London-headquartered web-to-print company Moo, which serves customers ranging from small businesses, creatives and photographers through to larger enterprises, has recently taken the concept one step further by introducing what it calls Business Cards+.

The near-field communication (NFC) enabled cards use Arjowiggins Creative Papers’ Conqueror Alive paper, a form of ‘digital paper’ that combines Arjowiggins’ conventionally printable Conqueror paper with a core layer of PowerCoat, a paper developed specially for the printing of electronic circuitry by PowerCoat Paper, a France-based Arjowiggins operation.

The outer surfaces of Alive are conventional paper and can be printed, finished and handled in the same way as normal papers. The circuits respond to being touched by an NFC-capable smartphone.

Moo first trialled a version of NFC-enabled business cards in 2012. The firm’s vice-president of product and design Chad Jennings says Moo is best known for business cards and wanted to be at the forefront of taking them to the next level.

“Business cards are no longer just about providing information but making yourself stand out and memorable and communicating your brand,” he says.

“We feel that we really need to compete and differentiate ourselves with unique and special offerings and we know that printed electronics is going to continue to grow so we’ve been exploring not only NFC but also RFID and nano inks, many of which are not yet necessarily to the quality we’d like.”

Moo had initially aimed to launch the cards in 2013 but was at that point still on the lookout for suitable substrates and partners. It was Arjowiggins’ 2014 launch of Conqueror Alive that proved to be exactly what the company was looking for to move things forward. 

Moo started to collaborate with the paper manufacturer’s research and development team to formulate what would eventually become Business Cards+ and the product was launched last year.

Clever cards

Business Cards+ are a combination of a printed aerial with a tiny microchip that contains the data. The electronics are pre-applied to the PowerCoat base by PowerCoat Papers using silver inks, then thin grades of Conqueror paper are laminated onto both sides.

“It was a collaboration to bring this to market with the thickness and quality that we felt our customers would expect,” says Jennings. 

“It came down to getting something that’s thin and that you don’t need a plastic support for but where there was also a bit of flexibility with the substrate.”

Jennings says Conqueror Alive fitted the bill because Moo sees Conqueror as a quality paper that it trusts and that can be digitally printed on at high quality, while maintaining the outer look of a premium business card despite the internal PowerCoat technology.

The NFC-enabled cards are driven by URLs that can be changed even after cards have been handed out, using Moo’s Paper+ platform. This enables users to apply and reapply different actions to their cards and to see how many taps their cards receive and learn how many people are interacting with their information.

“We get a collection of blank chips on a piece of paper from Arjowiggins and then we encode each of the business cards,” says Jennings.

Moo encodes each card with a unique URL and information and prints the cards 25-up on HP Indigo digital presses. They are finished using Polar cutting equipment and Autobond laminators. 

The firm sells the cards, which have a matt finish, in packs of 20 and they come in a neon and white gloss relief patterned box.

Jennings says digital printing makes the cards accessible to individuals requiring short runs – as well as larger companies – and gives Moo the ability to print up to five different background designs in a pack of 20 cards.

In terms of combining everything Moo required for the product, Jennings says there were no real viable alternatives to what Arjowiggins was offering.

“Conqueror Alive is so exciting for us because it’s such a well-known and trusted brand and Arjowiggins was bringing together that level of paper and substrate as well as the willingness to invest and collaborate with us.

“We work directly with Arjowiggins who have been a great partner that we meet regularly. They have invested in the Alive product and we have been over in France working closely with them to get to something that we both felt confident with.”

The firm orders Conqueror Alive from Arjowiggins’ UK branch and Jennings says ordering the stock is different to ordering regular paper due to various quality assurance procedures.

“In some ways it’s a bit like buying a digital product as much as it is buying paper. We keep a larger stock of this paper because it takes a little bit longer to get it but we plan for spikes in the business very much ahead of time and if we need any more we can call up Arjowiggins to get that.”

Moo uses the 420gsm weight substrate and Jennings says he particularly likes its durability and rigidity. Over the past couple of years the firm has worked with Arjowiggins on making the chip and the antenna thinner so that the finished business card itself is less thick.

“We find that the rigidity of Conqueror Alive is as important as the thickness. If you send it through a wash or bend it in half then it won’t work, but we’ve made it quite durable and did lots of tests on that,” says Jennings.

“Business Cards+ has that mix of usage between a traditional business card, that you might hand out, and something like a promotional card that you keep with you in your wallet or bag so for that reason we felt it needed that durability.”

Jennings says many early adopters are also using the cards in ways Moo had not envisaged, and that in the future the business will tap into these opportunities.

“It’s allowing us to potentially invent new markets that did not exist before. As well as using it as a business card in the traditional sense, people are also taking an ‘internet of things’ type of approach and using the cards to trigger lights to turn on and off or using them as Wi-Fi access cards or to check-in to locations during events.”

Jennings adds: “In the future it may be that every major piece of paper is connected to the internet, either through NFC, nano inks or some kind of technology that doesn’t exist right now. Whether that’s one, three, five or 10 years down the line we see that as the future and we really need to be the market leader in that.”

Partner paper

Conqueror Alive has achieved everything for the Business Cards+ project that Moo wanted it to, says Jennings. “It’s been the perfect paper and Arjowiggins have been the perfect partner in terms of the level of quality of the substrate as well as their research and development and the amount of money they’re spending on the product’s future.”

He adds: “Far and away the best thing about Conqueror Alive is the history, quality and brand of the paper itself and the reliability that we get from the brand and the business. Conqueror has been around since 1888 and Arjowiggins could have launched a whole new paper line and called it something not tying to the Conqueror brand, so it’s somewhat putting that brand out there.”

Jennings says there is nothing he can fault about the substrate itself but that learning how best to encode the cards in a scalable way has been the biggest challenge of the project.

“Most of the issues we had were around how we could tie all the systems together to let people track when it’s used online and change where it goes online,” he says.

“One of the differentiators for us is that, with our software, we’ve figured that out and we’re still learning how best to make this technology work and scalable as we grow this product too.”

Overall, Jennings would happily recommend Conqueror Alive to other businesses and says this is as much about about Arjowiggins as a company as it is the product.

“They’re passionate about this product and want it to be a success but they also know that it’s a new product and that getting people to understand how they can use it to help their business is the biggest challenge that we all have.”

Jennings says the Business Cards+ project is currently meeting its revenue goals and will continue to grow.

“If as much as 85% of our revenue is coming from internet connected paper products in 10 years then this may just be the starting point,” he concludes. 

SPECIFICATIONS

Paper size SRA3-plus

Basis weight 170-420gsm

Thickness 165-440 micron

Price Dependent on the number of circuit tags per sheet. Five non-encoded sheets with 25 circuit tags per sheet costs €175 (£139). 30 sheets with two circuit tags per sheet and standard encoding by Arjowiggins costs €90 while five sheets with two circuit tags per sheet and personalised encoding by Arjowiggins costs €30. You would normally only need one circuit tag per finished item

Contact PowerCoat Paper +33 1577 59200 www.powercoatpaper.com

Company profile 

Moo was established in 2004 and now has six locations, with offices in both the UK and US. The print and design company, which is overseen by chief executive and founder Richard Moross, specialises in premium business stationery and promotional materials including postcards, flyers, letterheads, stickers and labels. The business has a turnover of around £40m and employs 370 staff in total, 214 of which are based in the UK at the company’s Farringdon headquarters and Stratford warehouse. The firm operates a range of kit including HP Indigo digital presses, Autobond laminating equipment and Polar cutting machinery.

Why it was bought…

Moo had first talked about bringing NFC-enabled business cards to the market in 2012 and had aimed for a launch the following year but it required a suitable substrate - and partner - fit for the job. Arjowiggins’ Conqueror Alive paper proved to be exactly what Moo was looking for to move its Business Cards+ project forward and the two firms have collaborated on the venture ever since.

How it has performed…

Moo says Conqueror’s history, quality and brand has brought prestige and reliability to its Business Cards+ project and that Arjowiggins has continued to work with the firm to improve and develop the product. “It’s met all of our goals in terms of both a growth and revenue point of view and it has in some ways got new people to come to Moo who maybe hadn’t thought of us before,” says Moo vice-president of product and design Chad Jennings.