With 250 participants, the Online Print Symposium was a success - Inspiration came from Insight Pitches with six innovative start-ups - important insights and thought-provoking ideas for success in online print.

Twelve top-class speakers, six innovative start-ups, 13 partner businesses in the exhibition - and 250 participants from all over Europe and the world: The Online Print Symposium returned with a "big bang" after the forced break in 2021 due to corona and celebrated a thoroughly successful event in the Science Congress Center Munich. True to the motto "Start Up and Print Online!", the leading event of the online print industry was not only about the lessons learned from the last two years, but above all about how a successful "restart" after the pandemic can be achieved.

Able to act even in times of crisis
Roland Keppler provided valuable input right at the start of the 9th Online Print Symposium. The CEO of Onlineprinters steered the group of companies carefully through the pandemic years. Among his takeaways from the crisis was the realization that market volatility is here to stay - but that good internal communication can keep the company in a position to act. He says it is important, both as a company and as an industry, to have your own approach to the challenges of this time, to prepare realistically for a prolonged crisis and to think in terms of scenarios. For online printing, Keppler sees various trends that will drive developments in the coming years: The shift from offline to online, consolidation in the market, internationalization, changing customer needs, and the issue of sustainability. Those who take these developments into account in their business model can sustainably increase their company value, even in times of crisis.

Online print is recovering, but needs to be rethought
Bernd Zipper, Managing Director of zipcon consulting and co-organizer of the OPS, also provided an outlook on developments in online printing. After the Corona pandemic brought a slump to the printing industry, the signs are pointing to recovery, at least in online printing, as shown in particular by the top 5 online printers in the DACH region. The fact that print is now also more expensive in view of the shortage of paper and rising energy prices is accepted by the majority of the market. Nevertheless - or precisely because of this - it is the order of the day to rethink online print. The run-of-the-mill web store has had its day, print buyers are looking for alternatives and demanding new services. Online print providers are therefore called upon not to stand still, to create trust and to interact with customers. After all, that was the good news of his presentation: a paradigm shift is emerging. Online-generated print revenues are rising steadily and will overtake traditional print revenues for the first time by 2025.

Diversity, mistakes in online printing and digital leadership
But how a company is structured internally also influences its success. Hanne Dinkel, Chief Customer Delivery Officer of the Spread Group, spoke about the importance of diversity, new forms of work, and English as a company language - especially when it comes to recruiting specialists. Digital leadership expert Haeme Ulrich from Morntag GmbH also reported on new approaches to corporate and employee management. He provided plenty of food for thought with theses such as "manage work - lead people" or "the customer is a partner, not king". Thomas Völcker, Managing Director of the online print shop topp-druckwerkstatt.de, on the other hand, shared his experiences on the way from a classic digital to an online print shop. And Ramon van Wingerden, CEO and founder of the Dutch software company Prindustry, took OPS visitors along with him into the developments of the online print industry in the BeNeLux region.

Insight pitches: Start-ups attract attention
A particular highlight on the first OPS Day were also the insight pitches, in which six start-ups were able to present themselves. Among them were:

Hoodie Hoo, which combines software and creator solutions with API-driven textile production in Izmir to enable small, customized batch sizes

Printess, whose creators demonstrated how to easily manage complex products with strong margins,

Lox Solution, which uses AI-driven technologies to detect inconsistencies in the logistics process and help save lots of money,

Design'n Drink, which specializes in digital printing on aluminum cans,

FotoSystem, a cloud-based photo management, mass customization and print platform, and

Imprimu, whose CEO and founder Miki Rubin provided insight into the online print world of Latin America.

And the partner companies of the associated exhibition were also featured prominently in the truest sense of the word, namely in entertaining video clips very much in the style of "The Lion's Den".

Inkjet printing as a growth market
On the second day of the Online Print Symposium, the focus was first on a technology that has emerged as a true all-rounder in recent years: inkjet printing. Carles Farre, CEO of HP Pagewide Industrial, spoke about the rapid growth in print volumes produced in high-speed inkjet, the tension between supply chain challenges and increased customer demands - and how the value of digital production printing is increasing as a result. He cited the benefits of end-to-end inline production, talked about automation, and described the potential that lies in combining technology and data analytics. In addition, the topic was productivity: after all, 7.5 hours instead of seven days of production time, as he showed with a customer example, has long been a reality.

Business models, Amazon Custom and crowdtesting
In addition to the production technology itself, it is also important to have the right business model - and to constantly question and adapt one's own strategy, as Andreas Otto, CCP of the albelli-Photobox-Group, emphasized and demonstrated using his own example. Karim-Patrick Bannour from Marktplatz 1 spoke about the opportunities and risks behind Amazon Custom, Amazon's service for offering personalized products. Other presentations on the second day of the event dealt with the topic of user experience and how crowdtesting can help to guide users through their own web stores as easily and successfully as possible. The speaker was Georg Hansbauer from Testbirds. Christian Weyer from Zaikio, on the other hand, dealt with the question of what comes after the "computer colleague" and what software should be able to do in order to meet the requirements of the 21st century.

A panel discussion between Ulrich Stetter (President of Intergraf), Ulrich Schätzl (member of the Dscoop Board) and the moderators Jens Meyer (printXmedia) and Bernd Zipper (in his capacity as Chairman of the Initiative Online Print) also focused on how print companies can generate both more value and more business in the future despite all the challenges.

After the OPS means before the OPS
The Online Print Symposium 2022 has successfully returned and provided invaluable inspiration and food for thought, as well as many opportunities for networking. Now it's time to make a note of the date for the next OPS: The who's who of the online print world will meet as usual in Munich on March 23 and 24, 2023. Then there will be plenty to celebrate, because next year the Online Print Symposium will be ten years old.

The organizers
zipcon consulting GmbH is a globally active consulting company for the communications, print, and media industry with a focus on online print and digital transformation. The company sees itself as an independent and holistic technology and strategy consultancy. Zipcon also produces market studies and various case studies for e-business print, mass customization, and multichannel publishing. Leading companies in the online print industry rely on the expertise of this company. www.zipcon.de 

The German Printing and Media Industries Federation (Bundesverband Druck und Medien e.V. / bvdm) is the central association of the German printing industry. As an employers' association, political trade association and technical trade association, it represents the positions and objectives of the printing industry vis-à-vis politics, administration, trade unions and the supplier industry. The bvdm is supported by eight regional associations. It is organized internationally through its membership of Intergraf and FESPA. www.bvdm-online.de