Does your print business have a web presense? Is that an important component for the future success of your business? Do you offer E-commerce services? Are you looking to add such services? Will customers use it? Have customers been asking for such services?

I resently started working at a company where almost all jobs are web based template driven, with a upload your design coming soon. The only prepress that is being done is impostion for a 12x18 sheet. They're a small startup in printing but are growing, printing mostly BC and Postcards with VDP soon to come also.

To me, there is no excitement or long term future in the type of shop that only runs stuff from printing that is ordered line. Of course there are a few very successful shops, (Modern Postcard for example) but long term that is just playing into the commodity market. And who is excited to say "...hey, I have a great idea about how to build a business on doing commodity printing work...." Yuk!!

Now the exception to that is if you can find a very special vertical niche that supplies something to customers that they were unable to get at any price before, then that is something that can be charged for and profited from. But to just do "Business Cards," "PostCards" etc. is something that over the long run, only a few will be successful with and the rest will be picking up the scraps....

I'm assuming you are saying there is no future for people printing online instead of "line".

This is insane, web to print applications and print to web applications are the best printing has to offer today. They are not niche areas but powerful tools to interact with the next generation of print buyers and designers.

It is bringing prepress to the customer and allowing the customer immediate access to their files and print, streamlining the entire printing process, taking significant cost out of the process of printing and is the only way traditional printers will survive.

Having a business of print solely online is not what this is about, but more about are you planning on enabling your business online.

Print does not have to be a commodity business, it is a service business, you need to provide better service then the next printer to win, not the lowest price. Lowest price only wins to the point of someone who screws up, then the buyer will look to quality printers, not lowest price. Lowest price is the road out of this industry not a formula for success.

I think that we agree. I certainly do believe that getting your customers to order their work on-line is a very good thing. A step above them e-mailing their re-orders etc. But my contention is in response to the earlier post where the gentleman was talking about working at a shop where everything is simply driven off of templates etc. There are many examples of this on the web right now. In my region alone there is Vista prints and modern postcard. They are very excellent operations and very successful. But let's be honest, they are commodity printers. And that was my point.
I don't want to be that. I want to work closely with the client and help them grow their business by helping them produce the types of products and the correct quantities that works for them. So I wasn't saying that on-line has no future. I was saying that it would be very difficult today to compete with a Vista Prints type of printer on their level. And to do it, you really would be forced to build a leam, mean, "crank it out" machine.

I think that there is room for both type of applications. I work for a company that caters to our clients need and do our best to supply them with services that will help them grow their business. This seem to work well with large corporations. The web based print on demand works best for the small corps or home based businesses. So there is room for both because both small and large corporations will always be around.