Swiss printers are not so sure about w2p

[GeorgeA]

Hello to everyone! I’m new to this forum, but I’ve been active in the industry for a long time and I look forward to participating here.

I thought you might be interested in hearing about a survey conducted earlier this year in Switzerland by the Swiss portal www.mediaforum.ch. To my astonishment, the majority of the 200+ printers who responded do not seem to see web-to-print systems as a priority. For the most part, they are content to wait for requests from customers before considering a system. When asked “Should printers offer their customers web-to-print solutions?” only 29% said that printers should do so “as soon as possible.” The answers of the other 71% ranged from “Only if a customer expresses a need for it” to “No, there’s no market for it.”

Does this seem as strange to you as it does to me? Is it something about Swiss printers, or do you think the same question, posed to a broad spectrum of US printers, would get the same response?

(Full details about the survey are available at www.mediaforum.ch for those who read German; for those who don’t, the results are summarized on my site here: Web-to-print or wait-to-see.)

George Alexander
Beyond-Print

[smatros]

well, Switzerland is a very conservative country, which certainly has an impact on such results. Also payments over the net are (generally in Europe, not only in Switzerland) very behind the US habits. In my opinion w2p is a must have for any printer, no matter if US or EU based.