Latvia and its capital city Riga are a powerhouse of innovation and inspiration across their vibrant startup ecosystem and all those young companies create a different spin on making business. Last year the concept of phygital meetings was established in Riga and there are more digital services springing up constantly, which can be useful to the meetings as well as to other industries.
Startups like PrintOnPack.com can make a valuable contribution to meetings taking place in Riga (or anywhere else) by sharing their ideas and business models, often disruptive ones — as case studies. Besides inspiring for change, they sometimes offer services that can be directly relevant for bigger events — after all, branded printing on packages for give-aways, congress materials, product samples is widely needed.
On a general note, every congress organizer or companies which produce food items, cosmetics, dietary supplements, gifts or other goods that need packaging, have to make sure that printing and packaging costs are not eating up their profit margin. The printing and packaging market overall is in-transparent and it can be challenging to sourcing offers.
As a new start up from Riga, PrintOnPack.com offers a brand new digital price comparison service for all businesses that frequently need to — as the name states — print on packs in varying quantities.And this service is of course available from everywhere in Europe – just try it out!
Ingars and his partner Ivars realized earlier that the printing market is difficult to compare. Once producers have identified a printing partner, they obviously tend to stick to services, regardless of checking any further for better conditions. Also, little to no online servicing are available for getting comparative proposals — all with the result of clients widely overpaying due to the complicated structures.
The founders’ target was to change this system and create a platform with the vision of easy and wide reach to the best available offers from printing houses in mind. Starting the company in February 2020 and entering sales/marketing only in August 2020, they achieved till now a turnover of 80.000 EURO in 2020 and — only in the first 2 months of 2021 — already another 100.000 EURO.
So here is more about the business model:
Starting with the European market, PrintOnPack.com presently have 50 plus international printers under contract. The client can request a price quote for his particular demand from the company’s website based on comparison and immediately receives an approximate price (which he can already set against what he paid before).
To date the team have handled 300 plus inquiries with a steadily increasing number. From this background they can already deviate differences in price quotes of up to 88 % — which makes a massive difference, when you consider that around 6 % of the total production costs go into packaging. Any percent that can be saved is a direct increase of the profit margin for the client.
Special requirements e.g. for food packaging and the consideration of environmental issues are fed back into the algorithm —thus developing the search/comparison methods with each order. Packaging makes around 80 % of all plastic waste —using biodegradable and recycled materials can only be accelerated by easy comparison of competitive offers and less compromising on the side of clients. Also, in many countries the recycling infrastructure still is missing or in infancy stages; increased cost pressure from the market can change this.
PrintOnPack.com are the first comparing service platform in Europe for flexible packaging, and they want to break the habit of sticking to one printing/packaging producer forever —the aim is to create a cheaper and more sustainable way for packaging.
So how does it work? The request through the online form is handled by the PrintOnPack.com team and the client will receive an offer that is most affordable to him. Quality standard is a necessary main parameter for PrintOnPack.com when choosing a printing company as one of the partners and they check it out. As the clients can rate the quality of the suppliers and give feedback, the high level can be assured.
LIAA — the Latvian investment and development agency, has been supporting PrintOnPack.com with their incubator program and helps with Marketing and Sales programs.
The company does their best to satisfy every order, but of course higher quantities of packaging benefit most of the cost savings. One of the next steps to develop will be a 3D demo of how the design can look like on a package, and also to provide access to selected product designers.
Contact Ivars Sudmalis or Ingars Zagorskis for more information or an offer. They are both on LinkedIn or check PrintOnPack.com
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This article is part of the MEETRiGA story-telling in winter 2020/21
please follow the profile on linkedin.com/company/meet-riga-riga-tourism-development-bureau
