Nigel Boyd
Career
Nigel joined The Glasgow Herald and Evening Times as a management trainee back in 1970.
He took to this exciting new environment like a duck to water and over the next 25 years he held the positions of Telephone Sales Manager, Classified Advertising Manager and Advertising Controller – in 1994 he became Advertisement Sales Director leading a team of 17 managers and a sales team of over 120 responsible for generating revenues of over 40 million pounds.
There was never a dull moment – when Nigel joined it was the days of Linotype and hot metal – these were exciting times – he was part of the team that successfully brought both newspapers into the 20th century with the advent of new technology and full colour.
In May 1992 Caledonian Newspaper Publishing was formed to buy out George Outram & Co Limited, publishers of The Glasgow Herald and Evening Times. Nigel along with 5 directors and 9 department controllers became a shareholder in Caledonian Newspaper Publishing.
Nigel had so many fond memories of his newspaper days and all the folks that he had the pleasure to work with – he felt very lucky to work in the industry when it was at its best – happy times!
We both cashed in our newspaper shares in 1995 and used the funds to start our own Company – Tartane.
Having spent a year in research and development at Scottish Enterprise Technology Park we launched our brand Tartane in 1996 with a designer clothing range for children and a few signature pieces for grown-ups – it was a super exciting time for us and our team.
Nigel was in his element – he loved working with the design team and was instrumental in creating the look for the brand – working with the seamstresses on fine detail, choosing fabrics, buttons, zips, embroidery and packaging – Nigel was always interested in fashion – this was perfect – he was able to let his creative juices flow.
We enjoyed a lot of positive publicity and had been identified as a sound business with high growth and export potential – we were introduced to Business Ventures, an offshoot of the Glasgow Development Agency – they wanted to help us achieve our dream of becoming one of Scotland’s leading brands – sadly for us it was a disaster – the head man at Business Ventures decided to steal our company instead of helping it – he constructed a very well thought out plan to shut us down in January 1998 and take control – it was a long and tough fight for justice – we finally settled via mediation with Scottish Enterprise on 22nd December 2003 – it took over 5 years to get there – but with the help of so many people including a cross party group of politicians and our unwavering fight for the truth we knew in our hearts that it would only be a matter of time till justice would be served.
While waiting for help to get Tartane up and running again I went to work at News International as a consultant – at the same time Nigel took a college course in new technology covering the basic skills, Word, PowerPoint and Excel – Nigel would learn by day and teach me at night.
During my time at News International we met 3 chaps who had formed a company called Print 4 Property – they couldn’t continue with the business as there was a conflict of interest with an existing major client and asked if we would be interested – my consultancy was nearing the end and having looked at the business plan they had prepared we said yes – we had no money to invest as the Tartane case was still ongoing – so it was decided that we would run the company and have a 25% share – sweat equity!
We launched Print 4 Property in Abbey Business Centre at Woodside Place in December 2001 – we were back in business!
In October 2005, with help from the bank, we bought the other 3 shareholders out and became co-owners of the company.
In 2012 we moved to our new studio at 93 Candleriggs – it was also at this time that we shortened our name from Print 4 Property to P4P and add the word Creative.
Over the last 20 odd years we have built a small graphic design company that Nigel was so proud of – and in May 2017 he was delighted when we became employee owned.
Nigel was in charge of the financial side of the business at P4P – in addition to this his key roles included research, copywriting and storyboarding – he loved to get into the guts of a project and he enjoyed working with the commercial property agents, developers, architects and of course the P4P team to create campaigns that not only looked great but were extremely successful.
He was always happy to help whether it be a wee sticker saying ‘sold’ on a brochure to a major campaign – nothing was too much trouble.
Nigel felt privileged to work on some of the biggest projects in Scotland where in many cases we were responsible for naming a building or a commercial or residential development and then carrying through all the marketing from creating the brand, the brochure, the website, the advertising campaign, the internal and external signage, to digital advertising, marketing suites, promotional products and managing the launch event.
Always a stickler for detail especially spelling and grammar – harking back to his newspaper days – he led from the front when it came to exacting standards and levels of customer service – he cared – our team knew he cared and our clients knew he cared.