After much industry chatter about which supplier(s) would provide web-to-print infrastructure to update the FedEx Kinko’s offering, the company ended up developing its own interface, launched last October as FedEx Kinko’s Print Online.  Prior to that, the company had four different online job submission options, including Print to a FedEx Kinko’s, Web Order, File, Print FedEx Kinko’s and DocStore. Print Online replaces the first two.

WhatTheyThink spent time at FedEx Kinko’s Print Online to see how the interface worked compared to previous versions.  In previous generations, although it was not always clear which interface was best for which specific type of application, I had tried them all and found that they were fine for simple job submission, but fell short of expectations when a job became more complex, especially if you were trying to submit a job that consisted of multiple components.  That is, with the exception of DocStore, which is a catalog-based storefront that is targeted at FedEx Kinko’s larger corporate customers.

With the new FedEx Kinko’s Print Online, the company has done a nice job of providing a simple user interface that has a surprising level of functionality. Our readers, especially print service providers who have not yet implemented a web-to-print solution, should take a look.  As we have been warning for some time, FedEx Kinko’s, along with the office superstores, are rapidly improving their functionality and broadening their offerings, and they continue to eat into the lower end of the market which has previously been the province of small commercial and quick printers. Add to the online functionality the convenience of a national—and even international—footprint, and particularly in the case of FedEx Kinko’s, the growing integration with the FedEx distribution network—these non-traditional competitors are poised to present a formidable competitive threat to the approximately 20,000 small commercial and quick printers with less than 20 employees in the U.S., and their counterparts in other parts of the world.