Record UK results for Brother
Brother, a leading information, communications and technology brand, has announced record UK sales of £107m (2012: £100.8m) in the year to 31 March 2013.
The 6% rise in annual sales was achieved by securing increased distribution and additional market share for its products following significant investment in marketing and promotions. This investment, coupled with the rising cost of goods and unfavourable exchange rates in the first half of the year, reduced profits before tax to £2,664,000 (2012: £5,420,000). The profit figure was in line with expectations.
Brother became the number one labeling brand by volume in the UK (source: GfK) during the year, after investing over £2m in a 'labels are powerful' marketing campaign that led to significant distribution gains with multi-channel retailers and higher end user demand.
It launched a raft of new innovative award-winning technology including new iPad ready printers, collaboration services and print management software to help businesses operate more efficiently.
Many of the company's latest products - such as its new 100-page per minute inkjet printer, OmniJoin web conferencing service and b-guard print monitoring tool - form part of Brother's plans to increase its corporate and mid-market business services.
Phil Jones, who was appointed Managing Director of Brother UK at the end of the year after nearly two decades with the company, says: "In a very competitive and challenging market, we achieved solid sales growth thanks to great technology, people and partners.
"Success for any vendor in our sector is determined by the strength of relationships between the company, its distributors, resellers and retail customers. We worked very hard to ensure that our stakeholders were supported and aligned with our growth ambitions.
"It was also a year of change. We laid the foundations for the roll out of our solutions business, which is supporting corporate and mid-market companies to drive efficiencies and increase productivity by using our range of technology and services.
"The marketplace remains unpredictable, with significant disruption from new technologies and we will continue to keep pace with these changes by staying close to market trends and spending quality time listening to our customers."
