Meet Gary: Leading from the inside out

Leadership in print usually means distance: strategy, boardrooms, quarterly reviews. But not here. Gary Peeling leads WTTB the same way he learned it, by being in the middle of it.

He still walks the Dagenham factory floor, sleeves rolled up, stopping to pick up jobs and check the detail. If something doesn’t look right, he’ll pull it — no hesitation, no drama — and have it reprinted. Because for Gary, every sheet that leaves the building carries WTTB’s name, and the standard matters.

Gary’s route to the top wasn’t corporate; it was craft. He began on Saturday shifts, making plates, learning the feel of print before the theory. That grounding built the kind of perspective no boardroom can teach — a deep understanding of how decisions made in meetings echo through every stage of production, from quoting to dispatch.

That’s why, even now, he stays close to the numbers, the margins, the tech, and the teams. When a new system is introduced, Gary doesn’t test it himself — but he makes sure someone has. He’s the person who arrives once everyone’s confident, asks the questions no one else thought to, and spots the small details that could make a big difference. It’s not interference — it’s insurance. The kind that keeps standards high and customers happy.

What Gary values most about his team is their honesty. They speak up, challenge ideas, and say what they really think — whether it’s right, wrong, or somewhere in between. That openness is the point. It’s how good ideas surface and bad ones get fixed fast. It’s a team that doesn’t just care about their own patch; they care about the whole operation — from first quote to final dispatch. That’s why it works.

And while Gary keeps the pressure on, it’s the whole team that keeps the work flowing in — the people making sure every promise made to a customer becomes something real.

He’s built a leadership team he trusts — people who know their fields inside out and aren’t afraid to challenge an idea if it means improving the result. For Gary, leadership means staying connected to the detail without getting lost in it — knowing enough to question, but trusting enough to let experts lead.

“Good leadership isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room,” Gary says. “It’s about knowing the job well enough to ask the right questions — and listening long enough to hear the real answers.”

That’s the difference between management and mastery. It’s why he still keeps relationships with customers he’s known for decades and why he’ll always make time to talk through a challenge — whether it’s a price point, a turnaround, or a design quirk no one’s seen before.