Concerns for Canterbury printer Omicron Repro over the name of the latest Covid variant.
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Bosses at Omicron Repro “were left in disbelief when they realised their business shares its name with the latest strain of coronavirus”.
But managing director Mark Fawcett-Jones has been positive and that the business had not seen any drop in work as a result.
“As soon as I heard about the new variant I thought ‘oh no’, I was quite shocked and worried – we didn’t want it to have a bad effect on us because we’ve only just got round to getting ourselves back on our feet since the pandemic started.
“And then I started getting messages from friends that were negative, but my colleague who does our Instagram was getting messages from our customers and they were all positive. So I hope this won’t harm us.”
He added the company’s customers have struggled with the name for years, often misspelling it in emails, “but now they know what it is!”.
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Fawcett-Jones originally owned a company called Plan Xpress but acquired Omicron Reprographics in 2008 from its retiring Greek owner – who originally named the business – and decided to retain the brand, albeit altering it slightly to Omicron Repro, with the Plan Xpress name instead phased out.
Fawcett-Jones and director Dave Loveridge were pictured outside the company’s premises in Breaking Bad costumes but Fawcett-Jones stressed that the business was not trying to make fun of the situation.
“It is a serious thing and it’s a worrying time as well with a new variant – we’re all a bit scared about that and worried about where it’s going to take us – but we just wanted to maybe put a smile on some people’s faces.”
Specialising in same-day print including business cards, flyers, brochures and signage, Omicron Repro serves a wide range of clients, including a large student base in Canterbury, which has two universities with a lot of architecture students.
The eight-staff business runs HP Latex and DesignJet T3500 wide-format printers, Konica Minolta digital presses, and a Summa cutter in-house.
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