I recently wrote about the 2024 Online Print Symposium, calling out highlights from selected presentations. There are some additional insights to be gained, however, that could be labelled success factors for online printing companies, even if they were not specifically spelled out in the presentations. They can be grouped into seven themes.

Often, managers of online printing companies come from businesses outside the printing industry, such as telecoms and trade, or have a general management background. They are unhindered by long-held beliefs from the printing trade. Instead, they bring in their own view on how to market print and how easy procuring it should be, a belief they share with the modern print buyer or the consumer in B2C targeted businesses. Ordering should be as fast and intuitive as possible. It is the user experience that gets an order closed, not specs, tables, price lists, or technical language.

In all honesty, managers admitted that not all print procurement can be as easy as imagined. However, rethinking and questioning traditional processes goes a long way.