Oldham cardboard manufacturer, Ribble Packaging signs up to ongoing partnership with Manchester based marketing agency LeftMedia after adding £1m in new contract sales.

Ribble underwent a major rebrand last year with the city centre based agency, before embarking on an ambitious direct mail marketing campaign generating over £1m of annual revenue by targeting large national retailers and manufacturers with their returns management and on demand packaging solutions.

Ribble Packaging has been established for over 75 years, providing cardboard boxes to businesses. In recent years, the business has focused on value added packaging services to retail and manufacturing clients with innovative box solutions, including the Automate and Restore services.

Following the success of the rebrand and marketing campaign, Ribble have signed a 12 month partnership with the agency to manage their digital presence including the manufacturer’s search engine performance alongside regular marketing campaigns.

Stephen Rector, Managing Director at Ribble Packaging said, “for 70 to 80 years we’ve been making brown boxes. That really didn’t require any extent of marketing or PR at all. We tended to know who our customers were and they knew who we were. It was a different type of customer that we were targeting and the message we were getting across had, I think, become rather convoluted and complex.

“The direct mail campaign resulted in something in the order of a 40 to 50 percent hit rate and very recently we’ve secured two very large contracts worth in excess of one million pounds per annum.”

Mitchel White, CEO & Founder at LeftMedia said “Working with local businesses in Greater Manchester is always great, being local means we can gain an even greater understanding of the way the business operates. As a young business owner it inspires me seeing businesses in the North West who have been established as long as Ribble. Targeting big name retailers was a new challenge for us, so I’m beyond happy with the success of the campaign, and we look forward to working together on more successful campaigns.”