The young, Ireland-based firm has developed the new online interface as an addition to its existing white label and API offering to printers, retailers and other business-to-business portals.

Launched in February 2011, Tweak.com already offers a complete web interface for large print businesses to offer their small and medium-sized customers the ability to completely design their own marketing materials.

The system, which includes high-resolution images, personalised and targeted colour design and copy, offers the user more than 1m designs across 60 document types in European and US sizes, in UK and US English and in German.

Kiosk will now allow the end user to log in to the system on their own browser and get a final print-ready PDF (imposed or single) that they can print directly on their personal printers, office equipment or commercial printing device.

It can be integrated into point of sale, management information and production management systems. Kiosk will be officially launched in the US next month.

Meanwhile the fledgling company has found great success on its tiny drupa stand - dwarfed by neighbours such as Xerox, Fujifilm and Esko - by signing its first partner in Australia and expecting to close deals with another eight or 10 customers as a result of the show.

Documobi is the brainchild of print and pre-media expert Peter Lancaster and Dscoop chairman Larry Vaughn. The app has been developed to make it incredibly simple to creative interactive, cross-media materials without the need for QR codes or similar devices.

"With Documobi we can make anything ever printed in the history of the world interactive in about 20 seconds, so long as you have a WiFi connection," stated Lancaster.

It involves three steps: users either take a picture or upload a JPEG file of the target print. They upload the image into the Documobi portal, and then enter details of the destination URL that people will be taken to.

A few seconds later, wherever that piece of print is in the world, it will be interactive when users of the ‘brand app' scan the print with their smartphone or tablet.

Lancaster is demonstrating the system on the Canon booth (Hall 8a, stand C6) and it is also being shown by Heidelberg in Hall 1.

It's targeted at the larger end of the SME market as opposed to giant global brands, and creates a ‘walled garden' for each brand that uses the system.

"It's a system for printers to make money, by selling the service to their clients. The key thing is consumers don't download the Documobi app, it would be the brand's app," Lancaster explained. "I can teach someone how to do this in less than a minute."

The system involves a simple pricing structure for licensing the technology, with a small per-month payment for each image added to the Documobi database.

"Printers can then charge their own clients a facilitation fee accordingly," he added.

Tweet

The UK-based firm is also in discussions with a further 35 potential customers, with a possible total order value of around €900,000.

Taopix Asia president Richard Watson told Drupa Report Daily that although there were fewer visitors than at Drupa 2008, this year's prospects were of a higher calibre.

"People are coming here with the intent to buy. One person said he wasn't going back without the software," he said.

After launching in 2007, Taopix shared a stand with Canon at its first Drupa the following year, but this time the company is occupying a 54sqm pitch next to HP - something Watson said is no accident.

"The web-to-print market is expanding - it is no longer Europe and US-centric; it's a truly worldwide business." Deals had been struck with clients from as far afield as Bali, Iceland and Kenya, he added.

Watson said there had been substantial interest from conventional printers with no digital capability who were looking to expand into new markets.

But the biggest surprise, he said, had been enquiries from people who were not currently involved in print at all.

"We are talking to commercial marketing and web experts who know nothing about printing but who know how to get a job. That's great because it means new companies are coming into printing," he said.

But he stressed that although the market was growing, printers needed to learn how to sell themselves using less traditional models, in order to compete.

Tweet