The trend towards online shopping has prompted Web-to-print specialist Vpress partner with design and online marketing company Making Websites Better (MWB). Together they are offering PSPs a ‘CloudtoPrint’ package, with a promise of a ROI "within days".
“The pandemic has massively accelerated an existing trend where physical retail and manual ordering processes were giving way to online specification and purchasing. But we have seen ten years of market evolution compressed into one,” said Kelvin Bell, sales director at Vpress. “It has been like a tsunami, and there is no going back. Printers need to fundamentally understand that ecommerce is now their shop front, their sales team, marketing engine, automated account management system and revenue generation platform all rolled into one. It is not about competing on price - it’s about leveraging your specialisms.”
Bell added that those PSPs that haven’t moved to ecommerce within the next two years “will cease to be relevant - they will be out manoeuvred by competitors and their business will rapidly be adversely affected. I really wish it wasn’t that stark, but it really is.”
Richard Downham, business development manager at MWB, said: “The conversations we are having with printers is that the solutions that are currently out there on the market are very much aimed at much larger organisations. Specifically, they are not suitable for a ‘little and often’ business-to-consumer print business model.
“We are building on the rich business-to-business expertise from Vpress and now opening up an opportunity for print business to be much more effective in the business-to-consumer space. They can do this by simply by having a professional, effective, solid and up to date Web presence and scalable ecommerce platform.”
MWB founder and MD Paul Warren, pointed out: “With our CloudtoPrint partnership with Vpress we can get printers fully set up, working, and making money from taking their business online, without huge investment costs, long time delay and risk taking. Return on investment needs to be within days, not months. We can deliver that.”