The firm, which launched its European wing at Drupa, has clinched a deal to manage half of Polestars annual outsourcing work, which is worth 60m over four years. It has also won the deal to supply Polestar with a print production website, which the firm is rolling out in August. Polestar is investing 2m in PolestarOnline.com.

The firms have been engaged in long-term talks and were at one stage considering partnering on an exclusive basis in Europe.

Polestars backer Investcorp has made its first entrance into the dotcom world putting up half of the firms 13.5m ($20m) initial funding. Httprint is currently in the process of attracting a further 24m finance to fund further expansion globally prior to floating within a year.

The site aims to match printers and customers based on geographic area and product type. Following a request for quote the customer is put in touch with three suitable printers to bid for the work. Were not interested in being an auction house, said Hibbert.
He plans to make the firm a complete print portal. I want it to be open on the print industry's desktop all the time, he stated. Aside from ordering and job management, the firm is looking to add further services, including consumables sales. One opportunity is to sell consumables, he said. The most expensive area of the market to sell to is the small to medium. We can cut the costs to sell to that sector and pass some of the saving back to the customer.

The firm is also employing experienced production staff to provide online support and feedback and will offer a complete project management service covering all stages of the print production process.

Printers pay an upfront fee followed by a 1% commission on every job in the first year, shrinking to 0.5% the following year and 0.25 the year after that.

To meet the need of job planning, file transfer and proofing, it has developed agreements with printCafe, Vio and RTImage.

Story by Barney Cox