Print Shop Website Business Plan

PrintingSolutions.com will be an online provider of printing and B2B print services, focusing on the business market. This will be fortified with the company’s graphic art and website design services.

The online print shop will offer customers a one-stop shop for addressing their printing needs. Customers will be able to easily design and order customization on thousands of products, primarily small-quantity printed products. By automating and enhancing the print order process and electronically connecting our online printing services to carefully-selected commercial print vendors, it is believed, based on experience in the printing industry, that the company will significantly reduce the costs and inefficiencies associated with the traditional printing process. Our online print services are designed to be more convenient and cost-effective than printing alternatives provided through traditional print channels.

PrintingSolutions.com will simplify the design and ordering process in several ways, including the elimination of manual steps and handwritten forms used by traditional print shops. The company believes this will significantly reduce reprint-due-to-error costs and the associated print wastage incurred by commercial print vendors. Exact re-prints of previous orders will be available at a reduced cost. At the same time, the company will lower costs and improve capacity utilization for its commercial print vendors since it will electronically route orders to commercial print vendors that have idle capacity. PrintingSolutions.com also believes that these efficiencies, incorporated with lower overhead costs due to the online nature and automation, will allow the company to be more cost effective than traditional printing alternatives. Furthermore, the cost of printing will be greatly reduced by using the offshore printing press affiliate, Creative Designs and Printers.

In addition to providing customers with online print services directly through the PrintingSolutions.com website, the company will be conducting B2B through PrintingSolutionsB2B.com.

Graphic Art Design: PrintingSolutions.com will provide a graphic art design center where customers will describe their company to enable a graphic art designer to create a logo for them.

Website Design: Customers will also be able to have website designers create effective websites for their company. Customers will choose from either a template or a customized website, whichever suits their business needs.

Business Stationery: This will initially include:

• Brochures
• Business cards
• Envelopes
• Writing tablets
• Door hangers
• Greeting cards
• Memo pads
• Letterhead
• Logo designs

3.1 Fulfillment

All services provided by PrintingSolutions.com (business stationery products, website designers, and graphic art designs) originate overseas; when necessary, a United States-based team will provide assistance.

Customers will be able to work with the designers online for any changes or enhancements once the initial designs have been completed. Delivery of graphic art designs and websites will be done electronically, with the option of receiving a compact disk.

In the event that an error is made in printing an order, customers will have the option of returning it to have it reprinted. Otherwise, all sales will be final, since the printing will be customized and cannot be resold. Customers will not be able to cancel the order once the materials are printed.

Customers will be able to contact the company via the Internet through email, and interactive tools such as AOL instant messenger and Microsoft net-meeting. Additionally, the company will provide traditional telephone customer service.

3.2 Technology

An online print shop faces challenges that other electronic commerce vendors do not face. PrintingSolutions.com will design its online print shop to address the challenges of selling custom printed products and to handle potentially large volume orders. The computer software architecture of PrintingSolutions.com, the related websites, and the design/order processing technologies integrate high-performance and proprietary software modules with technology that is licensed from third parties.

3.2.1 Challenges

The challenges for an online print shop which are not typically faced by other electronic commerce vendors include:

1. Customer-driven product creation. Customers do not order from a static, pre-set product catalog. Rather, customers can create sophisticated desktop publishing design projects, requiring the ability to freely mix text, graphic images, fonts, styles, and colors on printed items.
2. Intensive customer interaction. Our websites are not presenting static content pages; customers are engaged in intensive design activities which require constant system monitoring and optimization as visitor traffic grows.
3. Integrating the process of typesetting with commercial printing. Typesetting is a precision science. PrintingSolutions.com will automatically convert an onscreen design into a resolution-independent electronic file that can be successfully reproduced by a variety of commercial print vendors, each with different printing processes and order management requirements.
4. Point-of-order pricing. Since each product created is a custom design consisting of various inks, papers, designs, and quantity attributes, PrintingSolutions.com must be able to provide accurate, real-time pricing information to its customers that can be calculated instantaneously from tens of thousands of price point combinations.
5. Re-orders. PrintingSolutions.com will retain each customer’s order specifications, including all designs, negatives, and print plates, for a limited time. This will enable us to charge a lower fee for an exact reprint of a previous order.
6. Intelligent order routing. Each of the commercial print vendors the company will work with has different capabilities and a unique set of requirements that are taken into account when determining how to fulfill an order. By considering account product type, pricing, geography, and shipping options, PrintingSolutions.com will strive to route each order individually to the vendor with the best combination of quality, delivery time, and price.

PrintingSolutions.com believes that, with our technology expertise, we will be able to address these challenges while also handling large numbers of customer design sessions and orders. We feel this represents a competitive advantage.

3.3 Future Services

Customized printing will be offered in the future on products including:

• Mass print materials (such as books and magazines)
• Mugs
• Mouse pads
• Pens
• Rubber stamps
• Labels

PrintingSolutions.com will eventually provide franchising opportunities. As the need for doing business in the information age evolves, so will we. The company will provide resources for customers to remain on the cutting edge of technology.