Onlineprinters celebrates 15 years of e-commerce

Print Solutions

The Onlineprinters Group is celebrating its 15th anniversary with record breaking production figures: originally a family run print shop, the company has become one of Europe's leading online printers and produced more than 3.2 billion custom printed products in the past fiscal year, generating over €200 million annual revenues. The online print specialist has served more than one million business customers since it was established. In future, the company will increasingly focus on data-driven marketing and ‘one stop shopping’.

‘We started out as a printer that did e-commerce; today we are an e-commerce business that provides print services,’ said Michael Fries, the CEO of Onlineprinters, describes the company's transformation. ‘Onlineprinters was one of the first web shops for printed matter in Europe and we are the only big online printing company that has evolved from a traditional print shop. To achieve this, we have radically changed how we do business, going online from zero to 100%.’

During the same period, the online printer has continued to grow and stepped up its internationalisation efforts. Since 2008, the company has sold printed products to 30 European countries under the brand name of Onlineprinters – the sales volume contributed by other European markets has increased steadily as a result. In 2017, the online print specialist acquired UK based Solopress followed by the acquisition of Danish online printer LaserTryk in 2018.

‘Thanks to our consistent internationalisation strategy, the Onlineprinters Group is very well positioned today and is one of the top three online print shops in Europe,’ said Christian Würst, the CCO of the Onlineprinters Group.

‘We have also become very popular as an employer with more than 1500 highly qualified employees in Germany, the UK, Denmark and Poland and we are continuously looking to recruit new talent. For some years now, we have been offering online marketing traineeships which are in great demand.’

‘We were able to successfully harness the disruptive force of the digital transformation,’ Michael and Christian point out. ‘By actively promoting the structural and cultural change in our company, we have safeguarded our competitiveness. We continuously innovate our business, analyse markets, our data and test new technologies. This enables us to target the right audience by using optimised marketing campaigns, for example.

Transforming the product centred business model to a consumer centred one is an essential part of this continuous improvement process. ‘Running a web shop used as a digital distribution channel for our own products only is a thing of the past,’ Michael explained. ‘Especially in the field of business to business, customers must get added value beyond the product purchase,’ Michael added. For this reason, Onlineprinters is currently restructuring its web shop to become a digital platform which combines marketing, sales and services that go well beyond buying a printed product with a mouse click. Thanks to intelligent data linking, customers get tailored suggestions for additional products and services to complement their portfolio. ‘We are integrating more and more products into our portfolio to become a one stop provider for printed advertising material,’ concluded Christian.