Northside Graphics managing director Gary White cited the keynote speech from web-to-print giant Vistaprint founder and Cimpress chief executive Robert Keane as one of the deciding factors in his decision to exhibit at next month's event.

White said the trade print site, which launched last September, will be using the show to “get across our core brand values”. 

“Because we are an upload-to-print trade service we are there to try and get the brand known and for people to put a face to an internet company and understand what we do,” said White. 

“We really want to hear the gentleman from Cimpress, which will attract a lot of people. Cimpress is a very large company and is doing a lot of things right so that will be really interesting, especially for anyone in the e-commerce space.”

Robert Keane’s keynote, ‘The future of print and mass customisation’, will take place on day one of the show at 9.15am.

“Pure trade shows without added value are not good enough. It’s a good thing to go see lots of equipment but if you’re not in the cycle and not looking to buy anything then there’s no reason to go, unless there’s somebody interesting speaking,” said White.

He added that TradeDigitalPrint is yet to decide whether to exhibit at any other UK trade shows but that it would be using PrintWeekLive! as a “barometer”.

TradeDigitalPrint was formed by White to supply a trade-only web-to-print service. It complements DigitalPrinting.co.uk, Northside’s B2B venture. 49-staff Northside, which refers to itself as being the “oldest and largest digital printing company in Northern Ireland”, has sales of around £4.5m.