In the picture, from left to right: Cheu Thai Shing (Analyst Peak Capital), Thijs Dijkman (Analyst Peak Capital), Jean-Pierre Meijer (CTO Happyprinting), Johan van Mil (Managing Partner Peak Capital), Sven Rusticus (CEO Happyprinting)
The Dutch online printing company Happyprinting has received a €450,000 ($505,772) investment from the Dutch venture capital firm Peak Capital.
Happyprinting announced the investment will be used to accelerate Happyprinting’s international roll out and further develop its online printing platform.
“We are excited to partner with Peak Capital. Peak has proven to be the right smart capital investor for fast growing companies such as Catawiki and Studocu, and therefore also for us,” said Sven Rusticus, CEO Happyprinting.
“Globally, the shift from traditional to online order placing in print has only just started. With our platform we make it easier, more efficient, more sustainable, and more fun for both the printers and their customers. It’s our mission to create happy customers and happy printers, worldwide with our platform. That’s why we are Happyprinting,” Rusticus commented.
Johan van Mil, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Peak Capital said: “We are impressed with the Happyprinting platform and the international business model that the founders of Happyprinting created. The team has vast entrepreneurial experience and knows the market very well. They were capable to rapidly develop and enter eight European and Asian countries, fully self-funded and in a short amount of time. We are thrilled to assist Happyprinting in growing even faster and fulfilling their global ambitions.”
Happyprinting was first launched in 2017 and offers its brand, the marketing and the webshop in a franchise agreement to printing companies worldwide. This enables Happyprinting to grow quickly, without investing in printing equipment, and allows printers to grab their share of the online market by leveraging the brand, the marketing and webshop from Happyprinting.
“We created an innovative franchise concept in the e-commerce sector. Where Starbucks franchises bricks and mortar shops, we franchise our country online print shops.”, Rusticus explained. It’s the company’s vision to create a global network of in-country printers that all share the Happyprinting brand, the marketing and the Printing as a Service platform.
This vision will also enable multinationals to distribute printed products overnight to any country in the world. In contrary to centralized printing, local printing minimizes transportation and hence lowers the carbon footprint of print. “We stop putting print in planes.”, according to Rusticus. “And through our global partnership with HP Indigo, we are able to ensure consistent print quality, anywhere in the world.”
The global print market is calculated at $980 billion (€872 billion) and is close to the size of the global car industry. Despite what many people think, “Print is big, here to stay and still growing”. The global Online Print market is growing even faster and is expected to explode in the coming five years.
For example, in Western Europe, for 2018, 19 percent of all printed matter was ordered via online printers. The market share of online printers is expected to rise to 42 percent in 2025, according to Bernd Zipper, Europe’s recognized expert in the field of online print. In emerging markets like Asia and Eastern Europe, the growth is expected to be even higher.
