Web 2 Print has been around since the 1990s, when it was first shown at a Seybold conference in San Francisco. That implementation was used to streamline the order and production of business cards, and since then the technology and its uses have expanded to be an almost universal requirement for print service providers. The advantage is quick job onboarding without the need for a CSR’s touch, and if you have an automated production workflow, it can eliminate or minimize the need for any operator intervention. 

Many B2C (Business to Consumer) print service providers using Web 2 Print have found their product niche and try to stay out of the race to the bottom on pricing. However, an increasing percentage of printers have found that B2B Web 2 Print implementations can provide a better way to engage and serve their customers that have a structured and constrained print product need with limited variability. Since not all customers’ needs can fit that requirement, based on studies I have done, for B2B implementations it usually accounts for no more than 30% of the total work of a commercial printer. However, it is still a profitable solution. So can it work for packaging, and to what extent?

There is a growing increase in orders for short-run on-demand packaging to satisfy shifting consumer purchasing requirements and operate at the “speed of retail.” Using what has been learned from commercial Web 2 Print implementations, there is also a desire to use it for packaging onboarding. While the B2C and B2B models of implementation and constraints on variability still exist with packaging, converters are finding levels of complexity not seen in commercial print.