Agfa Graphics announced today the launch of :Apogee StoreFront, the new cloud-based software solution that gives print service providers the ability to market their services and products using the internet. 

This web-to-print solution makes it easy to set up online stores or ‘storefronts’ for both printed and non-printed products.  Such stores can either be used for business to business communication with a particular company or :Apogee Storefront can be used to set up public storefronts that target a much wider audience. In either case :Apogee StoreFront is ideally suited for printers that want to expand their business or plan to strengthen their presence to a broader audience with additional services. 

“:Apogee StoreFront fits within the industry trend of printers evolving to become print or marketing service providers,” said Laurens Leurs, Product Manager for :Apogee StoreFront at Agfa Graphics. “We developed StoreFront as a cloud service so that printers do not have to invest in hardware or additional bandwidth. They don’t need expertise in web development or internet security either. Printers can focus on extending their service offering and use :Apogee StoreFront to improve customer retention” 

The Online Editor in :Apogee StoreFront lets print buyers design or edit their own documents. Occasional users will appreciate the easy-to-use forms that allow them to personalize pre-defined business cards, letterhead or other business documents. Power users will like the advanced editing capabilities for creating or adapting visually rich, multi-page publications. With the Online Editor, printers offer their customers an innovative way of creating personalized print. 

:Apogee StoreFront is launched at drupa 2012 and integrates seamlessly with :Apogee Prepress 8, also launched at drupa. Print orders from webshops can be processed by any of the 8000 :Apogee Prepress systems deployed worldwide. :Apogee Prepress 8, however, automatically downloads and processes orders from :Apogee StoreFront. This increases the printer’s efficiency in handling both offset and digital print jobs.