Change is a good thing

After 30 years, we’re making a change

It’s a change that’s been a long time coming, but events in 2019 have focused us on where we need to be in the future. It’s part moving forward, while still hanging on to the things that define us as a company. It’s also a matter of how much can you bolt on to something before it becomes something new entirely.

Looking to cater to clients that didn’t particularly fit inside the Fiske Advertising model, a few years ago we set up Express Card.Through Express Card, we looked after clients that weren’t resellers, but also required a more refined service than the majority of end-user suppliers were offering. Think libraries, for example.

Then, towards the beginning of last year, we were approched by one of our clients with a proposition. The owner of Precision Data wished to move on to new things and was curious if we pick up his clients. We said yes, and set a handover date of the 1st July 2019. From that point, Precision Data was now part of the family.

Less than two weeks after that, we began to receive phone calls asking for help. Redegroup/Australian Plastic Card Company had suddenly gone into liquidation, leaving a raft of customers with no supplier and no mailhouse. We made the decision that although they weren’t our clients, they needed to be looked after. We made an offer for the IP and equipment, and at the end of July 2019 we took over what was left of Redegroup.

After 30 years and having started off as a manufacturer of promotional products, Fiske Advertising had now grown to consist of Fiske Advertising, Express Card, Precision Data, Redegroup, and Australian Plastic Card Company, and was now one of the few full service plastic card manufacturers left in Australia.

We haven’t made a mouse mat or a drink coaster in over a decade. The name Fiske Advertising had maybe lost some relevance. What should our focus be moving forward?

After things calmed down a bit, we decided that what we did best – and perhaps do the best of anyone in Australia – is make plastic cards. Good plastic cards. After much deliberation, the decision was made.

As much as Fiske Advertising as a name was our heritage, it wasn’t really who we were any more moving forward.

We had become Express Card.

We’re still the same company, still the same staff, providing the same level of service to all our clients, we’ve just decided that our name should now reflect that.

We’ve still got some work to do. After all, 2020 has proven to be … interesting. But over the next month or so, you’ll stop getting emails from Fiske Advertising and Precision Data and Redegroup and Australian Plastic Card Company, and start receiving them from Express Card. The phone numbers will still work, as will the email addresses. We haven’t moved anywhere and over the 2019-2020 period, we have embarked on major upgrades of our production equipment. We’ve got too much stuff to move anywhere now. We have more plans in the works and to execute them well, we need to not worry about who we are.

We are Express Card.