Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Consumer Print Product Market
I haven't seen any hard numbers, but the on-demand print product market seems to be a pretty sweet place to have a service offering. Innovation in web-enabled workflow systems have made the creation high quality print products (especially photo book products) as simple as few drag and drops and a couple of clicks. Grandma can now create print products that rival those that are professionally produced.
There is tremendous growth opportunity for web savvy print service providers in the consumer product market (unsuprisingly, this area is void of traditional printers and is dominated by tech start-ups), and a golden opportunity for the digital press vendors to off load their latest printing systems which are need to produce one off copies of products.
A few weeks back Noel Ward wrote about Shutterfly's purchase of Xerox iGen3 presses on Xerox's blog:
The recent announcement of Shutterfly's acquisition of an undisclosed number of Xerox iGen3s to support its expanding operations (presumably including the company's new operation in Charlotte, NC) is a coup for Xerox. Not only does it put the company in a new market, but Shutterfly has been using HP Indigo presses since it began, so this move no doubt rattles some cages at HP headquarters in Boise. And the arrival of Xerox on Kodak's turf probably has a few Kodak execs pacing their cages, too.
Word on the street is that Blurb, the new headline making web-to-print start-up has invested in Xerox iGen3 technology to complement their current HP Indigo systems. This certainly this is a another score for Xerox as they venture into new this emerging market.
Is it the Workflow or the Press
I don't know much about Shutterfly or Blurb's workflow, but I can guess they would not have made investments in new (and different) press technology if it would have created major changes in their workflow. Is this as a testament to the diminishing role of the print engine in print production, and an example of the importance of having a well engineered workflow that can easily adapt to a variety of printing systems? I would say yes. The printing engine still plays an important role producing high quality prints in the zero defect environment web-to-printers live in, but they are also a piece of the production puzzle that can be swapped out and replaced.
Posted in: Print On Demand | Web-enabled Print
