TORONTO—Printchomp, an online service that hooks up print buyers with printers, has signed a deal with Franchise Services Inc. to bring Sir Speedy, Signal Graphics and Pip Printing to its network.

This adds more than 500 locations to the broker's network, primarily in the U.S. Is this the future of print buying?


Screenshot from Printchomp.com

Printchomp was started about a year ago by Joseph Puopolo (pictured below) in Waterloo, Ont. To date it has signed about 1,000 print shops onto the network across North America. Puopolo, who brings a background in web-to-print marketing, printing and agency experience to the initiative, says he has met with positive response since the launch and the site is growing rapidly, garnering about 10,000 visits per month. "We've had a pretty exciting first year," Puopolo said.
 
One of the first segments he has targeted are agencies, and credits his success to a resurgence of interest in print. "Knowledge of print was removed from many agencies with the rise of digital options and cutbacks. Now, we see a renewed interest in print, but younger print buyers are comfortable buying print online without having strong relationships with their printers."

The system works like like this. Print buyers place a print job up for bid on the site, listing certain specs that help Printchomp direct it to appropriate printers. The quote comes back and is channelled to the buyer. Once the buyer agrees, files get uploaded to the Printchomp website and redirected to the printer. The buyer is aware of who the printer is, but Printchomp acts as the handling manager until the job is delivered. Printchomp gets a percentage of the price of the job.

Most job orders, said Puopolo, come in after midnight, and range from a $20 order for business cards to a 20,000 run for a magazine.

Going forward, plans are to add more printers to the network and ramp up marketing efforts, while also branching out into other verticals including flag production and sign printing.