It started with photobooks. Then came individual books Then personalised posters, greetings cards, Santa sacks, wall art, maps, playing cards, T-shirts, drinking straws and with a vast potential stretching into the future. This is the market for personalised products, sold via the internet and where digital printing comes into its own.
This is an opportunity for printers to deal directly with the public and to reap the rewards of the online shopping boom. There is no chasing for payment as customers are charged upfront before printing and through credit card or Paypal.
It adds up to an opportunity that more printers are considering or have already taken up. It means that the development of websites that sit alongside the existing corporate website that sells their services to the traditional customer base for print, namely the collection of brands, businesses and designers, and listing capabilities and perhaps machinery. Members of the public do not care how something is printed, just that it will arrive on Wednesday.
Some printers, rather than set up their own online business, are working with the creator community where micro businesses design books, posters and more, making use of technology to come up with personalised products and to market these through social media and craft markets perhaps. It leaves the printer to execute the orders and deliver direct to the consumer’s home. Another approach is to join a network where distribute and print decisions are made by a third party.
It is a huge opportunity, one that has fuelled investment in Gelato, Printify, Printful, Cloudprinter and others in the last year. These are technology businesses rather than printers and they have attracted investment that has given rise to valuations of billions of euros. No other area of the printing industry is currently anywhere near as attractive for investors.
In a world where products have been commoditised and where almost anything can be purchased, what matters to many consumers is possession of something unique and personal to them. And a printed map showing an adventurous cycle route with timing intervals, a map highlighting locations visited on a gap year adventure, a map that ties into the family tree – are unique momentoes, special and available through a website that can consolidate hundreds and thousands of orders to make the run of one print business viable.
For many printers this is an opportunity to exploit a particular skill or experience in a sector. Ed Oakes, managing director at Spingold, did exactly this. He has been a keen poker player for many years so understands many of the nuances of the playing card market before launching a website where visitors can buy standard poker or bridge decks, tarot cards and of course playing cards that have a personal image or message on the back. The consumer facing website is Print From Your Sofa, a brand that appeals to someone at home, not to a corporate buyer.
For others it can be better to work with the creators or with those that can handle the marketing and customer facing technology.
“We do a little bit of work direct with creators on Where The Trade Buys,” says Precision Proco chief executive Gary Peeling. “They might be selling personalised wrapping paper or greetings cards via an Etsy site. We consider them to be businesses rather than individual consumers and it is a big and growing part of what we do and a big part of the strategic thinking behind the acquisition of the Photobox production site.”
The factory in Park Royal is perhaps the largest producer of wall art in the country, offers many otherwise standard products decorated with personalised images. And there are many more items being added.
For Where The Trade Buys the opportunity is through consolidating orders from these micro businesses that might be spending £200-300 a week on print production into a much larger revenue stream.
An API will connect into the Woocommerce or similar application that handles the order and payment process and collects the data that the printer needs to feed the production funnel.
“We used to consider these as business to business customers,” says Peeling, “but not in the traditional sense. They are creative resellers, perhaps transacting through their web presence or ordering some samples to go to craft markets and are taking orders there.”
The wedding invitation business has for example moved sharply away from the high street print shop into a vast online business where brides, their mothers and anyone else allowed to have an opinion, are able to browse a wide selection of designs and themes before choosing not only the wedding stationery, but also banners, wall decorations, personalised favours and more to make up the special day.
For many printers the swerve into serving the public has been an extension of selling personalised products to the traditional business to business customers, business cards for example, which have increasingly gone online. The underlying interface technology is the same, although the actual design of the interface and language will be different.
In many cases the production technology will be the same, namely a digital press and folder/creaser and guillotine for greetings cards or multi finisher for a broader range of products, a roll to roll inkjet printer for posters and so on. Over time further value added finishes may be needed: foil and varnish for invitations, for example.
Proper Goose has gone further than most. The Molesey company has invested in a Duplo DuSense to add a tactile finish to the backs of playing cards and more. “We have a lot of different items of printing equipment,” says director Luke Gosling, “but we do not consider ourselves to be a conventional printing company. When we are printing one item at a time, it doesn’t matter to us if we are printing a single item or 5,000 of the same or different designs.”
What matters is the automation to take what the consumer has placed in his or her basket at check out, to run it through the different processes, combine the separate items in an order and then ship them to meet customer expectations on delivery. At the outset this does not matter. The flow of orders is not overwhelming and a printed job ticket will suffice. As business grows, automation will be necessary. It will also be necessary to track the flow of a job, relaying that information to the customer if required as a reassurance that something is happening with the order.
The DuSense was installed to add something extra. “A lot of companies in the personalised products market also have flatbed UV machines, so we have to do more.”
Added value finishing also includes flood and spot varnish, laser die cutting, which combined or alone can enhance the finished product and make it more tempting for buyers. This also feeds a need for continuous innovation. What was a best seller one season can become stale by the next.
This can be a matter or working with a group of local artists or designers to sell cards or prints of a local area, which will naturally evolve over time. There is also a need to keep an eye on products that can be personalised and that through dye sub or transfer printing can gain the value enhancing personal touch. Proper Goose has a nice line in tins which become containers for grandad’s finishing tackle, for grandma’s biscuits, for sister’s pencils, sweets and so on, thanks to digital printing.
“We have to be conscious about cost,” says Gosling, “otherwise people will not click on the payment button. We also have to deliver consistency and to get the shipment out on time.” The penalty for not doing this is a bad review on Trustpilot, the online review site that has become essential for trading directly with the public. At one time a Paypal account was enough to provide that confidence. Now the bar has been raised.
“Five years ago, Paypal was a guarantee that people could trust you. Trustpilot has taken over. People are worried that they will not be getting what they see in the photo online, so it’s important to have reviews through an external site. Otherwise people will go to Amazon or Not On The High Street. You have to make visitors stick.
“And people are impatient. They will want it now without realising the number of steps that go into production of a personalised item. It is not always printing a generic paper item,” says Gosling. It means that the company has to hold stock for enhancing, has to have quality checking procedures before packing and shipping and it has to have a back up plan should a piece of machinery fall over. “We are always faced with different problems,” he explains.
There are videos to show how the company handles jobs and there is extensive social media activity, blogs, reviews and a section introducing the team – to give the people a face which the behemoths of online shopping cannot do. “People don’t want to see just product shots,” he says.
With one gift season now over, Valentine’s Day and Easter provide more opportunities, Proper Goose is starting to focus on workflow automation. Something is needed to pull and group together similar orders from different platforms to improve production efficiencies, which given the range of print technologies and options is as much as Proper Goose can aim for he says.
Then there is investment into new equipment for printing directly to cylindrical items and research into what sorts of items can be included. This will include printing directly to beer or gin glasses, packed in a personalised carton which will be enhanced with effects from the DuSense.
The Proper Goose journey started with production of First Day Covers for stamp collectors, quickly mutating into production of personalised gifts.
It set up a web shop to offer web to print production of many photo products under the getitprinted.co.uk name. Managing director Darren Bacon then launched a spin off, jigbox.co.uk, as a site specialising in selling personalised jigsaw puzzles to consumers, whether jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts buying puzzles for themselves; parents, grandparents and other relatives buying puzzles for youngsters; marketers choosing an interesting promotional item.
Colourfast Financial is still a printer offering rapid turnaround of research reports and documents needed by customers in the City. It acquired the first KM1 B2 inkjet press in the UK. Because this uses UV ink, it can print on a wide range of substrates at very high quality and with a resilient finish.
The orders are paid for, processed, packaged and posted to be delivered (Royal Mail allowing) two or three days later. This is a significant improvement on some of the big online jigsaw sites in operation.
The likes of Alizé in France, Germany’s Ravensberger and Royal Jumbo Group in the Netherlands, sell standard or personalised puzzles across Europe. In the last year or so, guaranteeing prompt delivery into the UK has become troublesome at best.
“It means that they are letting people down,” he says. These sites also produce on behalf of high street names offering jigsaws as part of an online retail experience. “We had one customer call us distraught that the present would not be there for a birthday. If necessary we could get it to where it needs to be by tomorrow,” Bacon says. “There’s a premium for that service.”
Bacon is not himself a jigsaw enthusiast. Casting around for an opportunity for a nascent online print business he realised that Moonpig and Funky Pigeon had the greetings card market sewn up, that there was little point in addressing the business card market. Jigsaws were different.
“The competitors are from Germany and the Netherlands and Brexit have effectively shut these down. There is only one other company in the UK producing jigsaws like this,” he says.
The company looks at every image submitted through the website. “We would rather check everything ourselves than leave this to a software programme. If the image is not up to scratch, we call the client to say that the resolution is too low. They can supply another picture or choose to have a refund,” he says.
The file is printed on the company’s Konica Minolta KM1 B2 inkjet press before lamination to jigsaw board and die cutting. When it started there was a flatbed cutter. There has since been investment in a platen with 200 tonnes of pressure. This keeps the quality high, he says. The next investment will be an automated bagging machine to take the puzzle into a protective plastic bag and then to its box: either a standard lidded box with a picture of what the completed puzzle should look like, or to a new slimline 20mm deep box designed to slip through a British letterbox and so reduce postage costs.
The market for puzzles divides neatly between the very young and a much older demographic. The youngsters will receive 24- or 54-piece puzzles that have been purchased as a gift. Older buyers will choose to buy a 750- or 1,000-piece puzzle. There is nothing in between because research has shown that teenagers and young adults do not do or buy puzzles.
The return purchase is made easier by a subscription package, sending out a puzzle each month for a year, with a marked reduction on the equivalent unit price. This is constantly refined to find out what works best in attracting subscribers.
“We think that the subscription is the best way forward, and we are looking at different subscription packages with a different period between sending out each new puzzle.
“The most popular format is the 1,000 piece puzzle,” he says. “Portraits and family pictures are the most popular, then pets, weddings and other parties, especially at Christmas and New Year.”
The company can attend these or other events – race day parties or celebrations are typical – where an onsite photo booth can take pictures of the celebrations and the consumer receives a puzzle from the day to remember. A phone app that is coming this year will also make it easier to move from a photo opportunity to a thud on the doormat.
Puzzles destined to be a promotional item will have fewer pieces, the idea being to reveal the logo or brand image without taking up too much time. One of the first orders received was one for 150 puzzles made from acrylic.
There is plenty of scope for further promotional puzzles, Bacon believes. There is plenty of opportunity as consumers increasingly seek individuality and gifts that are personal to them and their loved ones.
Human nature says that we like to be surrounded by items that have emotional meaning for us and that is what printers working in this way are tapping into. It is an opportunity where the surface has only just been scratched.
