[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:03] DC: This is the true story of two printers who agreed to podcast with me and have their opinions recorded. Listen to what happens when printers stop being polite and start getting real.
[0:00:13] JM: Hi, this is Jamie McLennan.
[0:00:15] WC: And this is William Crabtree.
[0:00:16] DC: And I’m your host, Deborah Corn. Welcome to the PrinterChat Podcast.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:27] DC: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. More specifically, we are back with PrinterChat. Hello, Jamie, the printer. Hello, Will, the printer.
[0:00:40] WC: Hello, Jamie. Hello, Deborah.
[0:00:44] DC: Hello.
[0:00:44] JM: Hello, Deborah and Will. Hope everybody’s doing well.
[0:00:47] DC: Doing well. Thanks for asking. Doing well, Will?
[0:00:49] WC: Fantastic.
[0:00:50] DC: Doing well, Will? Doing well, Will?
[0:00:53] WC: Doing well. Say that three times fast.
[0:00:54] DC: I just did. Doing well, Will. No, no.
[0:00:57] WC: You said it twice. You got the third one and you tumbled.
[0:01:00] DC: Twice is apparently my limit.
[0:01:01] WC: Two times is easy. Three times is difficult.
[0:01:03] DC: This is true. Speaking of difficult, over the last week and a day, I partnered with PRINTING United it was 50 exhibitors from August 17th through the 21st, and then another seven on September 2nd. It was about to let people know what they were bringing to the show and also so that there was content after and content also for people who don’t go to the show, so at least they could understand who they should talk to and what the companies were championing, or speaking about, or their vision of the future. I have to tell you, two things blew me away to no end. One that we are still talking about, digital transformation, whatever that means to people. The fact that anyone is still talking about it, I don’t even get it. Like workflow and all of the benefits of workflow. Less human touches, more margins. This is new news to some people, apparently, according to people I’ve spoke with, off the record, in the befores and afters and sometimes during the interviews.
The second thing blew me away even more, which I’ve heard from many of the exhibitors. I’ve heard from software providers. I’ve heard from people who make products that you need certain systems to plug into, storefronts. Who would have thought in 2026, after the pandemic, that there were printers out there without storefronts? I don’t understand. You guys both have storefronts. Will, yours is a living, breathing print shop. Jamie, yours is too, but you’re more like, “Hey, here’s everything you need,” but you’re a little more consultative. Will?
[0:03:04] WC: Can we clarify something when you say storefront? Do you mean like a brick-and-mortar store, where someone can come in, or an online storefront?
[0:03:11] DC: I’m very sorry. I mean an online storefront, like an online store.
[0:03:15] WC: Got you.
[0:03:16] DC: My apologies. Thank you for clearing that up. We would have had two different conversations here.
[0:03:20] WC: Well, no. It’s easy to get those vernaculars in that language confused.
[0:03:26] DC: You call them an online storefront. I guess, because you have a print shop, so you actually have a store.
[0:03:31] WC: Online storefront versus brick and mortar. Storefront can –
[0:03:34] DC: Okay. Not brick and mortar. I’m talking about a way for people to order print on their websites.
[0:03:40] WC: Got you. There’s that many that still don’t have it.
[0:03:43] DC: Oh, my God. Apparently, most of the industry does not have an online storefront.
[0:03:51] WC: It’s good for me, I guess.
[0:03:52] DC: I don’t understand.
[0:03:55] WC: I don’t either.
[0:03:55] DC: Does that mean that they’re relying on personal relationships and they’re relying on Gen Z’ers calling on the phone to talk to somebody? I don’t understand.
[0:04:06] WC: I don’t either. I’ve lived in a bubble for so long, because I’ve always had it that I can’t imagine how a shop could operate without one. But I do know that there’s an abundance of companies out there that still do not have an online storefront, or an online portal, which is where I’m able to fill a need.
[0:04:28] JM: It seems crazy.
[0:04:30] WC: Jamie, what are you guys using? Do you guys have something?
[0:04:32] JM: Yeah. We have an online system. It’s basically our workflow. When you become a customer, we set you up with a portal, and you can go in and reorder your jobs, or we can set up a whole library for you, or the things that you’re going to need throughout the year. I’m working on one now with a customer we’ve just done a couple of projects with and they’re like, “Can we add this to the portal, so I can just order them whenever I need them?” I’m like, “You sure can.”
[0:04:53] WC: Is that proprietary, or is that something that you guys licensed? Is it something you licensed, or are you comfortable with sharing what it is?
[0:04:59] JM: It’s PressWise. It works through our PressWise workflow.
[0:05:02] WC: Okay.
[0:05:03] JM: Basically, every single customer has a portal. Everybody uses them, and some people are excited about using them and it’s the best thing in the world. Other people are like, yeah, every now and then they’ll click on, or, “I don’t really need that.” But they’ll use the upload the files part of it and say, here’s – They’ll send a whole detailed email. “Here’s the files. They’re in my portal.”
[0:05:21] DC: Can I go to your website, Jamie, and order a pull-up banner, or do I have to speak to somebody?
[0:05:27] JM: You cannot just go on the website and order a pull-up banner. No.
[0:05:30] DC: Okay. I would not call that an online storefront. Is that correct?
[0:05:35] JM: All our customers can. Yes.
[0:05:37] WC: The process is if I have my company and I sell cups and I say, “Jamie, I need to order a bunch of banners and some shirts and some flyers to sell my cups,” you say, “Cool. I’m going to give you a portal where I’m going to put all those things on it,” then you can order those things. I can’t just order them, or you can’t just order them for me.
[0:06:00] JM: No, you can’t just log in and order them. No. I will work up a price for you, set it up, and then get it on the portal, and then you can log in later and order as many as you want.
[0:06:10] DC: Okay.
[0:06:10] WC: Interesting.
[0:06:11] DC: Let’s have a technology come to Jeebus thing here. It’s a South Park thing. I would not consider that an online storefront.
[0:06:21] JM: A storefront which – yeah.
[0:06:22] DC: To me, an online storefront is where I can go and actually purchase something, pick it out, do whatever I’m going to do with it, check out, pay for it, and then it comes to my house.
[0:06:33] JM: Our Georgia plant label division has an online store like that, where they can just log in, pick their label as many as they want, add their artwork, and do that and do it. Yes, one-third of our company does; the rest of it is –
[0:06:45] WC: I love you, Jamie, but that thing looks like it was built in 1993.
[0:06:48] JM: It was built in 1993. The guy who built it just passed away. He’s a very good guy. But that’s how long ago he wrote the program for it. It was actually helped run the Sears catalog at one time.
[0:07:03] WC: Oh, my God.
[0:07:03] DC: Oh, wow.
[0:07:05] WC: I was just pulling a number out of thin air.
[0:07:07] JM: That’s how long ago it was. But yeah.
[0:07:10] DC: That’s amazing.
[0:07:11] JM: That part is getting revamped, and then the whole company will have that. We’ve been working on it.
[0:07:17] DC: All right. Will, so before you said good for me, what did you mean by that?
[0:07:21] WC: Well, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any period of time, you know that I’m deeply invested in the software world of the printing industry. My recent ventures have led me to working with 4over. We recently launched a new printerbridge.com. The Printer Bridge has been their web-to-print program for almost 10 years. I think 10 years. They launched it in 2016. We just launched their new customer facing storefront, or customer facing website, which is printerbridge.com, where you can go and sign up and launch your storefront and your storefront being a web to print e-commerce platform that uses the 4over catalog and in its e-commerce workflow, online design, pre-fly workflow management, file storage, basically anything and everything that you – invoicing, accounting, everything that you need to run your shop is in this system. Then it also APIs to 4over’s workflow. So, when an order comes through the website, you decide, “Okay, I’m going to print this in-house, and you take it through your workflow,” or you push it to 4over for them to fulfill it and either blind drop, ship it back to the customer, or to you.
It’s like a web-to-print hybrid with a reseller program. It’s direct feed into 4over’s fulfillment, and then as your fulfillment backup for their products that you don’t offer, but as a print shop, it’s your workflow management, and it’s only $99 a month. It’s super easy to sign up. You sign up online, your storefront’s up in minutes. All you have to do is change the DNS to your domain name, and you’re literally live. I’m going to be in their booth at PRINTING United, wearing a 4over t-shirt or polo, giving demos of the software. Everybody’s laughing at me, because I’m going to be wearing a polo doing demos in a booth.
[0:09:29] DC: We’re laughing because the way you said it. “And I’ll be wearing a polo.”
[0:09:33] JM: Polo.
[0:09:36] DC: It will be a polo pony, instead of a gazelle.
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:10:38] DC: Jamie, okay, 4over are trade printers. Is this just a direct line from the print shop to 4over, or does that online storefront, or web-to-print system also cover ordering for in case they had another store, it would replace it, or are there two ordering systems?
[0:11:01] WC: It’s one ordering system, and the store is your store. When it comes out of the box, it’s their catalog, but you can customize it. You can disable things, you can enable things, you can create new products, you can take an existing product and clone it and customize it. It’s very versatile in the catalog itself and how you manipulate it after it’s launched. But when it launches out of the gate, it comes with their catalog and their pricing. It’s tied to your pricing with 4over. So, whatever tier that you have based on the volume that you do with them is the pricing that’s connected to your API, and it’s your store. If it’s debprintshop.com, or jamieprintshop.com, it’s your online store. As the orders come through, it stops at that administration panel.
You have a workflow management tool that you decide if you are going to print it in-house, where if you print it in-house, there’s tools to take it through status, notify customers, pre-flight it, and run it through imposition and do all of the things that we do at our print shops to manage our workflow and run jobs through the processes. Or you can push it to them for them to fulfill it. Depending on where you’re at and what you decide, you can say, well, this is going to ship to the customer anyway, I’m going to go ahead and blind dropship it from 4over, so it’ll come from you to the customer, as far as the label is concerned, but they shipped it out. Or it comes back to your shop for you to then deliver it, or send local pickup, or group it with another job and ship it out.
You determine how you manage the workflow of the fulfillment, and you can literally have this website and never send a job to 4over. Don’t tell them that I said that. But you can have this system and not use the fulfillment at all. It’s a fully functional web-to-print solution. I’ll tell you this, I’ll put their web-to-print solution up against anybody else’s in the market. I know Ricoh is charging 15 grand with a two-year startup. A lot of the other big programs that are out there that are that are do – as much if not half as much as the software does are exponentially more expensive with a bigger startup, more training. This thing is super simple; it’s easy, it launches in seconds. It takes you through step by step of how to set it up. Then your investment is the ceiling. As much time as you want to put into it and invest into making it bigger and better is as far as it can go.
[0:13:31] DC: Okay. I have two questions, and I’ll let Jamie go crazy. This would replace if I already had an online storefront up, correct? It doesn’t integrate with another online – I’m just wondering. In other words, if you already have a storefront, should I be thinking about this, like checking yours out, too? Is it going to cause chaos in my world, like disconnecting one thing and having another thing?
[0:13:57] WC: Here’s one thing that I’ll say. Well, actually, there’s two things here, is one, that a good majority of the people in our industry still do not have an online store.
[0:14:06] DC: Yes.
[0:14:07] WC: A good majority of people in our industry are using four, five, six, seven, eight pieces of software to manage their shop.
[0:14:16] DC: This is what I’ve learned.
[0:14:18] WC: They’re all Frankenstein together, if they connect to each other in any way, shape, or form at all. If you have a website, but you don’t have online ordering, you can integrate this with an existing website, super easy. It lives on a sub-domain name. If you already have www.debprint.com, you can put store.debprint.com and then just add an anchor link on your existing site to online ordering, order online, click here, and it’ll link into your existing site, or into your storefront. Your existing website can sync in and link in with this very easily.
If you already have online ordering, if you already have workflow, this would replace that, which I know is a difficult proposition for people that are already embedded in something and they’re already using something. To replace something that you’ve worked with and that you’ve used for a long period of time, it’s difficult, right? It’s not an easy thing.
[0:15:13] DC: Yeah, but it’s like getting a new phone, right?
[0:15:15] WC: Right. It’s like getting a new phone.
[0:15:16] DC: Your phone is upgraded. You have to –
[0:15:17] WC: It’s like getting a new computer.
[0:15:18] DC: Exactly. You got to deal with it. Right.
[0:15:20] WC: I’m still fighting getting a new computer myself, because I don’t want to deal with all of the new things that I’m going to have to deal with when I buy my new computer. But I know that I’ll be better off when I do it in the long run. For 99 bucks a month, how much are you spending on those five, four, six, seven, eight, nine pieces of software that don’t do everything that you need them to do? I mean, this thing literally does everything that you need to run a print shop, and it just got completely rebuilt. It’s fully modern. It’s in a new framework, where we have AI on the code side of things. We’re going to be rolling out new features and launching new things and taking feedback from users like, “Hey, why doesn’t it do this thing?”
Now if you wanted it to make coffee for you, we’re probably going to tell you to pound sand. But if you wanted to do this really cool thing that is going to benefit everybody else that uses the software, it’s going to be a no-brainer, and you’ll see a rollout in a couple of days.
[0:16:16] DC: Very cool. Jamie?
[0:16:18] JM: Will touched on a few things I had questions on. And going back to the storefront thing we talked about before, we do have a Chachiki storefront, which you go on our website and you can order whatever you want, which wasn’t from 1993, but it’s a little bit newer. But as Deborah said and Will said, I’m like, we already have a workflow that everybody loves and everybody works with. We’ve been working on trying to replace that workflow because when we purchased our plant in Georgia, we needed to get everybody on the same platform. We have labels down there. We have large format PA. We have direct mail offset and all that in New Jersey. You’re saying that I would have to scrap what I already do, rebuild and put everything in this new storefront?
I mean, customers can only used to log in and be able to find all their stuff. Will we be able to incorporate into that? We have customers with thousands of things on their website that they go, their portal they go in and they know where it is and reorder it every month.
[0:17:11] WC: Here’s what we’re getting into the weeds of things, right? You’re a very large organization, Jamie, and you have multiple locations in multiple states and have a vast network and a vast history, right? That’s probably not, “Hey, go sign up online at printerbridge.com and we’ll launch your store in less than a minute, and you’re ready to go.” You’re not that audience.
However, there is a solution for you, and there is a solution that I can provide and assist you with that is not that. That’s the versatility of the software. The software is a very vast program and is now at a point where we can have those conversations of, okay, well, I have 10 years of customer order history. What do I do about that, right? How do I incorporate that back into my new system? The easy, “Hey, I don’t have online ordering. I’ve never had online ordering, and I’ve got a website. What do I do?” Printer Bridge is super easy.
[0:18:17] JM: I love it for that.
[0:18:20] WC: But if you’ve got years of history and multiple locations and existing workflows and a vast fulfillment network, then you should maybe call me and not visit me in the 4over booth.
[0:18:32] DC: Can you Frankenstein Jamie’s portals with your online ordering process?
[0:18:38] WC: A Frankenstein is a loose term. There’s APIs. You said you use PrintSmith. PrintSmith, I’m sure has an API.
[0:18:44] JM: No, PressWise.
[0:18:46] WC: PressWise. PrintSmith, PressWise, same difference.
[0:18:49] DC: Jamie likes his PressWise. Don’t be mean to him.
[0:18:51] JM: One is brutal. One is easy to use.
[0:18:55] WC: Either way, they both have APIs. They both have things that we can integrate with, right? We’re living in the age of integration. Software is made to communicate with other pieces of software, as long as you can find a one-to-one, right? Customer ID tracks to a contact ID, or whatever the piece of software calls it, right? As long as we can find a one-to-one data point that we can communicate with, then we can connect things, we can create endpoints, and we can make things talk to each other. Yes, there is some Frankenstein-ing going on when it comes to that, but it’s not going to wind up being a clunky beast that wants to eat you. Hopefully, not anyway.
[0:19:35] JM: I think it’s pretty cool, because I’ve looked at part of that and you and I have spoken a couple of times. I’m looking forward to going to PRINTING United and at least checking it out and seeing what’s up, so you can run through all the cool things. But yeah, it could be a more in-depth conversation for printers like myself and that have a lot of things but don’t have that storefront that where we want it to be right now. Maybe it’s something that can be worked on and bridged together.
[0:19:59] DC: Yeah. I don’t have a print shop, as you all know. But the convenience of having everything in one place, to manage it in one place seems like it’s worth, like, re-logging into all your apps and downloading everything off the cloud when you change your technology. This is another thing that I learned during these interviews. I always say there’s three different sections of the printing industry. There’s the Quad end, they are RR Donnelley end, like that end. They have their own IT departments, their own agencies. They’re doing just fine. If they need something, somebody will help them. Then you have the middle group of people, which some have moved into what we call the digital transformation, and some haven’t. But they’re medium sized, they’re going along, but they’re only going to get to a point now, because it’s just like when your apps stop working, or your computer starts acting up, because you haven’t upgraded, and now nothing is made to fit into work with your computer, or your phone. It doesn’t accept it anymore.
That’s what I learned during this interview that this smaller end of the print shop, they’re probably not using an MIS system at all. They’re running on an Excel sheet, and they’re just like, “What’s next, Joe or Jane?” They’re just writing it down. They’re perfect for this system. But the middle people probably have something there that they’re going to have to assess, whether or not to move forward. Now, I assume that this software is no code, correct? It’s completely just get it, set it up. If you need help, somebody will help you, I’m assuming. Then there’s a ton of things it can connect to, I’m assuming, if you’re working on it.
[0:22:00] WC: Connections, when you say connections, it connects to UPS, it connects to FedEx, it has its own online design tool. APIs with seven different merchant processors. It has a lot of connections, but it’s not going to talk to your – well, actually, no. Sorry, it does have login as Facebook. The more I think about it, the more connections and things that it already does have. Yes, it is a living and breathing platform that is extremely vast, has a lot of features and a lot of functions and a lot of tools, some of which I don’t even use, but someone else might. Then there’s things that I wanted to do that I’m excited to build within it, because I have that ability. But yeah, it is no code. Our new content management system, or CMS if you’re not familiar with that works very similar to WordPress.
If you’ve ever used Elementor, or Divi in WordPress, it’s super easy to build your theme, make it look the way you want it to, go in and change it, customize it. We’ve made it really pretty in that way. If you don’t have an online presence right now in the printing world, you definitely want to sign up for this thing. If you do have an online presence, but you don’t have online ordering, this could very easily take the place of your website. But if you love your website and you’ve put in a lot of work into it and you don’t want to give it up, then you can incorporate it into the existing site and still add online ordering and make it look like it’s one website.
[0:23:25] JM: What do you have to say to many number of printers out there that are very worried about, like they’ve heard of the name Printer Bridge, but now 4over’s involved in it? Do they have access to their client knowledge once they’re part of this? Because that’s one question. There’s a lot of paranoid printers out there. They don’t want anybody to know who their clients are. Well, how do you make sure they’re happy and like, look, this is the perfect place for you to jump in because it has everything you need. But in that back of their mind, they’re going to be going, “Well, who else has access besides Will?”
[0:23:58] WC: Yeah. I mean, so there’s a level of trust that goes into a custodian of data, right? Any large company that is working with your data, you have to trust to a degree. Data has become probably one of the biggest commodities on the planet, if not the biggest commodity on the planet. Our position is, is that we are the utmost of custodians and that we are not going to solicit, sell, or do anything with your data.
[0:24:32] DC: I mean, how could they possibly be in business for as long as they’ve been in business if they screw over the printers?
[0:24:39] WC: Correct. Exactly.
[0:24:39] DC: I cannot believe that under any circumstance that they’re bypassing their own customers who –
[0:24:45] WC: They’re not.
[0:24:46] DC: Yeah. If I were them, would I want a print customer in my face? No. Printers are fine, because they’re dealing with the customers.
[0:24:56] WC: So, 4over has been a trade printer in this industry for the longest. They are the longest –
[0:25:02] DC: Yes.
[0:25:02] WC: They’re the longest-running trade printer.
[0:25:03] DC: Go to any trade show, they sponsor the lanyards. I mean –
[0:25:07] WC: They have a stringent process for when you apply for an account with 4over, you don’t just get an account. I’ve tested this myself. I tried to apply for an account to see if I could just get one, and you can’t. They denied me. They are good custodians. They value data very much. They value the print customer as being you, as the printer. You are their customer. If they bypassed you and solicited your customers, they’re not going to be in business long. Really, if you look at 4over’s marketing footprint, they’re not heavy in social media. They’re not heavy in really anywhere other than the trade shows. They have a presence. They have some marketing, but it’s not like, if you go to any Tom, Dick, or Harry on the street and you’re like, “Yo, do you know who 4over is?” They’re going to be like, “Who? You mean 4imprint? I know who 4imprint is.”
[0:26:00] DC: Yeah, because they have commercials.
[0:26:02] WC: Yeah, they don’t know who 4over is.
[0:26:04] JM: Confusing us with two names, yes.
[0:26:05] WC: It’s not in their best interest to solicit your customers, right?
[0:26:11] DC: No, but it’s still a good question.
[0:26:13] WC: It is. No, it’s a very valid and fair question.
[0:26:14] DC: Right. But Jamie –
[0:26:16] WC: I think it’s worth addressing.
[0:26:17] DC: Yes, 100%. Yes. I think there’s also a bigger picture here. By the way, 4over could do now if they wanted to, they know all the work that’s coming in and who they’re printing for. They might not know the actual person sitting in an AT&T chair buying the print, but they know that they’re printing for AT&T. They know where they’re shipping it. If they really wanted to do anything and they wouldn’t, by the way, but what I’m saying is that does the print shop still have visibility into what they’re farming out? Can they get data back, so they can understand like, you know, we sent a lot of stuff with rounded edges, maybe it’s worth getting a little die-cut machine here to keep that in-house and things of that nature.
[0:27:04] WC: Oh, the data is so granular within the software. You can do a report on rounded corners. You can say, how many rounded corner jobs have I had? Then, how many times have I sent it out, versus how many times have I done it in-house? That’s all of those –
[0:27:19] DC: The printer can do that themselves.
[0:27:19] WC: It’s all contained within the thing that you log into that you get from Printer Bridge for 99 bucks. It has data for days.
[0:27:26] DC: It’s only your data. It’s not like, tell me all the printers in my area.
[0:27:30] WC: No, it’s your data. It’s your website. It’s your orders. It’s your order experience, your customers, yeah.
[0:27:35] DC: Okay. I was just drilling down further into the data question that Jamie asked, you know what I mean? It’s just another angle of it.
[0:27:42] WC: No. Data in general is, again, it’s the biggest commodity on the planet. But customer data, your personal information, is the commodity. Whether you order rounded business cards, rounded corner business cards are not no one cares about. But for printers, it’s valuable to us because we want to know what did you order and then how many times did you order it. When was the last time you ordered it, and why haven’t you ordered it recently? That’s the question that you can’t answer that you have to ask, which that turns into a marketing point of why haven’t you ordered this? You’ve been ordering this clockwork for the last 10 years, and you stopped ordering it. Then you can even set notifications that will notify you when a customer stops doing that.
[0:28:22] JM: That’s perfect. That’s what we need. Yes. That was another up for grabs.
[0:28:25] DC: That’s amazing.
[0:28:26] JM: Because that’s something – Everybody needs that.
[0:28:28] WC: Yeah. It’s got lots of touch points with the consumer through the website, but you are the gateway to the consumer. That’s why it’s valuable to 4over is that it empowers you as being their – you’re their sales channel. As a trade printer, the printers are their sales channel. By using this software and having this software as a channel, it increases your ability to sell more printing, which is going to trickle and funnel into them.
[0:29:00] JM: Very interesting. The data is the big thing, because a lot of times it will be like, hey, we will run up reports saying, who hasn’t ordered anything in the last three months, six months, whatever the order, and go through all that and just make sure that we’re not – somebody who hasn’t fallen through the wayside just like, “Hey, somebody forgot about this person. Why haven’t we reached out to them?” Getting that report, and if we can run reports monthly like that, that’d be great.
[0:29:21] WC: Bro, there’s a report that you can sort by number of days of last order by client, and you can mass select and send them an email and a text message in one click. You can say –
[0:29:34] JM: I love that.
[0:29:34] DC: Jamie’s celebrating over there.
[0:29:35] WC: Everybody that hasn’t ordered in the last 90 days that normally orders every week, I’m going to send them a text message and an email going, “Where’d you go? What happened?”
[0:29:44] JM: Sometimes that’s me and my CRM. Finally.
[0:29:47] DC: Or all of a sudden, there’s a special on those rounded business cards that they stopped ordering a month ago.
[0:29:52] WC: Yeah.
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:30:45] DC: Will I have two questions. AI integration, I asked because, I mean, I just went on an online storefront the other day and there’s this freaking – I can’t call it a chatbot, because it’s not a chatbot anymore. A virtual assistant, whatever the hell they’re calling it. On every storefront, there’s something they’re asking me if I need help, questions. It would also be really helpful if it’s connected and it learns about all the products I can ask. What’s the difference between a spot varnish and a flood varnish, and so on? That’s my first question. Take it away.
[0:31:20] WC: Well, so if you remember when I gave my presentation in drupa before all of this came to fruition, that was my big pitch, for lack of a better term. That’s where I saw this going was the shopping assistant, the right questions being asked to be able to assist a print customer into placing an order, because the average print customer doesn’t know what the hell they want, right?
[0:31:44] DC: Correct.
[0:31:46] WC: We’re not there yet in the front-facing side of the AI. We are on the backside of AI, where AI is writing code. To put it in perspective, we rebuilt the entire platform. Remember, Printer Bridge launched in 2016. The software itself was built in 2013. In the last year, we’ve touched over a million lines of code and have completely rebuilt the entire software. Rebuilt it completely in a new framework. Now with that, we’ve also built in an AI developer, where I can literally say, “Hey, I think this software should do this thing.” It’s going to ask me a couple of questions. Then we vet it, and then we spec it, and I say, proceed, and it writes the code. It gives me a demo of what the software is going to look like and what it’s going to do. Then we put it into a test environment and then make a couple of tweaks, and we launch it.
The development cycle of building a new feature went from months to minutes, to days to hours, depending on the size of it. Development and building and expanding on software has become exponentially quicker. Then the other side that we’ve invested in is the support side of things, right? When someone asks a question, we have it built where it will respond with a video that explains this is what it does and how it does it and why, and then it banks that into a knowledge base, so the next time someone asks that question, it already has the video prepared.
We’ve focused on how do we make the software better and easier for the people that are using the software first, and then comes the customer-facing agent for, right? We don’t want to take the place of the printer. We want to give the printer the tools to be able to make their shop better. Then eventually, you maybe not need so many customer service people, or as many salespeople, but we’re not there yet.
[0:33:57] DC: Oh, you’re getting rid of Jamie’s job, it seems like.
[0:34:00] WC: You know what? You’re really never going to get rid of that. It’s funny, because I was using AI today to design a brochure. It gave me this amazing design as a PNG mockup. I was like, “Great. Give me that as an editable file.” Then it came back with an editable file was –
[0:34:19] DC: It doesn’t make editable files.
[0:34:20] WC: It didn’t look anything like it at all.
[0:34:22] DC: No, it does not have.
[0:34:23] JM: Doesn’t look anything like it at all. I was like, all right, so I have to take your editable file and the mockup that you gave me, give that to an actual designer and have them do the actual work.
[0:34:30] DC: Correct. I have a logo to send your way. I did the same thing. I made this really cool thing, then I was like, “Oh, great. Now I have to trace it in Illustrator.” It’s like, this sucks. Jamie, you have anything on AI before I ask my other question?
[0:34:43] JM: No, no. Just listening, following along. I’m going to have a Jamie bot soon. I’m going to work on it.
[0:34:49] DC: I love a Jamie bot. I want a Jamie bot. That would be the best. “Yes, Deborah. Whatever you want, Deborah. Okay, Deborah. I got you, Deborah. It’s fine, Deborah. You’ll get it on time, Deborah.” That’s the best.
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:35:37] DC: Okay. Jamie and I were actually chatting about this before you came on to record this podcast, William, which is estimating. I’m assuming that if it’s an online storefront the way that I think of it. Again, I know I’m bypassing just for the printers, because I’m not a printer. I would be using it as a civilian trying to purchase something. I understand that where I’m skipping over a lot of things, but I would assume that printers still need to know the costs of things. So 4over handles the products and services that they offer, the price that they offer, so for printer clicks in, whatever their tier is, as you said before, that’s their pricing structure, and that’s the end of it. They don’t have to adjust any of that, because that’s 4over’s responsibility. What happens when that responsibility turns over to the printer? I ask this because of so many things changing. Jamie and I were discussing an issue that with an estimate that had gone through a couple of rounds and the price was changing, and he just needs to clarify what was going on there. But that was a human that he could talk to and ask questions to and describe things that perhaps the estimator was not factoring in. How does that manifest without a human involved?
[0:37:01] WC: Well, there’s still a human involved in the estimating side of things, right? When you’re building an estimate for a customer, there are tools within the software that make it easy. When you think about printing, think of building blocks. Let’s say, we’re going to build a wall out of Legos and say we’re doing a book, right? You have the paper type is one block; whether it is full color, or black and white is another block. Is the cover going to be 100 pound, or 80 pound? Is the cover going to get coating? Is the cover going to get an embossment, or another embellishment? That’s another block. What type of binding? Are we going to use perfect binding? Are we going to use PUR perfect binding? Is it going to get coil bound? If it’s going to get coil bound, are we going to add plastic covers to it? These are all of the building blocks that go into building that wall that winds up being the product, or the estimate of that product.
We treat every individual item as a value, right? Single-sided versus double-sided, black and white versus color. Paper type, cover paper type, binding. All of those things are options into values and the values of the building blocks. Those values that are preset by 4over for their wholesale cost, you get to set a cost, and your cost can be the same as theirs, because they’re going to fulfill it. Or that building block that’s the same building block that they use is the same building block that you use, but you fulfill it in-house, so you set your cost, and then you are the one fulfilling it. Those building blocks not only become the thing that people order when they’re ordering online, but they also become what goes on the work order that tells the person in production what to make.
Then those same building blocks live in a database where they can be pulled into to build an estimate. You’ve set your costs for what bindery is going to be for 5,000 pieces, or you set it by cost per piece, or you set it by cost per thousand. You can pull that building block into an estimate and build estimates from your building blocks. It’s not necessarily something that you can order on the website, but all of those blocks are on your website, so they can easily be formulated into something that you send to somebody as an estimate, which then becomes a custom product.
Then once you’ve built it as a custom product, you can determine whether you want it to live on their account, and then they can reorder it, and it stays there forever. Or you say, “Well, no. I want this to expire after 90 days, because my price is going to change, which means their price is going to change.” All of these things we’ve thought about, because not only have I owned and ran a printing company for many years, the other person that writes the code has ran and owned a printing company for many years. 4over has obviously ran and run a printing company for many years. We’re thinking about this from the standpoint of not only how do we just sell you software, but how do we sell you software that will actually help you grow your business, so that you can sell more printing, because that’s the end goal, is to sell more print.
[0:40:19] JM: Okay, so the customer’s not creating that quote, but they’re going in and picking and saying they want business cards, or brochures, or whatever, that’s already made in templates, and they already picked the quantity and four over four. But if it’s something more complex, or need something else, I’m going in and building the quote through the system. Then, like you said, whether it lives there forever or expires. I’m using the same system, building the quote that the customer will get, and I decide whether it stays in shop, or goes to 4over, or goes whatever. It’s not the customer doing that. That’s a little bit more complex than somebody in the printing company does that.
[0:40:53] WC: Yes. All of the above. There is a mechanism where someone just fills out a contact form, and then you can take that contact form and convert it into a custom product. There’s a mechanism where you can take the building blocks that are the existent on the website of a product and make that an estimate. Then there is a hybrid of both, where someone asks you for something that is on the website, but then you make it an estimate for them, because they were too lazy to go to the website and get the price themselves.
[0:41:22] JM: Okay. All channels covered there.
[0:41:25] WC: Yeah.
[0:41:26] DC: It seems like it. Okay, so let me ask you this in my Deborah way. Let’s just focus on coated paper and uncoated paper, not a specific brand, okay?
[0:41:37] WC: Okay.
[0:41:38] DC: Paper prices, as we know, are fluctuating up. I hope they fluctuate down at some point, but they’re fluctuating up.
[0:41:44] WC: Good luck.
[0:41:45] DC: I’m just saying. Anytime somebody picks a printer, goes into the system to send an order to 4over, 4over has already accounted for the rise in paper costs. Therefore, I can see what the current wholesale price is, or the price that I’m being charged today, or for however long that estimate is good for. Now, when it comes to the products that the printer is going to keep in-house and the forward-facing information is not the wholesale pricing, is it up to the printer to update each product, or do they update it in blanket things? They could just go in there and say, okay, uncoated paper, add 3%. Embellishments, add 2%. I’m making up numbers, obviously.
[0:42:42] WC: That’s actually a great question. That’s one of the things that I’ve focused on very much from the development standpoint of the ability to manage pricing and manage products in a much more efficient and expedited fashion, right? Because in the e-commerce world and the building blocks of building products, especially something as complex as printing, in the e-commerce world, it’s painstaking and it’s monotonous, right? To be able to have to go in and say, every product that uses uncoated paper – because really when you take printing, a business card and the bookmark are the same thing. The only thing that dictates their name is the size, right? When you have bookmarks, business cards, rack cards, door hangers, brochures, sales sheets, and 15 other products that are basically the same building blocks as the product before it, if I have to go in and touch every one of those products every time uncoated or coated paper changes price, that’s a full-time job.
[0:43:45] DC: Yeah.
[0:43:46] WC: There are existing tools in there now that make it easy to take one product and copy your new pricing to all of the other products that use that. I have a plan and have specced out an interface and a user interface that will consolidate that even more, to where you would just input it once, and it would broadcast to all of the products that use that option. Not there yet.
[0:44:11] DC: Oh, my God. That’s amazing.
[0:44:12] WC: But the existing tool, I can say on business cards, uncoated paper is now X and then save and then select that and then copy it to every other product that I choose. It’s not going to automatically determine that for you. But you can say, every product that you can select – I know bookmarks, I know rack cards, I know door hangers, I know these products all use this option, I can copy it over. We’re working towards making it as simple as 14-point just went up in price. Here’s the new price for 14-point. Everything that uses 14-point now went up in price.
[0:44:47] DC: That’s incredible. I mean, it always reminds me of estimation with the online system always reminds me this sunglass catalog I did with all these different SKUs. I just wanted to kill myself. There was so much information. It was like, well, this black frame could have 10 different colored lenses and all have to match and be together. With one thing changed, you had to change it on 20 different styles. I still have PTSD over the stamp catalog. I hate this catalog more than life itself.
[0:45:17] WC: That’s every online catalog, just so you know. Every online catalog.
[0:45:20] DC: I know. I was getting stressed out about it, just thinking about how a printer could possibly do it. Okay. First of all, product roadmap, everybody has to have one, so fully behind that. Fully behind knowing how you are, that you’re testing everything, that you’re not going to throw something out in the marketplace that’s going to upset anybody, because I know that you don’t like to get upset about things like software.
[0:45:47] WC: Well, and I use it. If I put something out that doesn’t work right, I’m literally affecting my own business.
[0:45:51] DC: Exactly. A 100%. With that, and this goes back to the thing I learned about, you have to have the right base to connect other things to it. If somebody starts now with Printer Bridge and six months from now, you start incorporating more tools and more opportunities, is it as simple like, they just show up in my system? Do I have to implement them? Do I have to download something and upload it?
[0:46:25] WC: It’s all cloud-based. As we roll out new features and functions, there is a news feed in your admin that says, “We have a new feature. It does this. Did you know that it does this?” We actually have a rewind thing that we’re going to do, because we’ve rolled out a lot of new features over the last several years.
[0:46:40] DC: Ooh, I love the rewind function.
[0:46:41] WC: Where it’s going to say, “Did you know that it did this? Did you know you could do this?” As new functions come out, we’ll have news feeds, but we’re going to do that with old features and old functions. Because it’s so big that I guarantee you, there’s people that have been using the software for years that have no idea half the things that it can do. We are not in the business of being too modular, but that’s not to say that there won’t be some modular features that may cost more.
For the most part, the system, it doesn’t charge you transaction fees. There’s no transactional fees. It doesn’t charge you for the number of seats. If you have five employees, or you have 50 employees, it costs you the same.
[0:47:22] DC: That is a major benefit, sir.
[0:47:24] WC: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:47:25] DC: That is a major benefit, sir.
[0:47:27] WC: No transaction fees and no seat fees. We have some features that we’ve specced out that are really big and really powerful that we feel like we should be able to charge a little bit more for those, but we’re talking $20, $30 extra a month, right? It’s not huge amounts of money. But the software is meant to be versatile and lean and be able to be used by as many people as possible.
[0:47:56] JM: Very cool.
[0:47:58] DC: Basically, if you have a URL, you can have Printer Bridge.
[0:48:02] WC: Correct. Yeah.
[0:48:03] DC: It’s incredible. Will, thank you so much for sharing all of that information. I really look forward to learning more about the platform, and also, as you go along, let’s invite people from 4over to jump in, however you want to handle it. I just love this. I love an all-in-one system. It’s customer convenience, however you look at it. Well done on you. Jamie, any final words about Will’s system? Did you develop any software last week, Jamie? You slacker.
[0:48:38] JM: No, I was on vacation last week developing some –
[0:48:42] DC: A tan, a sunburn. He’s red, everybody.
[0:48:45] JM: Other than that, no, I think it’s really cool. Like I said, Will and I had chatted a little bit about it. I’m looking forward to learning more down in PRINTING United, and yeah, we’ll share what we can in our next podcast.
[0:48:56] DC: Excellent.
[0:48:57] JM: Yeah.
[0:48:58] DC: Yeah, we’ll definitely do a report from what we saw at PRINTING United. Hey, everybody, everything you need to learn about Printer Bridge will be in the show notes, and everything about Will and Jamie’s in there, too. Thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to check out printfm.com. Until next time, everybody, print long and prosper.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:49:23] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
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