Founded by Terence Livingstone and Jonny Ucko and headquartered in Manchester, four-staff 3printprices has partnered with a number of online printers, including Saxoprint, Helloprint, Print 24, Mixam, Premier Print and Micropress, to create the platform.
Livingstone also founded Speedquote, an online estimating tool used internally by printers and buyers, and prior to that was managing director of litho specialist Record Printing for 10 years. Ucko, meanwhile, has worked as a print buyer and in marketing.
“We looked around at other industries that had price comparison websites and we think they share a number of characteristics: commoditised products, online providers and trusted brands. The penny dropped that printing had arrived at that gateway, with the emergence of online printing,” Livingstone told PrintWeek.
“And the savings that are available through the online printers, as long as you hit their commoditised products, make it a very compelling offer.
“We see great potential for making the print buying journey an easier, faster and cheaper experience. We love online printing and it’s a great opportunity for the printing industry to really improve the buyer journey.”
Run lengths that can be selected vary from tens through to hundreds of thousands and a raft of different paper sizes, types and finishes are listed.
A list of competitive quotes are generated after the buyer fills in a simple form detailing their job request, which can be ordered by metrics including price and delivery time. Once the preferred supplier is selected, the order is seamlessly progressed with no need to re-enter information.
“There’s no need to spend hours shopping around, or going to multiple sites, rekeying in the same information again and again. Everything can be done in one place, quickly and painlessly,” said Livingstone.
“There are also some great savings possible with general discounts, product discounts and special offers all easy to see.”
Among the products supported at launch are saddle-stitched and perfect bound brochures, leaflets, flyers, business cards and posters. More are set to be added in the near future, according to Livingstone, including calendars and roll-up banners.
The site, which mines data from partners' sites in a variety of different ways, including APIs, has officially gone live today (9 September), following a beta phase.
3printprices will get commission from its online printer partners on orders completed through the site. Livingstone said the printers involved were carefully selected based on qualities including their service offering and ratings on sites such as Trustpilot. He added that more firms could be added to the platform in the future.
“Each one adds value. If they didn’t have their own individual sweet spots, whether that’s on a particular product, on turnaround times, or from a service perspective, then we wouldn’t entertain them.”
He concluded: “Most insurance and flight deals now are done through price comparison websites, so we see that the potential for print is massive based on the fact that online printing is getting bigger and also because price comparison websites are ubiquitous in other industries.”
