Micropress has opted to commission its own bespoke web to print system after an initial dalliance with an off the shelf package, helping it to launch new customised print websites.

The web to print journey of Micropress contains an element that will be familiar to many printers: the initial foray with an off the shelf package and the struggle that followed as limitations and extra costs dogged the moves that it hoped to make.

Instead of flitting between software vendors looking for the right fit however, the company has taken matters into its own hands, and had a programme written for it by a web developer customer. This has cost £30,000 at a conservative estimate, but it gives Micropress what it wants, and allows the Reydon, Suffolk printer to move forward with ambitious plans in the B2C sector.

Already it has a website called Grabmi, selling products such as customisable posters, canvas prints, greeting cards and calendars. Soon to launch is another website, Skin Public, which will offer personalised covers for mobile phones, tablets and other digital devices. Micropress is a £12 million turnover company that still accrues most of its revenue from its substantial litho printing capacity. Digital print, via Xerox narrow format and Epson and Mimaki wide format devices, accounts for only about half a million pounds of the turnover. A decision to target consumers with personalised items in this way might therefore be seen as a major step in a new direction.

Head of sales Rob Cross explained: ‘If you can be successful in B2C, the rewards are far greater, but a mix of B2C and B2B is best. We are a relatively big litho printer and the sales people are looking at big turnover. Digital and web to print takes a different mentality. You can spend quite a while putting a B2B site together for things like business cards, and it might only be worth £5000 per year. We need that mentality as a business to approach our customers and try to set that out.’

The company bought ThinkInk, a digital printing operation, around six years ago, which was already doing B2C work. It does, therefore, have experience already in this area, and is familiar with the customer service demands that come with it. The plan is to move the ThinkInk site over to the new web platform eventually, which will give it greater flexibility.

Flexibility is in fact the watchword for Micropress and was the major frustration with its previous web to print venture. ‘Off the shelf packages have a lack of flexibility,’ Mr Cross continued. ‘If you want to do something different it’s an extra cost and a bolt on. You can invest a lot of money without any return. They are far better suited to B2B because the product parameters are fixed. If you’re going to B2C offering a customised product, each one is different. You need far more flexibility.

‘You can offer a fixed product but the more you narrow it, the fewer customers you will get. You are competing with Vistaprint, Moonpig, Funky Pigeon to name but a few, and their stores are very impressive and give a whole array of options. You cannot compete with that using off the shelf web to print software.’

With the new platform, all the functions that Micropress might ever need will be built in. The company can create a site, B2B or B2C, and turn on the functions that it needs for that site. If another function needs to be added quickly, then Micropress has complete control of that.

‘I could come up with an idea today, get hold of the domain, and we could have the site live and selling within a week,’ explained Mr Cross. ‘If it works, then great; if it fails, then we can just shut the site and we’ve only lost the cost of purchasing the domain. It gives us the flexibility to dip our toe in the water in different markets.’

He added that Micropress also believed it could make the buying experience better for customers with its own software. With its old software, customers would see the attractive initial web page but when they went through the order process, the back end software had a much more basic look and feel. ‘That frightened people in itself, because of the contrast between the web page and the software; they might think “what am I going through to?”. With this, we can put imagery and colours and flash-up banners to match with the home page,’ he said.

With the nimbleness garnered from its new-found flexibility, it is certain that there will more new ideas coming along the Micropress conveyor belt.