中文There is a quiet kind of bravery in buying expensive machines before you have proven you can pay for them. Most of us would rent a corner, buy one decent printer, and grow into the rest. Pedro Guevara did the opposite — and it might be the most level-headed thing a print entrepreneur has done all year.
Only Boards is a wide-format and signage start-up based in Woking, in the south of England. It has been officially trading since May. That is barely half a year. And yet, just ahead of this summer, the company went live with a production line that some shops ten times its age would envy: three Mimaki machines (a JFX 200-2513 EX UV LED flatbed, a UCJV330-160 roll-to-roll printer/cutter, and a CG-160FXII Plus cutting plotter), a Neolt laminator, and a JWEI JCUT Pro 1625 digital cutting table. Every piece came through CMYUK.
Why does this matter? Because the entire stack lets Only Boards print, cut, laminate, and finish under one roof. No more farming out the tricky bits. No more waiting on a supplier’s schedule when a client needs a rush job. For a business that wants to say yes to almost anything — boards, signs, event graphics, interior decor — that in-house control is the difference between a shop that survives and one that thrives.
Guevara is not a stranger to big, messy, creative projects. He trained as an industrial and graphic designer in Venezuela, where he spent years building large-scale event spaces, 3D environments, and print artwork for brands you would recognise — Oreo among them. He moved to the UK, spent five years in the vehicle-wrapping industry, got his hands dirty with design and production, and somewhere along the way realised how utterly everywhere boards and signs are. Every shop, every building site, every hospitality venue, every corporate lobby leans on printed boards to say something.
So he built a company around that near-invisible need.
What I find genuinely refreshing is the philosophy. Guevara did not want to start small and “gradually expand.” He wanted to lay a solid technological foundation on day one. “Rather than starting with limited equipment, and gradually expanding, we wanted to establish a solid technological foundation from day one,” he said. That is a different kind of confidence — the confidence to bet on yourself loudly.
The bet came with practical headaches, too, and he handled those like a pro. The company runs out of a 130-square-metre facility with double-height ceilings, which leaves room for a future mezzanine level. But all that new kit needs power, so the team carried out an electrical upgrade before the machines arrived. They planned the production layout carefully, keeping safety and efficiency in mind, because throwing five machines into a room is a recipe for chaos if you don’t think about the flow.
There is a human story here as well. Guevara worked closely with Chris Martin, sales director at CMYUK, and visited the company’s demonstration and training centre in Shrewsbury before committing a penny. He watched the technology work together, poked at the materials, and explored applications. That is how smart buying happens — you don’t just take a quote, you pressure-test the solution. “CMYUK came back to me quickly, engaged with detail and helped shape the solution, not just a quote,” he said.
Only Boards now serves construction, property development, retail, hospitality, events, and interior design. And Guevara is clear that the ambition does not stop at conventional signage. He is keen to explore new applications, materials, textures, shapes, and finishes — the weird, challenging briefs that bigger, more rigid shops quietly turn away.
Here is the lesson for the rest of us. The printing industry loves to talk about creativity and innovation, but too often it hides behind safe, repeatable jobs. A six-month-old company with five pro machines is saying the opposite: build the capability first, then go find the interesting problems. Having the whole production process in-house gives them the flexibility to take on harder projects, respond fast, and keep a close grip on quality from the first sketch to the finished board.
Will every start-up should copy this? No. Most can’t afford to. But the mindset scales even when the budget doesn’t. Decide what you want to be known for, invest in the smallest set of tools that lets you deliver it end to end, and stop outsourcing your own identity.
Only Boards is barely out of its pram, and it is already playing in the big kid’s sandbox. If a six-month-old company can wire up a full wide-format production line and mean it, the rest of the industry has no excuse for standing still.
Information source: Printweek (www.printweek.com)
