolton store which was quite unique as prior to this the norm was to be ‘counter served’ with goods (like the Argos set up) rather than shop then pay say like B&Q etc.

My mother and father joined the company which grew to over 60 permanent staff and operated from a mill which was called flash street mills (the site where Mecca Bingo is based now) mainly specialising in shop fitting, he was one of the first companies to install automatic doors, shelving, lighting and check outs to large supermarkets unfortunately there was a set-back where he didn’t get paid on a large project as the client went into administration which left them owning £80k (equivalent to £1.5 million in today’s money).

Despite this set back they managed to condense the company to a much smaller format and continue to trade as normal supplying goods and services to the shop fitting trade.

I left school back in 1985 and joined the company after doing a couple of years here of part time work on Saturday mornings whilst at school. Where I got my first ‘Pantograph’ manual engraving machine for £400, after only 18 months our sign side out grew this machine and replaced it with two new manual pantographs machines and accessories costing around £10,000.

We then hit another set-back which was the UK recession in the early 1990’s although we managed to use this to our advantage as we had strong roots due to no rent or mortgage on the business premises we could invest in new ‘computerised’ signage equipment, my father wanted to go down the ‘vinyl’ side which at the was turning the signage industry on its head and I wanted to upgrade the engraving machines, due to the climate I managed to purchase a brand new computer controlled cnc-engraving machine and get a FREE vinyl plotter thrown in the deal.

This package too was superseded as the business grew as I then took my now wife/then girlfriend on a day out to the NEC to upgrade both machines. She also joined us around this time helping out and learning ‘the books’ which was still done manually, she was the one who took the company accounts from manual to then SAGE and now advanced us onto XERO accounts cloud based package.

During this period another boom hit the signage industry which was the digital print industry, we obviously didn’t want to get left behind and invested heavily in this market constantly upgrading sometimes within 18 months for example the print machine (Mimaki JV33) we have today is 6 times faster with photographic ‘band’ free output, than our previous machine (Mimaki JV3) also this older machine is still in use by our local competitors today to show how far we have come

Even though the present trading climate still looks bleak to most, I feel the future of Display Equipment is bright and will be around for many more years to come, I feel in any industry if you do a great job at a fair price you can never go far wrong, and for this I look forward to the next 65 years although may have to look to my son and daughter to manage the later half.

If you would like to find out about the fabulous services that Display Equipment offer, give them a call on 01204 525874 but have a look at all of the wonderful images attached to this blog including an amazing throwback picture and Ian doing a job for Villapac in Spain!!