How a family printing business went online with the help of The Loop co
It was in Bairro Alto, in the heart of downtown Lisbon, that Jorge Fernandes opened a small printing shop in 1890, which after his death passed into the hands of his son Jacinto and which a grandson would eventually inherit and develop until, at a time of “less stability” in the business, he sold the business to Fernando Marques. 132 years after its foundation, the historic printing company that is still in the hands of the Marques family — Fernando and Ana have already divided the shares with their sons Miguel and Pedro — is now entering the online printing business, taking advantage of the technological platform of the Portuguese company The Loop, through the creation of the brand Ok-Print.
Currently located in Charneca da Caparica, where it has a production area of around 3,000 square meters, Jorge Fernandes produces printed graphic material such as magazines, books, brochures and flyers, claiming a place in the ranking of the country’s five largest printers of flatbed machines (excluding the rotary ones, which print newspapers). Lidl, Meo, and the Santander Totta bank are some of its best-known customers, although it also works with companies, formats, and smaller print runs. And, for the last seven years, also with two online platforms dedicated to printing in the national and European markets.
This is the case of the Portuguese 360Imprimir and the Dutch Helloprint, which deliver part of the production of materials ordered digitally to this century-old industry in the municipality of Almada. Now, as the project manager, Ivo Gonçalves, tells ECO, Ok-Print emerged from the experience gained over the last few years working for these platforms and was also accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Sales fell for all clients [online and offline] and so it was decided to reprogram the funds for this area, to try to work directly with the end client and raise business margins.”
Targeted mainly at the end customer, whether private or corporate, Ok-Print has its eye on micro and small companies that until now have had a harder time getting volume to produce in the printing industry. “We want to target that area. Those who resort to the printing industry usually have a very large volume of printing and the work is always dedicated. In a platform we aggregate several jobs to create this volume and reduce waste, thus giving greater value to the final consumer,” emphasizes the manager, who was recruited to launch this project and already has three people dedicated full time.
Despite the launch of its own online printing brand — which took place in December last year, after a month of soft launch — the company will continue to produce for the other two client brands, which it does not see as competitors. Ivo Gonçalves argues that, despite having started in the graphic area, 360Imprimir has a wider offer and “is basically a technology and marketing company”. Helloprint, which is based in Holland and has several suppliers in Central Europe, for whom it produces the articles aimed at the Iberian market, “is not a real competitor because it has a much larger size”.
The differentiation, on the other hand, is even easier to explain: “this will always be a platform of graphic products with its own production”. That is why, after starting with the domestic market and opening the Spanish market earlier this year, Jorge Fernandes plans to also reach France by the end of the first trimester, thus investing in nearby geographies.
The responsible emphasizes that “the expectations are good because [it] will reach an audience of many millions of people in these three countries”.
The printing company closed 2021 with a billing of around five million euros and the administration would like this new area to be worth 10% to 15% of revenues at the end of the first full year of activity, growing “up to 50% in four or five years.” The direct investment, not counting human resources, will be around 30 thousand euros per year and, in time, online printing may be decisive for the sustainability of this century-old company, which was in danger of being left behind. “We had to get used to this new reality and be where most of the purchases are, which is in e-commerce” adds Ivo Gonçalves.
Software to integrate orders in the factory
In this digitization project that already offers more than a million combinations of products, Jorge Fernandes, which employs 40 people, had The Loop as its partner. The young Coimbra-based company developed the entire technological infrastructure that allows customers to consult, interact and submit documents, make payments, receive invoices, or manage their personal area; and that also includes backoffice tools so that the print shop can integrate these Internet orders into the manufacturing process and speed up delivery times to customers, without “clashing” with the rest of the work.
The partner in the Coimbra company, Ricardo Morgado, explains to ECO that online printing had already been “identified some time ago as a growth area”. Even before, about a year ago, he met Jorge Fernandes, who, in turn, was looking for a partner to digitalize part of the business. “We realized that there was an opportunity for a large company that was already consolidated in the market to have its own solution. By having its own production, it can have another scale and be competitive in terms of price, flexibility and quality” he adds.
The company in the centre of Portugal, which employs more than a hundred people and invoiced 3.7 million euros in 2021, has its origins in Book in Loop, a platform for reusing textbooks created by João Bernardo Parreira and Manuel Tovar after they finished high school. The success of this project led in 2019 to the launch of BabyLoop, which does the same with childcare products. With the union of Ricardo Morgado and João Rodrigues, the brand was refounded as The Loop, and is now a Portuguese technology company focused on circular economy business models and that also provides technology services.
It is in this last area of activity that Ok-Print was born, with the manager responsible for the circular economy and sustainability business reporting that “the project continues and will move into a second phase, to increase the scope a little, which involves making processes even more automatic” with the industrial part. Other examples are the collaboration with the ticketing platform Ticketline, with the retail area of the Sonae group or with the Red Cross and Portuguese Pharmacies, for whom he recently developed a solution for the scheduling of Covid-19 tests and the respective communication of results to customers.
— In the ECO Newspaper
