Unitedprint Shop Services (USS) is essentially the same ordering system the Dresden, Germany-based print giant uses but it can be customised so companies can put their own branding and pictures on it as well as choose their own pricing.
Unitedprint, which runs online print brand Print24, provides its full list of products in the website’s content management system and printers can add their own products to the list too, selecting which ones using buttons or drop-down lists. To the customer all the products appear to come from the UK company.
The price for products ordered from Unitedprint will remain the same, with resellers keeping the difference. The sites are also mobile optimised and calculation is also possible on mobile devices,
Furthermore the model allows the advantage of taking payment from the customer upfront but print businesses can choose to pay Unitedprint on dispatch or 30, 60 or 90 days later. The last option has proved to be the most popular with UK printers, the company said.
The products can either be shipped to a printer’s address or direct to the client under plain packaging.
Unitedprint marketing managing director Ali Jason Bazooband said he was expecting a 35% turnover growth next year following the introduction of the software this week but he said the market was big enough not to take work away from existing trade printers.
“Of course there’s always a fear that we take away customers from the local printers. I think this was the model five years ago with W2P 1.0.
“If you look at our customer base, you’ll find 35% printers and 35% print managers. This is W2P 2.0. We morphed from a competitor to the deliverer. And it’s going to grow.
“My vision is that we have to give them W2P 3.0. We are now a sales partner for them.
“We’ll never go into deep relationships [with customers] like existing printers. What we’re offering is you will get this shop for free and you can design it as you want. It is easy to use – it’s a what you see is what you get editor.”
Unitedprint has vastly extended its range this year, adding more than 100 new products over the summer.
Bazooband said the company has had its best year ever in the UK, reaching the same turnover by the end of October as it had in the whole of 2014. It expects to reach at least €10m (£7m) sales in the 2015 calendar year and €15m in 2016. Its total sales are expected to hit €100m in 2016.
The UK is now its second biggest market after Germany, followed by Spain, France and Italy.
He said over the past five years the market grew "by itself" but now he and competitors had to do more and more to serve and develop the market.
Unitedprint runs KBA and Heidelberg litho presses, HP Indigo digital presses and EFI and HP wide-format machinery with 90% of production in Dresden and the rest in Nuremberg.
The company currently employs more than 700 staff in 26 locations worldwide and also hoping to boost its headcount to around 1,000.
Unitedprint’s other brands include Easyprint, Getprint, Printwhat, Firstprint, DDK Print Big and Infowerk.
