Record UK sales for Brother

Printer and IT specialist Brother has posted record UK sales of £107 million during the 12 months ending March 31st, 2013.

This represents a six per cent rise over the £100.8 million it generated in 2012.

Brother says the rise was due to securing increased distribution and marketshare for its products, after making "significant investment" in marketing and promotions.

However, this investment, along with the rising cost of goods and "unfavourable" exchange rates in the first half of the year, reduced profits before tax to £2.6m, down from £5.4m the year prior. Brother says the profit fall was "in line with expectations".

Brother became the number one labelling brand by volume in the UK during the year, according to GfK data, after investing over £2m in a ‘labels are powerful’ marketing campaign.

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.

Brother UK MD Phil Jones said: “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.”

Jones was appointed managing director of Brother UK at the end of last year, after nearly two decades with the company.