Ecommerce is gaining a personal touch. In many aspects of printing it already has. But ecommerce extends well beyond photobooks, greetings cards, posters and other items which printers are responsible for creating as well as printing. The world of ecommerce extends well beyond these products and well beyond items that can be personalised on demand, either with a label or direct printing of a garment, or any number of promotional or novelty gift items.
There are large fulfilment businesses out there, Amazon being only the biggest, that package up and dispatch goods to millions of addresses where the only personalisation is the delivery note and address label. The business model is all about standardisation and efficiency, emphasising speed rather than a rapport with the end client.
Douglas Franklin wants to change this. Indeed he says things are already changing. “To enable their model, Amazon has needed a lot of standardisation,” he says. “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.”
If that is the case, Franklin is well placed in the middle of that battle. He is CEO of a company called Penny Black which has received £1.3 million in a latest funding round, half of it from Agfa Labs. The remainder has come from 9.5 Ventures, a more conventional venture capital funder which specialises in providing seed capital to move a start up to Series A funding and which, like Agfa, is located in Antwerp.
Agfa Labs is a little known part of Agfa (even to those who work at Agfa) which supports start up companies that can leverage some aspect of Agfa technology that it is not inclined to leverage itself. This is most frequently some R&D, analytics or scoping work carried out on a consultancy basis.
Penny Black is slightly different.
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.”
Its vision is to be able to print a personalised salutation or appreciation to insert in the box along whatever product the client has purchased, and which is not itself personalised. The insert, printed on the spot as the pack is being created offers the opportunity for full personalisation, becomes part of the unboxing experience, and is more likely to be read and recalled than an email message or a piece of direct mail sent separately.
After a launch earlier this year, there are some impressive figures: an average ROI of 300%, a £2 per recipient uplift in revenue(which is vastly more than SMS or post purchase emails) and improved retention, loyalty and conversion rates.
Penny Black is working with a range of fulfilment partners and brands including teas company Bird & Blend and jewellery retailer Paul Valentine. Its head of supply chain logistics is Stefani Donat, who says that there is immediate impact from the personalised experience of unboxing, adding: “Using Penny Black’s personalised approach we have seen 7% scan rates, resulting in a 15% conversion rate on second purchases.
One of the early partners is marketing automation business Klaviyo where strategic partnerships manager Jordan Bourchier-Lee adds: “This integration unlocks a new channel for our brands to continue communicating and building long term relationships with their customers. I love the concept of both hyper personalising the unboxing experience, whilst also encouraging customers to come back, check out new content, and, even, sign up to the newsletter.”
Penny Black is currently using a variety of desktop printers to do this, Epsons being a current favourite. The choice of print engine is matched to the customer and the fulfilment operation says Franklin.
“We look at a number of variables – where it sits in the warehouse is a very important factor,” he says. “We are using a variety of printers currently.”
The future may change. Penny Black is working with Agfa on a new device. “We are working with Agfa on using photonics technology about how and where it fits in the process. It is a very different technology.”
The core idea of photonic technology is to use laser energy to create a change in a suitable receptive medium. That might be a coating which under exposure from a laser creates a phase change. This is a concept shown by UK company Data Lase, now owned by Sato, and is being used by Ricoh on a high speed labelling line in Japan. The same core photonics concept can be used to write a digital image to photographic paper.
For Penny Black the idea is to be able to print variable pages in a variety of formats at the point of packing. This goes beyond adding a simple name. Just how far will depend on the customer. One is applying a geolocation layer, says Franklin, changing the information printed depending on the address of the end customer. Others want to trigger an offer according to the end consumer’s profile held in a CRM database. Images will also be changed to deliver the most suitable message. “It’s almost a 1:1 conversation,” he says.
Printing personalised messages off site, at a conventional digital print company results in a stack of printed sheets or folded letters that must be matched at the point of pack, which remains a largely manual operation. It adds a layer of complexity and additional tasks for the fulfilment business which is a barrier to adoption. Printing on demand changes this.
Penny Black will combine the customer data with message templates on the fly triggered by QR codes identifying the end customer to create the personalised message. And it goes beyond the page. Penny Black is already printing stickers that are applied to tissue paper wrappings.
Franklin wants more. “There is a huge opportunity through synthesising data and print. The technology has not be readily available before. Penny Black is well placed now that the technology is available.”
MORE FROM THE MAGAZINE
EXPLORE MORE ON PRINTED COMMUNICATIONS
