Defining who was and who was not a printer used to be simple: possession of a printing press and customers who would take the printed products, combine them with other products or use the print to sell those products. Sometimes the printed item was the product, a book for example, but the purchaser was in almost all instances a professional, a business or organisation that understood what it wanted from the print supplier.
Those definitions no longer apply. The internet has shattered this traditional way of working. Printers can sell directly to end users, and many do, providing greetings cards, photobooks, invitations and more directly to individual purchasers of print. In many cases this is print that is enabled by digital printing and which could not exist before the rise of print technology and the online shop.
Now there is a huge swell of creative businesses, frequently side hustles or kitchen table start ups, without the established connections used to source print. And there is a group of companies that exist solely to fulfil these needs, delivering posters and wall art, T-shirts and cushion covers, wallpaper and personalised crockery. Are these companies printers? They certainly print or, like Gelato, enable their customers to specify print. And they are attracting eye watering amounts of investment, far more than any conventional print business might attract. The financial community does not see them as printers: these are internet companies and are judged alongside the likes of AirBnB, Uber, Deliveroo and perhaps even Facebook. Investors are looking to back companies that can grow rapidly and are betting that these companies can do this.
Printful is among this gaggle of businesses and is opening its first facility in the UK, in a vast space in Wolverhampton. This is a central location with good links into the transport network, and being based in the West Midlands, there is a ready pool of labour to call on. Some are former printers, some from retailers like Next, some from fast food, Greggs, for example. The first year target is for 50 staff.
Printful sets its stall on fast turnaround. “Being close to the customer and being able to deliver in 48 hours is crucial,” says international business development lead Davis Vasilevskis.
“With the UK leaving the EU and being a leading ecommerce market with a 60 million population, we had to be in the UK.”
It is not only the delays that can occur crossing borders now, there is the potential for huge confusion among customers. Sandra is typical. Customers use Paypal to make purchases from her Shopify store and Printful links seamlessly to the ecommerce platform. Until now one of Printful’s sites in Europe or the US would print and ship directly to her end customer. This can incur different import duties and worse, Paypal puts payments on hold for 21 days. Then people like Sandra want the carbon footprint to be as low as possible. “Would it be possible to transfer all my items to your UK base once you’re up and running?” she has asked.
Vasilevskis adds: “We will be able to provide almost everything from the UK plant, though some categories will not be available from the UK to start with.”
The UK plant is the ninth that Printful has opened since the company started as Startup Vitamins in the founder’s garage in 2013. International growth was not in the original business plan. The young business was about selling inspiration wall art, the sort with uplifting slogans imposed on a spectacular views of animals or landscapes, via an internet portal. “And we needed a printer to partner with us to do that, but there were no options. We realised there was an opportunity to fulfil and benefit online markets,” he says.
The first Printful site was opened in Los Angeles, followed by Charlotte, in North Carolina on the East Coast of the US. Expansion to Europe meant setting up in Latvia, something of a tech hub for ecommerce companies. There are directly owned operations in Barcelona, Poland, Mexico and Canada, with coverage from partners in Brazil, Australia and Japan. Today there are 1,800 staff and the company has invested £41.6 million in print technology.
After wall art the move to produce T-shirts was a natural extension. A white T-shirt is a blank canvas that allows someone to express their self and is easy to produce. Other products have followed.
Eight years later the company has revenues of $208 million and has opened a site in Dallas as well as Wolverhampton. All have presses to print the posters and T-shirts, others have differing capabilities according to demand. The proposition is all about the micro business. And those have been popping up like mushrooms throughout the Covid period.
“From a business perspective this has been helpful,” Vasilevskis explains. “People were not allowed to do AirBnB or Uber and were trying to find something else to make some money and Printful was there to turn to. You don’t have to go anywhere, you just have to make the sale – everything else is done by Printful. This is why we saw significant growth during the pandemic, as well as the general shift to ecommerce.” The question is the extent to which this has now become an ingrained habit. “We believe that the future is bright as people have adapted to the technology and ecommerce and trading online.
“A business can set up an ecommerce site and we take care of everything else, the business just has to focus on marketing and sales. There is no inventory to look after, no investment in equipment. Other than sales or marketing, everything else is handled by Printful,” says Vasilevskis. This is known as drop shipping. Printful buys in the blank T-shirts in bulk and in every possible size; quality of the product is crucial, likewise the wrapping and packing is of the standard that appears on YouTube and TikTok unwrapping videos. This is all explained, including the drawbacks, in a series of friendly videos on the Printful website.
The level of attention is core to the proposition. Others may use a network of approved suppliers to print and ship to strict SLAs. Printful wants the level of control that operating its own equipment brings. “We see value in controlling the process for clients who see that value as well. Customers can come from anywhere in the world and we try to deliver the same experience regardless. This means having the systems and infrastructure in the background, which involves continual investment in R&D,” he adds.
The development teams can be looking at potential products to add to the portfolio, at interfaces with the off the shelf ecommerce and website design applications that businesses will use, and interfaces into the printers and any finishing technology to keep the operation as slick and high quality as possible.
“We are very much open to new ideas for products, but we never announce anything before we are ready to launch,” Vasilevskis says. This makes good sense. Rivals might steal a march and there is room for disappointment should a product or the service not come up to scratch. Production has to be as simple and automated as possible in order to have the confidence to deliver the same item in precisely the same way anywhere in the world. The approach has worked for franchise businesses for many decades.
This dictates that the production platforms be identical in every location, hence the profusion of Kornit textile printers. Vasilevskis admits to these, but is tight lipped about other equipment that is used, though Epson printers appear in images on the corporate website.
The focus now is getting the UK up to speed. The plan is to have 50 staff within the year and to begin filling what can seem a vast space, and establishing Printful as a name to be reckoned with in the UK. Print on demand and drop shipping is not as well understood in this country as in the US, Vasilevskis says. “We are very hopeful that we can grow successfully. There is competition, some more or less a mirror of the Printful model, though limited in geography, and during lockdown more print on demand companies have sprung up. For Vasilevskis, this is expanding the pie rather than eating into Printful’s share. “This business model is still new. It’s growing and it’s why we are trying to educate potential customers that this is possible because the majority of the population do not understand what print on demand is, though momentum is growing in the UK.”
Print on demand is not restricted to the Etsy or Pinterest crowd. A growing number of large businesses are investigating print on demand either to manage stock levels or to bring new products to market. “Yes, we do have large companies looking at print on demand. It means that they don’t have to handle as much stock, so don’t have to discount it to shift it. And this is more environmentally friendly as well.”
As he says, print on demand for textiles is in its infancy. It can still develop in different directions to meet a spread of requirements as the market evolves. Some will grow rapidly, others will, no doubt, wither.
At the same time Printful continues to produce the inspirational wall art that it started with, and has them on display in the various locations around the world. Moreover, Printful can vouch for the fact that they are effective. Whatever the message on the wall of the converted garage where the business started out less than a decade ago was, it has propelled the start up to the company it is today. The issue of whether Printful is a print company or a fulfilment company does not seem to matter. It is a successful company, which is what matters.
