After Thursday (31 January), Exaprint.co.uk will no longer exist and its website will redirect to Tradeprint’s new web-to-print trading platform, which was launched in June last year. Exaprint's UK customers will have to reset their passwords on the new site, but will be otherwise unaffected by the move.
Tradeprint and Exaprint, both subsidiaries of Cimpress, merged their respective teams at the start of 2017. No jobs losses are expected at either the offices in London or the production site in Dundee.
A single customer services operative was the only team member who was “100% Exaprint”, according to Tradeprint managing director Charlene Douglas, and he has also transferred over.
Douglas said: “This was a long time coming. We had worked on creating an e-commerce print site for Tradeprint that was far superior to anything we had before, and we have now finally reached a point where we are confident that we can seamlessly migrate customers.
“Exaprint was a secondary brand and Tradeprint was the big one. Merging them allows us to refocus on all customers on a single, unique platform. Customer migration is never 100% but our best efforts have shown that Exaprint customers will see more interaction and attention now they are served by Tradeprint.
“Our next step is to continue to work to delight our customers, exceed their expectations and build the best print experience in the UK.”
Exaprint was originally brought under the Cimpress wing in 2015 when the group took a 70% stake its original parent, French company Exagroup, in a €91.5m (£79.5m) deal.
With the transition, the new Tradeprint entity will introduce a number of new products to its extensive trade print offering – the new portfolio features silver and gold foiled business cards and flyers, NCR books, pads and sets, pop-up stands, SRA1 unfinished sheets and postcards.
Douglas, who replaced Simon Cooper in the top job in November last year, will continue to oversee the new version of Tradeprint serving a UK market of print buyers.
In November, parent company Cimpress reported “disappointing” sales growth across the international group in Q3 2018 with a jump of 5% to $558.98m (£425.1m).
Sales growth at the Upload & Print division, which includes Tradeprint, Exaprint, Pixartprinting and WirMachenDruck was “substantially below” the prior year, with sales increasing by 7% to $172m.
Douglas said that, as of the merging of Tradeprint and Exaprint, she was “very pleased” with the latest growth figures at her own Cimpress subsidiary. She said the refocus under a single brand was also expected to drive growth over the coming year.
