Steve Parish on DALIM and TAG

A Partnership Decades in the Making

When DALIM SOFTWARE CEO Carol Werlé sat down with Crystal Palace Chairman, Steve Parish, it felt less like a formal interview and more like two old friends rewinding the clock. Their relationship spans decades, industries, and a few memorable moments, including the day Parish drove a yellow Beetle from London to Strasbourg in 1999 to help take DALIM private.

"We've been through a lot together," Carol laughs. "Back then you were running operations above me, and I was fixing things under a table. You went on to become a major figure in advertising and eventually a Premier League chairman. Quite a journey."

What follows is a candid conversation about technology, entrepreneurship, resilience, and the surprising way life connects the dots.

Watch the full interview or explore the transcript below

The Technology That Changed an Industry

Before he became chairman of Crystal Palace FC, and before he led one of the world's largest marketing production agencies, Steve Parish was a young professional navigating a rapidly changing industry.

"This company played a huge role in my career," he begins.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, digital print production was chaotic. Designers worked across QuarkXPress, Photoshop, and Illustrator, and nothing matched or reproduced consistently. Files were unpredictable, deadlines were stressful, and workflows were fragile.

Then he discovered DALIM.

"At the time your technology was almost unseen, the plumbing of the industry. But it rationalised everything. Suddenly we had a way to check, correct, and manage files so they printed the way they were meant to. It was out of the ordinary."

He remembers the first system he purchased. It cost upwards of £100,000, a transformative investment. He didn't just buy it; he demonstrated it, operated it, and built an entire business around it.

"We'd go into big London operations and ask for their most complicated job. Sometimes the system performed magic. Sometimes it didn't, and we'd be chased out of the building with the box. But that's how you learn."

Those early years gave him a grounding in profit and loss, persuasion, risk-taking, digital production, and leadership.

An Accidental Entry Into the Graphic Arts

Parish is the first to admit he entered the industry by chance.

"I was putting up ceilings for a living," he says. "Hard, manual work. My father said, go and apply for this job, you can't keep doing that. He had a contact in the industry, so I went along."

That moment changed everything.

"Suddenly I found myself in a business transitioning from craft to digital. I'd taken one computer class at school, one Apple II for the whole class, but that tiny bit of experience made me the one-eyed man in the land of the blind."

He mastered traditional retouching, masking, and studio techniques early on, then moved to another firm just as Macintosh computers revolutionised production.

"Age didn't matter anymore. What mattered was whether you could deliver."

Building a Global Marketing Technology Business

The company Parish worked for eventually ran into financial trouble, but the division he ran, selling DALIM technology, was profitable. He acquired the distressed businesses and combined a production operation with a technology integration business. That became the foundation of TAG, the global agency he would go on to lead.

"We were obsessed with collaboration long before it was mainstream," he recalls. Using DALIM's next-generation platform, TAG developed CMD, one of the earliest systems for remote collaboration, workflow automation, and online review and approval.

"Looking back, we were probably too early. If we'd taken another path, we might have built something like Shopify. Instead, we built a global digital asset management and workflow platform operating in 13 countries with around 3,000 people."

TAG became one of the world's largest marketing production agencies, and DALIM software sat at the core of its infrastructure.

The Management Buyout That Secured DALIM's Future

In 1998, DALIM faced financial strain despite having exceptional technology. Both Carol and Parish understood the underlying problem clearly.

"You were never a failing business," he says. "Just a good company pushed too hard, too fast."

Together with Jim Salmon, Carol orchestrated a management buyout supported by investors from Germany, Japan, the United States, and TAG, the very first investor to come on board.

"We didn't really have a choice," Parish jokes. "We relied on the technology. Our clients relied on it. If DALIM fell, our business fell."

The buyout anchored DALIM as a stable, independent global player and powered TAG's continued international growth.

Business Pressure vs. Football Pressure

Carol couldn't resist asking the obvious question.

"So, what's more stressful? Launching a global brand campaign or defending a 1-0 Premier League lead in the 90th minute?"

Parish laughs.

"Stress changes with age. When you're young, work feels heavier, the hours, the travel, the habits, constantly scanning for threats. In business, everything is shades of grey. In football, it's binary. Win or lose."

And the stakes are very real. "Relegation can take you from £200 million revenue to £20 million overnight. Emotionally brutal. But in some ways physically easier than running a global agency. Far less travel."

Rebuilding Crystal Palace: Culture Starts at the Foundations

When Parish acquired Crystal Palace FC, the club was on the brink of extinction.

"It was on the floor," he says. "Portable cabins for offices, infrastructure falling apart."

One moment crystallised the scale of the challenge. "A coach told me he was trying to instil professionalism in the players. And as he's saying it, a radiator literally fell off the wall behind him. You can't talk about professionalism when the environment itself is collapsing."

Parish recognised the need for a complete rebuild, not just facilities, but culture, communication, expectations, and ambition. It was the same philosophy he had applied to production studios and agency operations throughout his career.

Wembley. 90,000 Fans. A Historic Day.

Years of work culminated in an extraordinary moment: Crystal Palace reaching the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.

Over 90,000 fans filled the ground. Millions watched worldwide. And around 45,000 of those in the stadium were cheering for Palace.

"I was born minutes from Selhurst Park," Parish says. "To stand at Wembley, hearing that wall of Palace fans, with millions watching across the world, it was unbelievable."

Text Interview adapted from the video interview for clarity and flow, with all content remaining true to the original conversation.

It was more than a football result. It was the symbolic completion of a rebuild that began the day a radiator fell off a wall.

A Relationship That Has Stood the Test of Time

Carol closed the conversation with a moment of genuine gratitude.

"There are so many people here who owe their careers to the journey you helped shape. That small startup grew into an international technology company, and your role in that mattered."

Parish nodded and revealed a gift he had brought along: a Crystal Palace FA Cup winners' shirt, worn on the pitch and signed by the entire squad now proudly hanging in DALIM SOFTWARE's offices.

"We didn't have many of these," he says. "But I wanted DALIM to have one. This place is a big part of my journey."