Print
Solutions March 2006
433
East Monroe
Diving
Into Web-to-Print
I
was only 18 when I became the
ad hoc procurement officer for
a budding catering and decorating
business in Maryland. The business
was—and still is—owned
and operated by my mother. In
addition to helping her make purchases
of table cloths, plates and flowers
over the web, I was responsible
for designing and buying her business
cards and company stationery.
It
seemed like a weighty responsibility
for someone still slogging her
way through her freshman year
at college, but the job was made
easy with the help of a simple,
online web-to-print application
I found through an internet search.
It took less than 30 minutes to
format the standard 3.5-inch x
2-inch business card with my mother’s
name, title, phone number and
address. A pop-up screen even
alerted me that a soft proofing
option was available. I used another
template that replicated the newly
composed company logo and attached
it at the top of her letterhead
and to the corner of an envelope.
Within a week, shipments of the
new business materials began to
arrive at our home. Soon my mother
was proudly showing off her new
business cards to family members,
pointing to the embossed teal
ink and remarking on how professional
it looked. (Of course, I now know
the “embossed teal ink”
was produced with thermography.)
Though
the time it took for me to format
those cards, letterhead and envelopes
was less than the duration of
a TV sitcom, I know now that the
time it took that company to create
the software and integrate the
hardware for that web-to-print
solution was considerably longer.
Seven years ago, I went the direct-to-market
route for my purchases, but many
print distributors now offer similar
web-to-print solutions to end
users. These companies have found
that to stay competitive, they
must embrace e-commerce print
applications, especially in a
world where so many end users
make daily household and business
purchases over the web. According
to Jupiter Research, consultants
on the internet and emerging consumer
technologies, purchases made online
in the United States totaled $65
billion two years ago. That number
is projected to be $117 billion
by 2008.
In
this issue, we wrote about not
only the companies who took the
leap to web-to-print and succeeded
at it (for example, Mimeo, p.
72) but we also look at software
options (p. 52) and trends in
web-to-print on the horizon (p.
22.)
Making
our way through this subject matter
was challenging, especially for
someone like me who joined Print
Solutions only a few weeks before
we started work on this issue.
I had to take a crash course in
the ins and outs of the business
forms industry, along with the
intricacies of web-to-print solutions.
Hopefully, this issue will provide
insights for distributors who
are contemplating web-to-print
workflows.
LaShell
Stratton
Assistant
Editor
