Not long ago, almost all equipment in the packaging industry was analog, but this is quickly changing. Although the industry is still highly dependent on conventional printing, like flexography, significant growth in digital label and package printing is on the rise. Digital printing is opening the packaging market to new opportunities like customized and personalized packaging. In fact, Smithers Pira forecasts that digital print for packaging will more than double from $6.6 billion in 2013 to $14.4 billion in 2018.
The key driving growth factors in digital labels and package printing include:
- Brand owners demanding more variations, personalization and sizes, leading to shorter runs
- A security imperative to cut risks of counterfeiting, as well as comply with regulations of pharmaceutical and food industries
- Print Service Providers striving to be more efficient in manufacturing and logistics
- As a strategy – brands are looking to complement their print communications with digital
As the digital packaging market continues to grow, Web-to-print solutions become very relevant to this industry. The need for a convenient way to customize, order and produce many short-run items is very apparent and Web-to-print portals offer a perfect fit to satisfy this need. In addition, customers can dramatically increase workflow efficiencies by reducing the cost of acquiring, processing and fulfilling orders. Web-to-print software, like XMPie PersonalEffect StoreFlow, offers a full set of features that can easily scale when required.
We recently held a webinar with Zoxxbox to showcase how the company developed a unique Web-to-print site using StoreFlow to promote its custom packaging operation. Their customers can easily choose the type of packaging they want and they how they want to prepare the package design: customizable Zoxxbox designs, artwork design services or upload their own design.
To see a demo of the Zoxxbox website and to learn more about Web-to-print, check out the webinar replay here.
Are you using a Web-to-print site for your operation? Tell us how it’s going below!