Ipex Sees Digital Press Greetings Card Application

Xerox today announced that Dutch company, Venspro, will be one of Xerox's key European partners whose business innovations will feature on the Xerox stand at Ipex 2006.

Xerox today announced that Dutch company, Venspro, will be one of Xerox's key European partners whose business innovations will feature on the Xerox stand at Ipex 2006.

Venspro will be demonstrating its Greetz On-line personalised greetings cards service at Ipex, which will take place at the NEC, Birmingham (UK) from April 4 - 11.

The product, in the 'greet and gift' retail sector, is said to match the customisation possibilities achievable through digital print with dot com logistics management, said the company.

UK greetings card company, Hallmark, is a major distributor - other partners include Microsoft and Sony - and Venspro is now responsible for generating over 100,000 different orders each month, ranging from one-off cards for special occasions to short-run individually customised invitations.

The company's Johan van Vulpen said: "A greetings card should be a mirror of the relationship between sender and recipient.

If you went to a shop, you could find a really great design, but maybe the caption isn't quite what you want it to say.

We give you the tools to create something unique so you'll always score a hit, and we enable you to do it cost-effectively." In addition to enabling customers to create individualised designs and text on-line or adapt existing cards, the Greetz service includes full print, production and onward postage with guaranteed next day delivery.

For distribution within the Netherlands, the total cost can be 0.02 Euros per card, he added.

The Greetz service has already extended beyond the Netherlands to the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and France.

Demand has grown at such a pace that Venspro's exclusive print partner, The Finishing Touch, has upgraded its Xerox Docucolor 2045 device with one of Xerox's flagship iGen3 digital production systems to handle a rapidly expanding level of business.

"We have also invested money with our print partner to assist it in developing its technology base," added van Vulpen.

"As the Greetz operation becomes increasingly international, and we exploit the strong growth opportunities we see in the corporate sector, we will need to establish partnerships with additional Xerox iGen3 users based in key countries." And he continued: "For 2006, we have one mission, and that's to become the world's best on-line greetings card company, so we'll keep focusing on quality, product development, and innovation.

We are proud to share these points of focus with our key partner, Xerox, and we are very much looking forward to demonstrating the results of our shared vision on the Xerox stand at Ipex." Valentin Govaerts, senior vice president of graphic arts at Xerox Europe, said: "We are very clear about partnerships being absolutely fundamental to our business moving forward.

Venspro is an excellent example of a partner achieving great business results by exploiting a clever idea and backing that idea up through the effective and innovative maximisation of technology.

By supplying people with a practical easy-to-use on-demand service, Venspro is delivering positive benefits to its customers and partners alike.

We are more than happy to invite the company to be one of the key customers and partners appearing on our stand at Ipex 2006." Other applications to be featured on the Xerox stand include the European market-leading 'My Photo Fun' on-line image personalisation tool.

'MyPhotoFun' is now operating in 10 countries, using the Xerox iGen3 system as the printing platform, delivering added value with its ability to print materials such as calendars in large paper sizes, said Xerox.

Another application on show will be the Xerox-Alphapicture portal, created by German direct marketing company and software developer I-Clue.

It gives Xerox iGen3 users access to an image tool that can be used to personalise images for calendars, postcards, greetings cards and marketing literature.

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