But Hardie, who retired from the board following the AGM on 20 July, said the firm was continuing to make progress with the commercial "exploitation" of Printing.com’s template technology, W3P, a web-to-print platform that allows businesses to access ‘cloud-based’ high quality graphic designs to apply to and personalise materials such as business cards or leaflets.

The announcement at last week's AGM comes after the firm posted a 28% increase in turnover for the year to 31 March 2012 to £28.1m from £17m. That was despite a slight pre-tax profit drop from £1.31m to £1.26m which was attributed to further investment in its template technology.

Printing.com chief executive Tony Rafferty said that softer trading during the summer was generally expected. "Add to that an appalling economic news flow at the moment and this is no big surprise. It will be the start of September until the UK sees a return to normal business levels, I think," he added.

Despite the current malaise Rafferty maintained a positive outlook: "Confidence in micro-businesses in the UK is generally low at the moment but it doesn’t mean we are not delivering big, brave and innovative ideas. All the strategies we have been working on are gradually being implemented."

Printing.com now has more than 25 partners using W3P web-to-print platform for major client systems, according to Rafferty, and as well as promoting the technology at Graph Expo in Chicago in October it was expected to be "extended to several other countries" by the end of 2012.