Although we couldn't attend this event, with the internet it's easy to keep in touch. It provides an insight into other shows like IPEX too.

One element of the Print09 website I liked was the 'Must See ums' section. Common with most shows for the last 20 years, it provides attendies a shortlist of products to zero in on. This year though, they also came up with a 'Top Ten' strategies list as well. (Below). 

Respected Industry columnist Cary Sherburne's take on the situation was spot on too. (Article download here). It shows the huge gap between the technologies printers should have, and what they actually have.

As Cary noted, of the top ten 'survival' technologies, very few are seen in Printshops today. Other commentators like Dr Joe Webb have talked of such things at industry conferences for years. Barb Pellow talked of web trends is a recent podcast. (click here )

Noteably, all the top super-growth printshops like Vistaprint, Printingforless, Expresscopy, Moonpig, PSPrint, Mimeo etc have all been using these toolsets and strategies for up to ten years now.

So, what's holding us back?

I guess the sheer cost in many cases of implementing such systems, and as many industry observers have mentioned, the inherent rejection of all things IT and the internet by too many printshop owners, caused primarily by the natural FEAR OF CHANGE and desire to maintain the existing systems.

The other big problem is the current Web2print solutions from the main vendors like EFI, Xerox, Kodak etc. They're often grossly often over-priced, overly-complex and poorly supported, simply because outside the US, staff have very limited IT or workflow expertise. They can 'talk and talk', but seldom 'walk the walk' as a wise colleague once told me.

Now, with the industry struggling to pay the wages of existing employees, how can smaller printers afford the $100k salary of a well qualified IT geek, plus the $100k of IT hardware and software needed? And more importantly, are any IT geeks out there that even want to get involved with the old-fashioned print industry? I think I'm one of only a few left.

Fortunately there are some innovative solutions. To address the prohibitive cost of traditional software solutions (software, systems, periodic software upgrades, hiring technical staff etc ...) a few developers now offer "hosted" or Software as a Service (SaaS) options that cost under a tenth the cost of traditional systems, with no real downside. In fact they're often better and more reliable too. In the Business world, the best known SaaS application is Salesforce.com which is a very popular alternative to costly CRM systems.

Imagine, no computer hardware or software needed on site, no uprade nightmares, and most support can be done online, remotely. There's not much available specific to the print industry yet, however one we discovered recently as a slick Web2print storefront is Pressero . 

Put simply, you basically 'lease' or 'timeshare' this software application over the web. Unlike 'normal' software which is distributed as thousands (or millions) of copies onto distant computers, SaaS means there's only one version for the developer to support, on one computer. This dramatically reduces development and support costs for everyone.  With Pressero Web2print, it's starts from only US$995 setup and then US$295 per month instead of the $50,000-$150,000 (plus 15% per annum support/licensing fees) common today. Below is an interview with Greg Salzman, president of Aleyant Systems, the developer.

Like any e-commerce store you'll still need to spend some time, money and effort customising the look and then add in products for general retail sales, or private items or catalogues for your key customers. But even these aspects can be easily outsourced to us and done remotely for a few hundred a month or on a per item/job basis.

For more information on these amazing developments, call me on 09-889 0954 

Kevin Trye 

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