Agfa Labs has joined venture capital company NinePointFive in funding Penny Black, a UK start up that proposes to add personalised printed messages in packages of items bought through websites.
The company will manage fleets of printers that sit alongside packing staff located in fulfilment hubs. These will print personalised letters, leaflets and promotional flyers to say thank you and to promote further related purchases. Some fulfilment operations have added promotional printed literature to ecommerce packages, but these have been preprinted, neither printed on demand nor personalised.
To date personalised communications of this sort can be supplied with photo products, posters and books where the printer is producing, wrapping and posting the product to the end customer. It has not been available to merchants selling jewellery, cosmetics and higher value items which are not themselves printed.
These items are processed through large fulfilment operations, Amazon being the largest. Penny Black CEO Douglas Franklin says: “To enable their model, Amazon has needed a lot of standardisation. Products will arrive in a limited range of packaging sizes. What is starting to change with some designs that can be printed on the packaging, helped by developments at Shopify. Flexibility and personalisation is the new battleground for fulfilment.”
The company has attracted £1.3 million in seed money shared equally between the two investors. Agfa Labs will also enable access to relevant technology from Agfa. This will include workflow software and potentially more in future. Agfa Labs exists to provide access to IP and experience that Agfa has built up, but which is not being applied in the products it makes and sells.
Agfa VP of strategy and corporate development Jorge Tomas says: “Penny Black’s holistic solution brings the best of digital to tactile personalisation, creating opportunities to build ever important brand loyalty. We are always striving to support and nurture innovation that will transform industries. With its integrated approach, leveraging data, technology and partnerships, Penny Black is on course to do just that.”
Currently Penny Black is using a range of different printers, many from Epson. The chosen machine will depend on a number of factors, depending on the end client. Early adopters have included purveyor of tea Bird & Blend, jeweller Paul Valentine and nursery decor provider the Modern Nursery. It is also working with digital marketing firms and ecommerce fulfilment specialists.
The early experience is more than encouraging with claims of an average return on spend of 300%, increased second purchase rates and a far higher impact than through post purchase SMS or email communications.
