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Online Print Shop - Start up
Business Plan
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| 3.0 Services | [back to top] |
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.
PrintingSolutions.com. 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 thousands of customized 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.
| 3.1 Service Description | [back to top] |
Background
Through the online print shop, PrintingSolutions.com will offer consumers a single location to satisfy the majority of their printing needs. The company will develop a user-friendly website for obtaining professional quality, mass-market printed products. This will provide customers a compelling alternative to traditional print channels. PrintingSolutions.com will also offer specialized websites and printing services for print items or quantities that are not generally offered in the self-service print shop. By automating the print order process and connecting online print services to carefully selected commercial print vendors, it is believed that the costs of printing will be significantly reduced.
PrintingSolutions.com will offer printing, website and graphic art design at affordable prices. The company's proprietary product will be a website that will provide customers an avenue to create business stationery. PrintingSolutions.com will allow customers to track their purchases from start to finish. They will be able to view their selections online and make modifications at any time; customers will have access to service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most importantly, PrintingSolutions.com will provide our customers exactly what they want or there will be no charge.
PrintingSolutions.com' products and services will address the need for assisting customers in obtaining their business stationery, graphic art designs and websites at more affordable prices than are currently being offered.
The company's product selection will not need a high initial investment. The staff that develops websites is capable of many other projcets, too. In addition, the materials required for printing do not expire and can be utilized for other printing purposes as well.
| 3.1.1 Products | [back to top] |
Business Stationery
This will initially include:
- Brochures
- Business cards
- Envelopes
- Writing tablets
- Door hangers
- Greeting cards
- Memo pads
- Letterhead
- Logo designs
| 3.1.2 Services - Graphic Art Design | [back to top] |
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.
| 3.1.3 Services - Website Design | [back to top] |
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.
| 3.2 Fulfillment | [back to top] |
All services provided by PrintingSolutions.com (business stationery products, website designers, and graphic art designs) originate overseases; 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.
| 3.3 Technology | [back to top] |
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.
| 3.3.1 Challenges | [back to top] |
The challenges for an online print shop which are not typically faced by other electronic commerce vendors include:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
| 3.3.2 Software Modules | [back to top] |
The software that supports the online print shop is a collection of integrated software modules that will enable PrintingSolutions.com to quickly create, maintain, modify, or replace individual components. PrintingSolutions.com will create its proprietary software modules using development and technical standards and practices, and without significant dependencies on specific operating systems, databases, or Web server technologies. As a result, the company will be able to move portions of its software between different databases, operating systems, and Web server products to upgrade capacity or take advantage of price or performance improvements, as they become available.
The following is a description of the key software modules that will be found on the PrintingSolutions.com website:
- Design Workshop. This will incorporate features found in desktop publishing software that enables customers to easily create a wide variety of custom-printed products. The workshop will be designed such that what customers build on the screen is what they will receive in their hands. This is achieved by considering all aspects needed to produce on-screen images and transferring them directly to the final printed product. Since customers will be able to view and proof their orders before they are printed, we believe the percentage of orders that shall require reprinting due to design error will be significantly reduced.
- Product and Pricing Engines. Our various engines will contain a wide range of product designs, features, and pricing information. To support the broad array of product variations and customization options offered, we will design these databases to be highly flexible. This will allow us to modify our records as the market dictates.
- Secure Shopping Cart. We will provide a customized order basket designed to store and securely process orders. The Secure Shopping Cart will be integrated with the systems of members, thus reducing the need for human intervention in order to produce and complete an order. The company believes that by designing the system in this manner, the order and completion process will be vastly more efficient and are less error prone than current processes.
- System Reporting and Diagnostics. This program is designed to track customer action on participating websites. PrintingSolutions.com will utilize this program in order to remain aware of industry and retail trends.
- Custom Website Resources. By allowing participants in the private-brand program to customize and control their own print shops, we will eliminate the need for costly, time-consuming programming efforts. We will allow these participants to directly manage product prices, configurations, and sales tax assignments, which decreases customization and maintenance expenses for PrintingSolutions.com.
| 3.3.3 System Standards and Integration | [back to top] |
Design Standards
PrintingSolutions.com will offer the following design standards:
- High-speed operation.
- Optimized screens incorporating data from several modules on a single display.
- Great depth to handle the most sophisticated requirements.
- Tightly integrated standards to minimize errors, data entry, and time, and maximize the speed and information content on displays and printouts.
- Consistent look and feel, uniform prompts and similar data flow for every module.
- User-friendly. Rich in useful features such as help displays, pick boxes, numerous user-changeable flags and user-modified options.
Depth and Integration
PrintingSolutions.com will have depth, which means that the software will allow the customer to go beyond the basics. Depth will apply to each module individually: estimating, cost collection, and accounting. Software without depth is limited and can be frustrating to a consumer.
The company will have the ability to confirm customer information when processing an estimate. We will also be able to convert an estimate to a job and automatically allocate inventory, verify credit limits, allow for coverage, and put all outside buys on a 'must buy' list for purchasing and updating work-in-process. When a job is billed, all information will be fully automatic. Then, after billing, the work-in-process, job history, job archives, accounts receivable, sales tax, sales commission liability, sales revenue, production scheduling, active job file, and inventory files will all be automatically updated.
We will have depth in accounting. This implies the following:
- A job scan will be pre-billed or partially billed.
- The sales tax will be computed for all states taxes, including any county or local tax.
- More than one accounting period can be open at the same time.
- Allowing several bank accounts and classes of Accounts Receivable to automatically compute and track sales commissions and multiple plants with individual and consolidated financial statements.
| 3.4 Future Services | [back to top] |
Printed products that will be offered in the future include:
- 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.
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