DAVID ANDREWS's career as a photo lab owner began in the smallest possible way. He started with just one client - a photographer who encouraged him to bring his considerable printing talents down to Kent to fill the void in the area's photographic services.

David, fresh from a large photographic laboratory in Harrow where he worked following the completion of a two-year photography course at Harrow Technical College, took up the challenge. He set up a hand printing service in two small rooms of the photographer's premises in Ashford, and then methodically set about drumming up more business.

"I went to the leading photographer in the area, Ron Sloman of Sloman and Pettitt in Maidstone. If I could get his work, I thought, I would be able to get anyone's", David recalls. "Ron was known as having very high standards - he was very critical."

"Ron Sloman gave me a negative to print. When I showed him the print, he tore it apart - but he gave me all his work! That was really the start of it. Other photographers would listen when I said I was doing Sloman and Pettitt's printing, and work started to come in."

That was way back in 1973. Andrews' reputation for producing prints of the highest quality grew rapidly, and work came in by post from photographers all over the country. He soon had more work on his hands than he could cope with, so he drafted in the help of his brother Mark. So began the highly successful partnership that endures to this day as Andrews Professional Colour Laboratories Ltd.

The next few years saw the business grow rapidly, gradually taking over more of the building as services expanded and new processing machinery was purchased. In 1975 the lab took the innovative step of putting vans on the road specifically for the delivery and collection of work. This led to a rapid surge in growth and by 1979 having outgrown the entire building left no choice but to find bigger premises. The company then moved to a 2,500 square feet custom built unit on the Chart Road Industrial Estate in Ashford.

"This was heaven", said David. "All the lab space was on one floor - in the old place we were spread over four floors. It didn't take long to outgrow that unit, however; as soon as the adjacent premises became available we grabbed it".

"We knocked a hole in the wall and instantly doubled our square footage. A couple of years later the process was repeated with a third unit, giving us 7,500 square feet of floor space."

Innovative and energetic marketing brought the brothers new sources of work, but high quality results is what kept those new customers coming back. To ensure those standards were maintained, the company committed itself to a strict regime of quality monitoring. This philosophy is still in place today and to maintain consistency and optimum quality Agfa Labcheck, Kodak Q-Lab and Fujitech, closely monitor all processes.

A theme in the company's development has been its readiness to invest in the latest technology to ensure that it stays in front. In the 80's it was one of the earliest adopters of the Kodak Professional Video Analyzing Computer (PVAC), ensuring a level of high quality print consistency that had not previously been possible. PVAC has been constantly upgraded taking advantage of the latest technology and in its current form is still in use today.

Social photography remains the lab's core business, but commercial work is on the verge of overtaking the social side as the company expands into new services and an ever widening clientele.

The brothers took the inevitable plunge into digital imaging in 1997, equipping the lab with a Macintosh computer and a comprehensive suite of mainly Agfa equipment.The key elements are an Agfa Select Scan, which allows high resolution scanning of film and hard copy up to A4, and an Agfa Alto film writer which produces high quality duplicate transparencies or negatives up to 5 x 4 inches.

In June 2000, Andrews took another innovative step into the future with the installation of a Durst Epsilon 30 Digital printer. This machine prints directly onto photographic paper from a variety of digital files, and produces far superior prints than conventional methods like inkjet printing etc. Yet surprisingly, the prints are about the same price as those printed directly from negatives, and also on photographic paper! For further information on the Epsilon printer, see our Services page.