How industry pioneers Amazing Print Tech and PrintSites2Go are making a huge difference helping print shops here and around the world.
InfoTrends is the leading worldwide market research firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry. I recently visited its website to get a handle on what it considers as the best companies in various segments of our industry. Not surprisingly, I found several Canadian companies that got high marks. One in particular, Amazing Print Tech (www.amazingprint.com), was singled out as having the largest variety of available solutions in the web-to-print segment. Web-to-print started with the onset of e-commerce in the 1990s. The technology is a browser-based software application that facilitates commerce, collaboration, and/or customer service interaction between those who buy print and those who sell it.
Today’s web-to-print solutions offer printers an affordable cost of entry, a recurring revenue model, and the ability to implement a vastly more efficient production process. In addition, vendors have continued to add more functionality to their solutions. In Amazing Print’s case, it has successfully facilitated millions of postcard, business card and stationery orders with its proprietary online printing technology that began in 1997. Its web-to-print software applications empower printers with template-based postcard, stationery and business card printing software tools to effectively market, drive and close sales.
Print shop automation today is crucial
“In today’s economy, print shop automation is not a choice – it’s a path to survival and profitability,” said Slava Apel, CEO of Amazing Print Tech. Let’s look at some of the ways printers are automating their workflows, sales, order flow and estimating. Let’s start with sales. Sales automation can be done in multiple ways. The most cost effective way, and growing at an unprecedented 20% per year, is web-to-print. Web-to-print not only automates sales online from both existing B2B clients and new retail clients, but it also dramatically reduces the time spent on every order – eliminating billing, preflight, proofing and about 20 other time-consuming and profit-eroding steps.
As I clicked through InfoTrends comparison matrix, it revealed that the front-running company with the most features and most automation covering more technologies than anyone else is Canada’s Amazing Print Tech with its flagship product eCardBuilder. You’ve likely seen its online design on the most popular franchises and independent printing sites – you just didn’t know that Amazing Print Tech was behind them. Its software enables users to turn a printer’s website into an online design studio with over 20 million (yes, million) different images and templates. eCardBuilder also allows a printer’s customers to upload their own files quite easily, get instant pricing, or set up corporate accounts.
“What matters most to printers, is how many new sales the software can deliver that are touch-free,” said Apel. “Customers want to be able to design online or to upload their design and receive exactly what they have seen on the screen,” he added. “Printers should not be spending their time on smaller orders. They should increase profitability by going straight from an internet order all the way to their presses in as seamless a manner as possible. With eCardBuilder’s workflow of marketing, to order to production, to post sale follow-up, this is possible.”
In a perfect workflow, once a customer orders something online, the software should automatically take care of the rest of the touch points. Web-to-print does this efficiently. It eliminates cold calling, billing, proofing, accounting, imposition, scheduling, shipping and even client follow-ups. Virtually everything is automated. Furthermore, according to HP and Xerox, web-to-print orders going through a printing shop can be 500% to 2,900% faster compared to traditional methods. More importantly, studies have shown that for every $1 spent on printing, another $6 to $9 is spent on managing the print workflow in shops without automation.
The success behind Apel’s eCardBuilder has impacted literally thousands of printers across 16 countries. Amazing Print is also one of the top 100 vendors to the U.S. printing industry, one of the top 100 worldwide integration award winners in 2012 and 2013, and has helped literally thousands of printers worldwide since 1997. “Consumers are skipping the brick-and-mortar shopping experience and increasingly placing orders over a computer,” said Apel. “As revenue projections for e-commerce continue to rise across all industries, businesses can’t afford to miss out on a revenue-generating web presence.”
PrintSites2Go: Breakthrough online print marketing that a business can actually afford!
According to Aquent, even without the web-to-print component of designing online, it may cost up to $25,000 for an attractive, well-functioning e-commerce website that simply includes a price list and the ability for people to buy from you! For most printers I know, that website exists in one place only – fantasyland! The most difficult part of building a website is putting all of your prices into the site and all of the permutations of finishing options. Handling e-commerce and file uploads is also crucial.
In my investigation, another Canadian company, PrintSites2Go Inc. (www.printsites2go.com), seems to have overachieved in the realm of website design that is actually affordable to the average printer. The pioneering company delivers a turnkey platform equipped with 30 products pre-populated with over 55,000 price permutations and shipping dimensions for just under $150 per month (yes, $150). The solutions are all multilingual, multicurrency and multi-tax-coded. For further automation, PrintSites2Go comes with vendor management, where printers can outsource some products to their favourite trade printer, or print the products in-house. Users can also sell creative services or customized products.
With its simple mark-up engine, printers are able to save months of upfront work populating pricing data. Users can add unlimited categories and products. In addition, there are powerful reporting and analytics tools that yield clearly understandable and business-critical data. The company has also integrated an e-mail and coupon marketing component. Considering all these innovations, it’s no wonder that this company has overachieved and is continuing its expansion into other countries.
“Many other vendors have tried, but failed to bring to market an affordable turnkey web storefront system to the printing industry due to the hundreds of hours required for inputting pricing and shipping data,” said PrintSites2Go’s President Ming Leung. “What is really needed is a full-suite solution that minimizes set-up time and maximizes profitability. Sure, the larger commercial and trade printers embraced web-to-print a long time ago, but with many trade printers now offering retail, it’s getting more and more difficult to keep up. Their web sales are growing rapidly. Now, they are receiving orders at all hours of the day and taking money from the pockets of smaller and medium-sized printers. That’s where we come in. Our solutions are extremely price-friendly, printer-friendly and broker-friendly – and we have ten attractive templates to choose from,” he added.
We all know that most printers traditionally service clients in their local geographic areas. By getting optimized for search engine websites, a printer’s reach can extend beyond any border. Currently, U.S.-based customers are taking advantage of low Canadian print pricing. If we take a look at any successful North American printing website online, we see that over 90% of business comes from U.S. and 10% from Canada – so be ready for an influx of American orders if you use PrintSites2Go, said Leung.
Leung’s focus on helping small and medium-sized printers is understandable as well as inventive. Small firms dominate the commercial printing industry in Canada with 75% of companies employing fewer than 20 employees. Less than 3% employ more than 100 employees. So as you can see, this kind of Canadian-based technology is making a difference exactly where it needs to.
And while PrintSites2Go is indeed making a huge impact with printers across Canada, it plans to expand into the U.S. and international markets in the near future, taking its world-class online print marketing solutions worldwide. They already have a presence in the UK.
Both Amazing Print and Printsites2go will be at Print 13 September 8-12 in Chicago. It might be well worth your time to pay them a visit.
More information: www.amazingprint.com and www.printsites2go.com.
Don’t miss our early August webinar on Amazing Print and PrintSites2Go technologies showcased at Print 13
Graphic Arts Magazine, in conjunction with Print 13, is planning a timely, helpful pre-show webinar that will reveal the latest technologies from Amazing Print Tech, PrintSites2Go and perhaps other companies, that will be displayed at the Chicago show. Watch for special ongoing announcements and updates at www.graphicartsmag.com and in our weekly Thursday E-Newsletter, which you can subscribe to by visiting our website.