[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:00:00] DC: This podcast conference is brought to you by GelatoConnect. Learn how to get control over your entire print operation and work more efficiently at gelato.com and through the links in the show notes.
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:15] DC: It takes the right skills and the right innovation to design and manage meaningful print marketing solutions. Welcome to Podcasts From The Printerverse, where we explore all facets of print and marketing that creates stellar communications and sales opportunities for business success. I’m your host Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. Thanks for tuning in. Listen long and prosper.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:42] DC: Welcome to building a print business that will last, the podcast conference sponsored by Gelato. Throughout this series, we’ve explored how the print industry is being reshaped by automation, AI, shifting customer expectations, and the demand for faster, smaller, more personalized work. We’ve discussed the breakdown of traditional workflows, the pressure to do more with less, and the need for smarter, data-driven decisions at every level of the business.
One thing has been clear throughout this conference, the rules are changing and have changed, and print businesses that want to stay relevant will have to change with them, which brings us to this final conversation, what does the print shop of the future look like? What opportunities will define the next decade of print, and how can print service is prepared to thrive, not just survive, in this rapidly changing landscape.
Joining me on the last episode is also the gentleman who joined me for the first episode, Henrik Müller-Hansen. He is the CEO and founder of Gelato. Under his leadership, Gelato has grown into the world’s largest production-on-demand network. Its software platform for print, GelatoConnect, is the operating system print shops leverage to drive growth, efficiency, and control. By unifying procurement, workflow, and logistics, GelatoConnect enables PSPs to reduce waste, boost profitability, and scale without adding machines or headcount. You can learn more about Henrik and Gelato in episode one of this conference. Welcome back, sir.
[00:02:31] HMH: Thank you so much, Deborah. I look forward to wrapping up this conference and podcast episodes that you have so nicely managed for us. So, yes, let’s get started.
[00:02:43] DC: Okay. From your perspective, what is the next generation of print?
[00:02:48] HMH: So, at a high level, I would actually not speak so much about print because I think the next generation of anything is going to be AI-impacted. What we’re seeing, I mean obviously we’re in the print industry but the changes, I’ve been a CEO now for 20 years. I started in the telecommunication industry and then I founded this company 16 years ago. I have never seen the pace of change that I am seeing today. This has nothing to do with printing.
What is so interesting is that these changes forces us, as Gelato, but I would argue any company more than ever before to understand what is your DNA. What is it that you are uniquely equipped to do? Because if you do not have that thought constantly guiding your decisions, you are going to waste a lot of money, you’re going to waste a lot of time, and you will not be able to compete.
So, going to the print industry, I’ve now met, I would probably estimate it to be a couple of thousands of PSPs, print service providers, during the last 15 years. Most of them consider themselves to be incredibly good at software. I would argue there is per definition nothing that equals a company managing a print shop to be a company that is great at building software. I think if PSPs, and by the way, not to offend anyone, let me say to you, listeners out there, we don’t invest in print equipment because we do not consider ourselves to be great at production.
So, there is no industry, and you think about this. Is Hilton the ones that built Airbnb? The answer is no. Is it Capital Records that build Spotify? The answer is no. Why does every PSP, more or less Deborah, I mean, think that they are really good at software? The distinguishment between your DNA versus what you’re doing has never been more important. One question I often ask myself and the audience here can ask yourself this question. What is it that other companies would have really hard time replicating when it comes to Gelato? I would say software. I would say AI. Are you using Devin? Are you using Cursor? are you using Anthropics? These are examples of software tools that are AI tools that if you’re not using you will not long-term win in the software space.
So, you ask what is the future like? Where is the print industry going? What will happen during the coming 10 years? What will happen is that every PSP will have to accept the fact that they are not software companies. If they don’t, this is my prediction, they will not survive. In the same way, Gelato will not survive if we think we’re a printer and we start investing in machines. It is not easy to be a PSP. It requires you to totally focus on production and doing it efficiently and that I would say is not unique to the print industry, Deborah. I would argue that every single industry right now is undergoing fundamental shifts in its structures and in its core competence.
[00:07:00] DC: Paul Hudson in the previous podcast reviewed all of the areas where his partnership with Gelato has given him data for decisions, not just decisions about his workflow and decisions about where he’s buying things through procurement or anything like that, but also decisions to help his customers make decisions. So, that is software too. Sometimes I think that the overarching word, software, workflow, automation gets lost in the, “Oh, they’re just trying to sell me something. I’ve been using my Excel sheets for 20 years and everything is fine.” That might be the case, but I believe what you’re saying is something I believe, which is that you’re investing in software because you’re investing in the way that consumers and customers navigate purchases in the world, and it’s all about customer convenience.
So, if there are antiquated processes, I believe truly that you will lose out on that work because people want to do what they know how to do. If I can order something online at a red light and get it tomorrow morning, that is my experience of purchasing things in the world.
[00:08:24] HMH: Yes. Well, there are so much to unpack on these comments that you made there, Deborah, because let’s start with this. If you have your own software tool as a PSP, you built your own workflow as a PSP, that is an isolated workflow. So, my question to you is, let’s say you have a customer. The customers, if it’s a B2B, B2C, a global brand, it doesn’t matter. They will ask the same thing from you. How can I use software to simplify my production in Toronto, in New York, and in Melbourne over one single platform? That is the question. The whole world is moving to that. It’s Airbnb, you have Spotify, you have different travel apps, Tesla is easy to use in Norway as it is in the US.
So, the platformization of the economy is something that every PSP should think about because your customers will demand it from you. And my analogy that I’m thinking of here is if you have a gasoline station, you have your own software. But if you don’t have any roads to the gasoline station, it’s not going to be a good investment. Those roads are defined by the customers, be it B2B, B2C. So, if there is no road in and out from your PSP, you will not be part of the growth going forward. That is not you that are deciding, it is the customers that are deciding this.
[00:09:53] DC: Yes. Let alone if you don’t have 24-hour staff on site to help people with their problems, or for some reason, the credit card machines are broken and you have to pay with cash. I mean, that’s actually a great analogy because it has to function by itself.
[00:10:11] HMH: Yes, it has to function. What gasoline station says, “I’m going to build my own software.”
[00:10:16] DC: Right. Or you can only get gas between nine and five. And I want to talk to you about it. I want to make sure that – let me see if I can get you on the premium gas instead of just the regular gas because I need to talk to all my customers.
[00:10:30] HMH: On top of that, every single process right now is being redefined by AI and software. Let me give you an example. In q1 this year, 62% of our software was generated by AI. So, my question to you as a listener is how much of your code base, how much of your software was upgraded by AI last 30 days? My estimate in q2 is that that has exceeded in Gelato 70%.
So, I think there are foundational shifts in how you need to think when you operate your PSP and your production hub. The other thing I would say, and this is so incredibly difficult for all business owners, including myself, is there is this concept about sunk cost. Typically, I hear the following comment, “Henrik, I really love your software, but we have invested 15 years in building our own software, and it has costed us so much money that we don’t want to forsake it, we don’t want to leave it.”
Let me share this. Google and Meta are right now fighting about one thing, which is who will be first to power the first one-person unicorn in the world? Meaning one person building a company valued at over one billion dollars. So, the world is changing so fast that if you do not take a hard look at how you’re structured today, you will not be able to sell your business, you will not be able to transfer your business to the next generation, you will not be able to connect your business to the outside world. What I – my dream with Gelato is to connect the best PSPs on the planet into such a strong network that the megacities can’t consume what the megacities produce. Because that saw so many things. You have fast delivery, you have local production, it’s much more sustainable, it matches your personal design preference with a product that is produced in your city.
I think that with 3D printing also, we are not speaking about that, but I look at 3D printing as an integral part into the print industry, and especially if we speak on a 5 to 10-year basis. So, how are you going to build the software tools and the workflow models for 3D printing? Are you going to adapt your existing software to capture that growth? It will not be easy. So, this sunk cost element, then the thought about sunk cost, that is same for all of us. When I build Optimalprint, our B2C business, this year, Optimalprint is going to generate, this is just our B2C business. It’s going to generate roughly $50 million. It’s managed by nine people. It’s throwing off around $9 million. So, the revenue is $50 million. We have a free cash flow of roughly $9 million and it’s managed by nine people.
Why is that like relevant? It is relevant because what we’ve realized is we were not an e-commerce platform. So, we downsized 85%. Was that easy? No, it was incredibly hard, but it’s part of being a leader and it’s part of being just truthful to what changes in your world and in the industry we are operating in. I want to give you one example here, Deborah, which I think speaks volumes about where this industry is heading.
In the old Optimalprint world, and again, it’s our B2C business, we had two engineers and one product manager handling our CRM tool, Customer Relationship Management. That is replaced with an app that we pay a couple of hundred bucks per month now. And you know what, that app, that whole usability, I would argue, is three times better than what those three people could do.
So, you have, in the age of AI, a couple of hundred dollars replacing three people but generating a value to your end customer that is three times bigger than in the old world. This shift has happened in 18 months. What I’m seeing now, Deborah, is going even faster. In the month of June, the AI improvements just blew my mind. If you go and you look at the Veo 3, the video AI app, you can write the prompt which is basically you have two couples, Chinese, walking downtown Shanghai, it’s three o’clock at night, it’s raining, and the moonlight is shimmering on buildings, and the pave walk. Three minutes later, you have a video that a year ago would have costed you 100s of thousands of dollars to create and now you pay $20 per month and you get a subscription to do that.
So, I think the players in this industry that are fighting the tide will not win. I want to repeat one thing. I am not saying to anyone that we are masters of all trades. We say, we don’t know anything about production, but we know a lot about software. When we divide, one plus one becomes seven. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the individual parts. That is what partnership is about, that is about knowing your core competence and your DNA string, and it’s never been more important.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[00:17:12] ANNOUNCER: The print shop of the future isn’t coming, it’s already here, and it runs on GelatoConnect. Built on 15 years of insights, GelatoConnect is the operating system for digital print production, connecting every machine, product, and process with real-time control and AI-powered automation. Printers using it are increasing packaging speed by up to 5x, reducing stockouts by 85% and doubling profit margins without adding headcount. Unlock growth, increase efficiency, and take back control. Empower your print business with the operating system built for growth. Learn more at gelato.com/connect.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[00:17:50] DC: I want to echo one – I mean, there’s so much I could chime in on, but I do want to move on. I just want to echo one thing and just put it in human terms. If you think of your print shop like an iPhone, at a certain point, your accessories stop working, you can’t download the apps that the people with the new operating system can, because you’re using an older model, and technology is working that way now. So, when you said, you mentioned that working in your own self-contained system almost in some situations locks you out from just connecting the APIs with all the amazing technology that is out there to help you become more efficient and effective, because you would have to upgrade to be able to connect or look into a platform that has already done that for you.
In previous podcasts, we’ve been talking about micro-orders, how the brands are going to micro-orders. I want to ask you how you’re defining that and then how will the adoption of on-demand production by the global brands reshape the e-commerce and printing manufacturing landscape?
[00:19:07] HMH: It’s a super relevant question in the age of the creator economy, but let’s go back to micro-orders. I would change the definition and the terminology and I will say personalized production. If you have a choice, Deborah, between a standardized, white Gap t-shirt or creating your own t-shirt, produce it locally, ship it overnight and have it tomorrow, what would you choose? I would argue there is not a same person in the world –
[00:19:38] DC: It’s not a choice, exactly.
[00:19:39] HMH: So, there is another thing you’re saying, the scary concept of micro-orders. I mentioned before, I come from telecommunication. So, the person working in my company before I joined as the CEO assistant was Niklas Zennström. You might not know him by name, but you know the company he founded, Skype. So, Niklas left Tele2 and he founded Skype.
I remember I was sitting, it was year 2000, I was sitting in the leadership team room and one of the people in the leadership team said, “You know what, IP telephony, if Niklas succeeds we either buy him or we out-compete him.” Turned out, none of it worked. So, why should something that is scary be a reason for not moving? It was scary for us. We made a lot of money on fixed telephony. Niklas said, “Fixed telephony is a thing of the past.” That’s like offset orders. That’s like those giant 10,000-brochure orders. It’s like annual reports.
When I joined Tele2 25 years ago, it was mandated to print annual reports to all your shareholders. If you had a hundred thousand shareholders, you had to send a hundred thousand brochures. It’s not the case any longer. You know what? Niklas won. We lost. Niklas won the IP telephony war. He built the largest IP telephony company in the world. Being scared is not a reason for not moving.
So, I don’t really care if the industry in printing or outside of printing, any industry for that matter. If Hilton says, “We ignore Airbnb.” Or, I don’t know if you remember this, but Blockbuster was offered to buy Netflix for $50 million. At the time, it was 0.6% of Blockbuster’s revenue. It’s the biggest strategic blunder in the world.
[00:21:46] DC: New Coke was pretty bad too. I don’t know if you remember that.
[00:21:49] HMH: I do remember that. So, I would argue that the terminology we should all use and not ignore and accept is personalized production and that can happen at scale. It to be New York School District that wants a personalized brochure for all the schools in all of New York. One order highly personalized. Or it could be my oldest daughter wanting to decorate her apartment and she goes to Gelato and one of our create customers and creates her own art that she hangs on the wall.
So, we can like or we can dislike the fact that personalized orders drives down the quantity per print run from 20,000 brochures to 20 brochures highly personalized, but we cannot ignore it. In the same way as we cannot ignore a person preferring Netflix ahead of Blockbuster because there are no late fees and you can buy 20,000 movies in a couple of seconds over Netflix. You pay a subscription on it just like software and it allows you to move a decade forward in time. The ultimate goal of any business is to be led by customers. If you’re not led by customers, eventually you will lose out.
This industry should celebrate the fact that consumers are pushing down quantities and are going from analog to personal. Why? Because it’s higher average order value, it’s higher profitability if you have the right software, and consumers will continue the shift for decades to come, moving away from centralized mass production of analog items, to localized personalized production in mega cities across the planet. This is a massive opportunity.
I’ll give you one example from real life. One of the Formula One teams reached out to me and they said, “Listen, we have a big problem. The whole Formula One Circus has to produce all the merch, the posters, the stickers, before the season even starts.” However, when we see one of our drivers, and I don’t want to mention the name of this company, but when we see one of our drivers win in one of the megacities around the world, we see millions of customers coming to our website wanting to buy personalized merch. Put their own name, put the idol, their Formula One driver on that t-shirt with our brand. We can’t do that. Why? Because we don’t have one software that we can go to that manages 20 megacities around the world. And we cannot administrate.
Individual solutions in individual megacities is just not feasible. So, what we ended up doing last year was produce everything before the season even began. It’s crazy. We ended up having to destroy $15 million of branded goods that we tried to sell on big discounts, destroying our brand because we sold old branded goods. That, by the way, are not personalized, so it has low interest because our biggest fanbase is Gen Zs and Millennials.
I think we’re sitting on an incredible opportunity in this industry, Deborah, but there is no way, no way that the music industry could produce Spotify, or the hotel chains producing Airbnb. So, if we don’t work together, we are just going to prolong the pain, we’re going to continue suffering with low margins, and if a PSP is making less than 10% free cash flow, that’s a warning sign and I would argue you’re running your facility with an old legacy burden software system. That’s the reason why you’re running below 10% free cash flow.
I would also argue there is no industry in the world that long-term has survived if you’re generating less than 10% free cash flow. Most of the time I hear 2%, 4%, 3%. It is crazy, and it should be an alarm bell for every single PSP.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[00:27:00] DC: Print Media Centr provides printspiration and resources to our vast network of print and marketing professionals. Whether you are an industry supplier, print service provider, print customer, or consultant, we have you covered, by providing resources and strategies that enable business marketing and creative success, reporting from global events, these podcasts, Project Peacock TV, and an array of community-lifting initiatives. We also work with OEMs, suppliers, industry organizations, and event producers, helping you connect and engage with our vast audience, and achieve success with your sales, marketing, and conference endeavors. Visit printmediacentr.com and connect with the Printerverse. Links in the show notes. Print long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[00:27:54] DC: Okay. So, what I heard was Formula One, and I heard every printer listening to this saying, “Well, I don’t have Formula One as a customer, so this does not affect me.” This is what I would like to ask you about, okay? Because listen, I’m on your side. I completely believe – what I’m saying is that, I believe in survival of the fittest. I just do. It doesn’t upset me when I see less companies at a trade show because I feel that the market has determined who should be there and who should not, depending upon where the future of the industry is going.
But what I wanted to say to you is this. Let’s take a 100-year-old bakery and every day in the morning, they get there at 3 o’clock in the morning and they bake 200 loaves of Italian bread, right? Now, what we’re asking them to do is not to do that and have a customer say, “I would like an Italian bread, but I would like caraway seeds on it. I would like an Italian bread, but I would like it if half of it was pumpernickel and half of it was Italian. And the bakery has no system for that. It’s not their business.
I just wanted to bring this back down to earth for a second, because I believe that more printers are in that situation because either they’re operating with their own software, with their own processes, because the customers they have, they’re not pushing them to do anything personalized or customized. I can tell you as a print customer for 25 plus years, that when I would investigate a new technology with my printer, if my printer did not have that technology, they wouldn’t say that to me. They would just say, “Oh, you don’t want to do that.” And they would give me every reason in the world why I didn’t want to do it until I – and it was digital printing, by the way, until I was terrified of it, until they got a digital press. Then all of a sudden everything was okay again.
So, I want you to address that, but I want you to address that in the setting of how does a print business know it is evolving with the industry or just getting better at serving that shrinking market of customers that they happen to have a pretty big share of right now.
[00:30:25] HMH: Let’s go back to the bakery. I grew up in a relatively small town. Let’s say that there were 10 bakeries. How many bakeries are left today?
[00:30:35] DC: Two?
[00:30:36] HMH: One. Let’s go to the music industry. For how long did the music industry fight for DVDs, CDs, and LP records?
[00:30:48] DC: I don’t know.
[00:30:50] HMH: Let’s say 15 years, 10 years. Let’s go to the hospitality industry. For how long did Hilton say, “We don’t need Airbnb. We don’t care about Airbnb.” What are they doing now? How many are on hotels.com or Airbnb? So, you can fight the tide to a certain extent, but you can’t ignore the reality.
[00:31:12] DC: I’m going to have to push back on you there because I don’t think it’s a fight. I think it’s, I don’t know how to start. I don’t know how to change what we’ve been doing here for the last 50 years and bring my staff, upskill my staff, and have somebody who understands technology. That’s why I use the example of the bakery. You keep wanting to use the examples of these giant companies that must have a system like this because they have millions of customers.
[00:31:43] HMH: But how many small hotel chains are running on Airbnb? How many individual households are running on Airbnb? But –
[00:31:50] DC: Yes, I want to talk about the print shop who has to say, “Okay, we need to make a decision here. Either we are going to stay on our iPhone that cannot be upgraded or –”
[00:32:02] HMH: Not an iPhone, Deborah.
[00:32:03] DC: Right. Our rotary phone that can’t be updated or we’re going to have to bite the bullet, kill all our darlings, as the expression goes, and –
[00:32:15] HMH: Just like we did with Optimalprint.
[00:32:17] DC: Just like we did with getting a cell phone, by the way. When I first got a cell phone and someone’s like text me, I’m like, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.” Because remember, you had to go A, A, A, B, B, B, like to do that. And I’m like, the phones in my hand and you want me to spend 10 minutes going A, A, A, B, B, B instead of just calling you. Now, if somebody calls me, I’m like, “Why the hell are they calling me and not texting me?”
[00:32:40] HMH: But let’s go back to the then industry. Let’s go back to the 50-year-old and here this is so telling about this industry. Let’s go back to the 50-year-old PSP. On average, what type of machines does this company that you’re speaking about have? Let’s say two HP Indigos. Let’s say one large format Canon. Let’s say perhaps an apparel machine and so forth. What is that investment? Let’s say five million dollars. How much is their software platform investment? Let’s say zero or it’s their own people that are building the software and they built it for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years. There is no correlation in my view between the amount of money you have invested in hardware versus software.
So, you have all this hardware, it’s not connected to the software. When you say, how do you get started? We have examples everywhere in the US or in Europe of companies that have bought our software and deployed it. This is what we have spent 15 years building. It takes us from A to Z two, three weeks to deploy our software, to connect it to procurement, to get it running on your production, and it’s a cross machine. It’s machine agnostic. You use our software for Ricoh, for Canon, for Kornit, for Brother. It is one software.
This industry has grown up with vertical software per machine part, basically. The industry needs a horizontal operating system that connects your warehouse, your production, and your logistics. So, I think it’s a shift of mindset and in a way, you need to let go of your darlings and the perception that you have all the answers.
Let me go back to the CRM app. We thought we knew how to build a CRM system and we replaced three people with one app. How did we get started? Well, let me tell you, Deborah, it was very easy to get started. It was much, much easier than we could ever imagine. Now, every month, what happens? Upgrade, after upgrade, after upgrade. It just becomes better and better and better. Software has this peculiar advantage that you can just upload it into the cloud and you get the best and the latest and the most updated version overnight. So, if you want to understand how easy to roll out GelatoConnect, well speak to Paul Hudson for example, or speak to Adam at Bennett Graphics, or speak to O’Shea brothers in Germany. And the list goes on and on and on.
So, the thing with today’s software landscape and services is it is not complicated to implement and that’s the whole deal. That’s the whole thing. It is much more complicated to try to build a software to create your own 200 different loaves of bread.
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[00:36:18] DC: Like what you hear? Leave us a comment. Click a few stars, share this episode, and please subscribe to the show. Are you interested in being the guest and sharing your information with our active and growing global audience? Podcasts are trending as a potent direct marketing and educational channel for brands and businesses who want to provide portable content for customers and consumers. Visit printmediacentr.com, click on podcasts, and request a partner package today. Share long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[00:36:52] DC: I don’t disagree with you. I think that printers have, many of them have PTSD from MIS companies and those sorts of implementations and it just is like, we have to get our jobs out the door tonight and nobody has time to be investigating these things. When you’re at trade shows and things like that, it is worth to look at Gelato and other companies out there that might be okay for you to at least start your investigation so you can pair and contrast and know what is better for you.
[00:37:24] HMH: You can also go and you can look at use cases and customer reviews are a page from PSPs, from printers all across the world, and you will have heard about them and you will have known about them.
[00:37:36] DC: Yes. The reason why I’m actually suggesting they look around is because when it comes to convenience, and oh, we don’t need 90 people who understand technology in the print shop and we don’t have to have customers like Formula One and we can still get the advantages of working with your platform. So, when speed, cost, and quality are no longer differentiators, let’s say everybody is on GelatoConnect now, and we’re talking about the future of the successful printing business, right? When speed, cost, and quality are no longer differentiators, what is?
[00:38:16] HMH: Let’s go to Uber. Let’s go to Spotify. Let’s go to Airbnb. What has happened? What has happened is that you’re democratizing the access to your assets. What is happening with Gelato is that you’re giving access to your machines to millions of customers, be it B2B or B2C.
Go and do some searches. Has Uber decreased the amount of taxi rights? No, it hasn’t. It has increased the amount of taxi rights. It’s convenience. Who is the competitor? Well, I would argue the competitor is perhaps the tube. The competitor is perhaps the bus. There are, in my world and in the print industry, a massive volume in IKEA, a massive volume in Zara, in companies that previously weren’t viewed as competitors, but the consumers, and the demand from the consumer is shifting this and opening up completely new markets.
I’ll give you an example. One of the reasons why I’m so excited about the print industry and its growth potential is that the creator economy didn’t exist 10 years ago. Now, it’s heading towards $500 billion. Half a trillion. Who is going to produce for the creator economy? My concern is not what is your core competence, because I think the PSP’s core competence is insanely efficient production and the ability to co-locate production and get ready for 3D printing. Because additive manufacturing is the next wave that’s going to drive growth and profitability in this industry. If you’re not on the right software platform, you will end up having big problems. Fighting over CDs and LPs, it is not the way to ride the wave. It just, it’s not.
[00:40:16] DC: Yes. And just to go back to your Uber example, there are still some cities here in the United States that are not so happy about Uber. They want to support the taxi drivers because there’s money involved in having taxis in the cities and things like that. But what did the taxis have to do? They had to create their own system so that you could also order a taxi as well as ordering an Uber. Sometimes when I go to Europe there’s like that vert thing. It’s like a green. You have an app for taxis there too. So, it’s even the people in the old system of I stand on the corner and I raise my hand and I say, “Come pick me up,” but that’s not customer convenience. That’s hoping that a taxi comes around.
So, what I’m saying is that even though that system is still in place, even they had to upgrade to the call a ride because they couldn’t survive as drivers on a system relied on someone just standing outside and hailing a cab, which of course still does happen if you just happen to need a cab or it starts raining or something like that. But the point is that they have to have the customer convenience to offer to people. Anything you want to say about that before we move on to the last question?
[00:41:33] HMH: Yes, well, I would also just say that you can’t fight changes in consumer demand.
[00:41:40] DC: Correct. And that’s why I was using the example of the taxis who were like, “No, we will be taxis.” And the consumers were like, “No, if you’re going to be a taxi, then I’m going to go do the thing so I know only to go outside when my cab is out there.”
[00:41:55] HMH: Just like if we continue on the Uber, number one, you spoke about the consumer convenience. We all know the beautiful experience with using Uber. Number two, of course it’s a lower cost and competitive pricing. It is inevitable. It’s happening in all industries. Then there is economic opportunities for drivers or this industry in the digital print space. Technological innovation is coming into the print space with such a speed now and AI is only going to accelerate it. Then you have increased market efficiency.
So, let’s go back to the Formula One example. They want this service and it’s a massive growth opportunity for the digital print industry. Then you have global reach and urban mobility over one single software platform, helping PSPs, helping consumers to find each other. It’s like there is so much excitement when I look at the future here in this industry, and sometimes I get a bit too passionate about it because I really believe that we stand before unprecedented growth and profitability.
[00:43:08] DC: Yes. Don’t let that passion die. I’m accused of being too passionate too, but we need passionate people out there. I do agree with you. There’s nothing wrong with the medium of print. It’s these processes that are antiquated and that’s where we get a bad rep. But as soon as we catch up with everybody, it’ll be an offer, what they need, the way that they need it, when they need it, at the price that they need it at, and it’s the right message at the right time. Don’t forget about the creatives have something to do with it too, and the marketing people.
But yes, I mean, this is where we are going, which is why I am thrilled that I get to hang out with you and your team.
[00:43:48] HMH: Thank you, likewise.
[00:43:49] DC: Okay, so last question, and let’s try not to talk about Uber apps in this one, okay? If you could challenge print business leaders with one question about the future of their business, not to respond to you, but to reflect honestly about it, what would it be?
[00:44:07] HMH: How much have you invested in AI and software tools compared to how much you have on your balance sheets in terms of machines and equipment? IRA. What is driving the customer’s usability and user-friendliness?
[00:44:29] DC: Yes. I mean, who is going to be buying from you in five years, or not even five years. Who’s buying from you now? Or how many people aren’t? Because they land on your site and they go right off of it because they don’t see anything that speaks to them. Or they can’t order on it.
[00:44:44] HMH: But that correlation between how much you have invested, it is not uncommon, Deborah, that I hear, I have $10 million invested in machines. I ask, what operating system do you have? We built our own software. Then the discussion goes from there. There has to be a balance between machine investments and software and operating systems. Because who buys a hotel and then do not put rooms available on the internet?
[00:45:18] DC: Right. Could you imagine people walking around knocking on doors and saying, “Hi, do you have a room?” I mean, that’s almost exactly what it’s like going past the websites. A lot of times printers are like, “Look at my website, tell me what you think.” I’m like, have you ever tried to order something from yourself? Go ahead and try that and see how that works out for you.
[00:45:37] HMH: Yes. So, you can say, we have one tool that we’re now – we presented it to 13 PSPs and 13 have signed up for it. It’s the AI estimator tool. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re training the AI cost estimator tool on hundreds and thousands of jobs that you have done historically on your machines, on your cost structure, so that when you get a request inbound from a customer, we can respond in 60 seconds. So, you will win a lot more deals, you will simplify the user experience, you will make a beautiful user experience for your customers, and you will have much better predictability in your calculations.
It is an example, we spent a year building our AI cost estimator and now we have PSPs rolling that out across the world and if you’re not moving in that direction, it is my belief that you will be outcompeted.
[00:46:39] DC: Henrik, it has been a pleasure to speak with you and Pradeep and Rick and Rebecca and Paul. Everything you need to connect with Henrik and Gelato and everybody I mentioned is in the show notes of this podcast conference. So, everybody, it is worth for you to do a little clicking in those links and see if Gelato can help you build the print business that will last. Until next time, print long, profit long, and prosper.
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[00:47:12] 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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