High, higher, highest: There are industries that have done anything but suffer as a result of the Corona pandemic and the lockdowns but have instead enjoyed the business of a lifetime. For example, various online retailers. And software companies whose tools make online commerce possible in the first place.
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Necessity is the mother of invention: Lidl and Kaufland are currently demonstrating how to secure resources. The Finnish paper manufacturer Stora Enso has announced that the Schwarz Group, to which the discounters mentioned above belong, will become the new owner of the Maxau paper mill. The takeover can be seen as one thing above all: As a commitment of the Schwarz Group to printed matter.
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Twelve percent more sales, nine percent rise in gross profit: figures that many a print service provider could only dream of. Cimpress is reporting new record figures both in the fourth quarter and for the 2022 financial year as a whole and will not starting its new financial year with a “business as usual” attitude.
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Without much press hype, the news fluttered into the company’s own newsletter: Cimpress has made a strategic investment in CloudLab AG, it said, in order to make the cooperation even closer in the future. But what is the background to the strategic partnership and what will it change for the software developer’s existing customers? Beyondprint asked CloudLab founder and CEO Marc Horriar.
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Axel Lilienblum is a physicist. Technically, that is. But today he is one thing above all: the founder of Grow.Photos, a start-up founded last year that takes a completely new approach to the subject of photo books. Grow.Photos is a photo book that literally grows with the user and is a subscription-based model.
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Between the energy and paper crises, the situation remains tense for companies in the printing industry. In the second quarter of the year, the online print shops recorded in the ZOPI, the Zipcon Online Print Price Index, continued to pass on the cost increases to their customers almost without exception.
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Something is happening in the print job intermediary market: Cloudprinter, Dutch developer and provider of the global print API platform of the same name, has received seven million euros in seed capital in an investment round led by Capital Mills. The backers are Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM) and a Dutch family office.
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It all started with an algorithm that matches print job requirements with production machine specifications and immediately outputs prices. A few years later, the Cologne-based start-up sourc-e has become a full-service print broker that, with a team of 40 and an international network of 250 print shops, is rethinking the purchasing of print products and, above all: digitizing them.
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Whether we like it or not, anyone who runs an online store, no matter what products it focuses on, will be compared to Amazon. That’s because the number 1 online marketplace sets the benchmark when it comes to checkout. Online print shops likewise have to contend with the expectations this creates on the customer side.
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A week ago, at #BOPE22 – the Benelux Online Print Event 2022 – in Antwerp, the motto was “Back to e-Business.” But what does this e-business – or more correctly digital commerce – actually look like for print shops in the future, now that Corona has reshuffled the cards? On the one hand, I’m sure it will be simpler and more personal for customers, and on the other hand, it will be “headless” – and THAT, in turn, has nothing whatsoever to do with headless business.
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