NEUSTADT AN DER AISCH, Germany and LONDON, May 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
30 years of printing experience and ten years of successful e-commerce
This impressive development is something that Erwin Meyer, trained as a typesetter, would not have expected three decades ago: When he founded the printing house Druckerei E. Meyer in 1984, his small, family company was selling to clients primarily in the area around Neustadt an der Aisch in Middle Franconia, Germany. The starting capital was 100,000 D-Mark, the family car served as a pawn.
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Today, the printing house is leading when it comes to online sales and is one of the biggest online printing houses in Europe. Over two billion print products are produced annually in around 100 printing units in the German headquarters. About 500 people work on the 40,000 sqm plant area in sales and production. They support more than 300,000 customers in 30 European countries with their questions, print orders, purchase orders and deliveries.
"We are very excited to celebrate this extraordinary success story in 2014 with two anniversaries: 30 years of Druckerei E. Meyer and ten years of diedruckerei.de, the German shop of Onlineprinters, that started our online business," said Walter Meyer, CEO of Onlineprinters GmbH.
Walter Meyer - one of the first Internet entrepreneurs in the industry
Today's CEO Walter Meyer, son of Erwin Meyer, understands the printing business from the bottom up: He is a trained offset printer. Ten years ago, the entrepreneur founded the German online shop diedruckerei.de as an individual enterprise - this is how he managed to enter the Internet business. The goal was to move away from a few large regional customers to many smaller international customers via Internet. The success story of the online print shop was born and was continued with the establishment of Onlineprinters GmbH in 2008.
Today, the success of Walter's leadership is clear to see. The online printing service provider sells offset and digital printing products via the English web shop http://www.onlineprinters.co.uk as well as 13 international web shops under the brand Onlineprinters in 7 languages. In 2013, each day, about 3,000 printing jobs arrived at Onlineprinters and around a million packages were shipped across Europe. The range of products is for business customers as well as for private customers from brochures to complete booths for fairs. The brochures can be printed from a circulation of 1 to 100,000 catalogues.
High quality printed materials and satisfied customers since 1984 are the nuts and bolts of Onlineprinters' daily work: "We are growing at around 20 per cent annually and, despite the large number of orders, we treat every printing job with the same care. This is because we produce in our own company and our employers are professionals - today as well as 30 years ago. We employ printers, media designers and printing engineers." To only employ experienced and good employees was particularly important to founder Erwin Meyer from the beginning on. He trained many trainees in person.
Online printing as a growth engine
While many small printers were no match for the extreme drop in prices and competitive pressures in the recent years, Onlineprinters was able to maintain its stance in the market thanks to its innovative, international and sustainable growth and production strategy. Reasons for this are investments in new machines with the latest technology and a strong IT-based automated production and the efficient combined printing process.
In the beginning of 2013, the companies Druckerei und Verlag E. Meyer GmbH and Onlineprinters GmbH legally merged under the umbrella of the newly established Onlineprinters Holding GmbH. "The dynamics of the market require that we develop our processes constantly, taking new customer requirements into account and not neglecting trends," said Meyer. The competition in the online business will continue to increase. "We want to continue to compete in the European printing market at the top and to grow profitably," the CEO is optimistic about the future.
About Onlineprinters GmbH
German Onlineprinters GmbH is one of Europe's largest online print shops. All standard printed products are produced in the PSO-certified production department in premium offset quality and in flexible digital printing technology and are distributed via online print shops. Detailed is available in the online shop and mobile shop of http://www.onlineprinters.co.uk
Press contact:
Patrick Piecha
Phone: +49(0)9161/6209807
press@onlineprinters.co.uk
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