The group has created a separate brand and website for the new Nettl Now offering, which was previewed at its Expoganza event in London last week.
The four-hour service, billed as “the new-fangled way to get printing and display, when you downright must have it today” will go live in Manchester on 27 February, with production at the group’s Trafford Park hub.
Chief executive Peter Gunning said the plan was to roll out the service in other major cities, using the group’s network of partners.
“We already have people asking for same day print so we know demand is there, and this is a way to offer a real value-added service,” he said. “We’ve created a dedicated, straightforward website that is entirely focused on same-day products, with no options that would slow down production.”
The suite of products available encompasses business cards, leaflets and flyers, reports and booklets, and banners and posters. Jobs are uploaded, pre-flighted and sent to the production site, which then has to produce the job within three hours, ready to be collected for delivery.
It has partnered with UK Mail for the delivery aspect. The firm has more than 2,000 same day delivery vans in its fleet and offers live driver tracking. The delivery collection is booked automatically at the same time as the order is placed.
“We worked out that to have something delivered within an hour, you’re looking at a five mile radius. So the job needs to be made near the client. Our aim is to be in all the major cities,” Gunning explained.
He said pricing would be premium, but still had to be competitive. “It is a premium service and you can charge more for same day delivery than next day delivery, but it still has to feel like value for the customer,” he added.
Gunning intends to set up ten pilot sites initially, and is already in conversation with potential partners in the Grafenia network, billed as “Nettl Now makers”.
“We’re offering it to people we know first, then we will open it up to people beyond our group partners.”
He said partners would need to have digital or large-format kit, or both, and will be on-boarded to the system after they have successfully produced a set of certification files to the required standard.
A number of printing companies already offer same day services for specific clients, but Gunning believes Nettl Now is the first such offering to do so via an open-to-all e-commerce site.
“It’s an experiment. Who knows that the typical order will be? We’ve got the network, the platform and the client base and we’re going to have a try.”
