The retail printing services market has undergone a radical change in the past decade. Firstly, the awareness and pricing of digital printing equipment has drastically allowed small players to venture into this market. Nevertheless that you have been a veteran of this industry; you have a top quality product; your turnaround time is fast; you are well connected with your community and have a loyal customer base, suddenly some Peter Prints starts a couple of miles away, drops their prices and your customers are siphoned away.
There is a movement towards digital printing as an alternative for offset. The quality of digital printing keeps improving; their equipment keeps getting cheaper thus allowing new players to enter into the market. Digital printing is packed with goodies like low cost, less inventory wastage and one-to-one production. Thus there is a high emergence of new competitors putting extreme pressure on the margins. Commercial printers now have to struggle even harder.
Lastly, the Internet has created a revolution for most SME businesses. Local businesses that earlier used to work only with their local providers have found new suppliers either through referrals or through Yellow pages. Now your loyal and potential customers can access the Internet and Google for a phrase like ‘Discounts on photo prints in Manhattan’ and receive a list of all potential suppliers. Some of them may be local, others would be based out of your state.
How do you compete against these competitors and take them head-on?
To start off with, you should continue to nurture your ongoing relationship with your customer base and fraternity. However, you require much more to challenge the online threat. Your business needs online visibility, present a corporate image and highlight your unique selling points. Only then can you can reclaim your lost customers and perhaps even earn some new ones from your competitors thus demonstrating your leadership in the local market.
So how do you start? How do you get your business online?
It’s a complete waste of time and money in employing some in-house programmer who creates some basic stuff for you. In this way, you end up losing more than what you had gained. So how will you do it and master technology?
The key to your growth –
Enter Pixopa – an Enterprise Web-to-Print Ecommerce solution designed to specifically meet the requirements of local print shops. Now you can take on your competitors head-on, compete with them and maintain your advantage in the local as well as global market.
Pixopa provides the technology by removing the complexities – all that at a price to suit your pocket!
Once your site is up, no need to worry about the modifications or post sales support. Pixopa offers easy tools to configure your product definitions, publish special offers, change contact details. This keeps your operational cost low.
Along with the Ecommerce, your customers can also generate previews, place online orders or track their order status.
If you already have an existing Ecommerce Solution, you can add a cutting-edge Online Designer Studio offered by Pixopa and amaze your customers by providing limitless personalization.