Summary
Shutterfly started as a company to help people print photos from their digital cameras.
Vistaprint, one of the leading providers of printing services, began its journey to provide printed products at an affordable price to small businesses.
DiscountedMugs is on a mission to create lasting impressions with personalized gifts within budget.
What’s common among these?
Well, they began with an idea. If you want to step into the entrepreneurial arena within the printing industry, you need to be very clear about your printing business ideas.
Stats say the global printing industry will reach $821 billion by 2022. This means that now is undoubtedly the right time to start your own business.
However, printing, like any other business, is undergoing major shifts. For instance, the demand for newspapers and magazines is diminishing while packaging printing is growing.
Hence, you need to invest in something that has bigger opportunities in years to come. To simplify your task, we have prepared this guide of four printing business ideas and how you can improve your print shop business ROI as quickly as possible.
Here are top printing business ideas for starting your own printing business
1. Start a Commercial Printing Business
The commercial printing market is experiencing substantial growth. Studies project it will be worth USD 501.36 billion in 2024, with a CAGR of 3.2% from 2025 to 2030.
Increasing applications across various end-use segments and technology drive demand for commercial printing services. Hence, commercial printing products seem to be a good printing business opportunity.
The first step in starting a commercial printing business is to decide on products. These include brochures, flyers, business cards, greeting cards, and notebooks. You can also sell apparel, photo albums, mugs, and more. The easiest way to find trending products is to check Google Trends.
Google Trends is an excellent tool for analyzing the popularity of top search queries across various regions. It also uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries.
For instance, the image below shows five products: notebooks, business cards, greeting cards, flyers, and brochures. It also shows a graph of the search queries in the United States over the past 90 days. As you can see, the demand for flyers and notebooks is the highest, while greeting cards are the least popular. You can check the popularity and choose a product category accordingly.
(Flyers and notebooks have the highest demand, while greeting cards are the lowest.)
Personalization is the secret weapon of success regardless of your printing service. Whether it’s Nutella’s ‘Nutella Unica‘ campaign or Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign, brands connect with customers with one-to-one personalization.
Moreover, your customers no longer consider personalization a luxury. They expect companies to deliver better experiences with personalization. Here are some examples depicting online printing business opportunities in this service.
PsPrint is a leading online print production and design company. Their customizable print products help their customers stand out from the crowd. Users can create designs on different products like booklets, business cards, flyers, etc. As you can see in the image below, you can design a card by adding text, a company logo, images, and more once you choose a design template.
(PsPrint – Allowing Users to Customize Business Cards, Flyers, and More)
Custom Ink is a famous retail company that sells apparel, promotional items, and more with the highest-quality printing. Users can create and print various products the way they like using their design lab. For instance, this spiral notebook is a classic promotional item. Users can add their company logo or text and use it as a giveaway.
(Custom Ink’s Design Lab for Different Print Products)
PrintXpand’s packaging design tool allows users to design and customize their product packaging with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. It provides a range of templates and design elements, allowing for easy adaptation to any brand’s visual identity. Get started now!
2. Build a Print eCommerce Store
From face masks to jackets, mugs to pillow covers, you can provide your service as a print eCommerce solution. If you do not want to set up a printing infrastructure and manage inventory yourself, you can choose to have a print-on-demand business model.
Print on demand is where you work with a supplier to customize and sell products per order. Following are some options that you can consider for your printing business. If you are wondering how to start a print-on-demand business, your journey starts with picking the product niche, setting prices, and ending with you launching the store and scaling it.
Starting a clothing line is one of the quickest ways to enter the print eCommerce market. While you can do a lot here, choosing a trending product with great future opportunities is a good idea.
Selling custom-designed T-shirts is a good printing business opportunity. In 2024, the global custom T-shirt printing market is valued at USD 5.16 billion, and it is expected to grow at an annual rate of 11.5% from 2025 to 2030. You can start your own T-shirt business with the right business plan and tools. Later, you can expand your business by adding more product categories like hoodies, activewear, hats, and more.
Another trending category is custom-printed mugs. Businesses use mugs as promotional products. Hence, starting a custom mug business can open many online printing business opportunities.
Like custom mug printing, selling customized glassware is one of the famous printing ideas for businesses. With increased beverage consumption and glassware usage as promotional products, the market will likely reach $12.4 billion by 2025.
When it comes to printing business ideas for eCommerce products, the list is endless. Clothing, home decor, phone covers, coffee mugs, uniforms, photo albums, and much more. Deciding what products to sell can be difficult.
You need to ensure that there is a market for what you are selling. Moreover, the products you decide to sell directly influence major business decisions, including finances, inventory, marketing, etc.
Schedule a demo session with our experts to see how easy it is to customize products on the design tool.
3. Start a Printing Business Using 3D Technology
A 3D product configurator with a 3D preview integrated with the advanced product design tool helps you offer the most amusing product printing services.
The configurator allows users to design and customize products interactively in real-time. They can easily customize products that they want by choosing colors, designs, and styles.
On the other hand, the configurator integrates 3D preview options that help you or the user designing the product rotate the product in 360 degrees and easily examine the design and how it looks on the product.
This near-realistic and interactive model helps visualize the product from every angle. In short, this simple feature works like a digital prototype and lets the customer spot design flaws before the printing order is placed, reducing the chances of errors and returns.
So, depending on the products you sell, be it apparel, shoes, shirts, furniture, etc., you can get the configurator and offer customers a wider customization choices. Furthermore, if you integrate a mobile-first condigurator, you will be able to attract more customers who would like to design the product and place the orders quickly.
4. Offer Packaging Printing Services
One of many printing business ideas to consider is packaging and labels. At a global level, the packaging industry is a major economic generator. A 2024 report by Mordor Intelligence says the global packaging market is expected to be worth $1.14 trillion in 2024. It is also predicted that the industry will grow further to $1.38 trillion by 2029.
The growth is due to the increasing demand for printing solutions in end-use industries like food and beverage and pharmaceutical. Some of the other packaging industry trends that are fueling this growth include:
1. Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Packaging: Focus on offering packages made from biodegradable materials, eco-friendly inks, and minimalistic designs to reduce waste and promote sustainability. Highlight all the sustainability certifications to attract environmentally conscious customers and generate more sales.
2. Smart Packaging and Interactive Designs: Integrate QR codes, NFC tags, and Augmented Reality (AR) features in order to enhance your customer engagement along with product authentication. This trend is crucial for businesses focusing on traceability and product information.
3. Premium and Luxury Finishes: High-end finishing on the package like embossing, foil stamping, or textured effects appeal more and is one of the best ways to elevate brand positioning and generate more ROI.
According to a market report, the demand for packaging printing is likely to remain robust as hospitals, drug companies, and PPE kit packaging companies respond to the crisis.
If you want printing business ideas, this industry offers great opportunities.
Since the packaging printing business is versatile, you would want to focus on a specific market, such as cosmetics, food products, medical goods, etc. Doing market and competitor research will help determine who you wish to serve.
You can choose from a variety of products like promotional boxes, signature boxes, handbags, bottle neckers, stickers and labels, etc.
It is entirely up to you if you wish to start a full-fledged packaging business or choose one or two product categories and then go big.
Next, keep an eye on the latest trends in the industry. Currently, digital printing is gaining popularity in this sector. It offers labels and packaging companies attractive benefits like faster turnaround, cost-effective print prototypes, the ability to print multiple versions, and more. Hence, more and more businesses are switching to digital printing. The process of starting a packaging printing business is easy, provided you have the right experts to work with!
Here are some examples of brands that offer easy packaging printing online.
Whether it’s a small carton or a huge printed shipping box, Packlane has everything you need for your packaging needs. What sets them apart is the custom design lab. Users can choose a style, change graphics, add text or logo, and more. Once they create their design, they can get a sneak peek in 3D and instantly get a quote.
(Packaging Printing By Packlane)
eCreamery is a US-based business, known for its mouth-watering ice cream and personalized packaging. Users can choose their favorite flavors and then personalize pints with their favorite titles using their product design tool.
(eCreamery Offering Personalizable Pints on Their Packaging)
Do you want to enhance customer experience through customized ice cream pints like eCreamery?
eCreamery identified the need to cater to individual preferences and provide a seamless customization experience for customers. They required the integration of their online stores to showcase the flavors customers chose on the ice cream pints.
Check out advanced features of our packaging design tool to discover how it can help your custom
packaging business.
5. Provide AI-powered Personalization Capabilities
By enabling your customers with the capabilities of personalizing products of their choice leveraging AI, you can build a successful business with ease.
Why AI?
With AI, your customers can create effortless designs and they will be able to save time when curating the designs. Furthermore, it can give you a competitive edge!
Two of the most intriguing AI features that you can use to make the customer experience exemplary are:
- AI-generated text: The feature allows customers to elevate their designs with AI-powered text suggestions. All they have to do is simply enter a prompt, and they will be able to generate personalized text per their design requirements.
- AI-generated Images: As the name suggests, this feature lets customers create custom product designs using the tool’s in-built AI image generator. By simply entering the prompt, customers will be able to quickly generate the perfect image for their product design.
Such AI-powered features simplify the design process, saving time and effort while consistently delivering professional results.
6. A Checklist to Improve Your Printing Shop Business’s ROI
Here are some ways you can reach your target customers and improve sales:
1. Quickly start selling With an Online Store
You can build an online store for your printing business in two ways: developing an eCommerce store from scratch or purchasing a ready-to-use web-to-print store.
When it comes to building an online store from scratch, there are many platforms to choose from. As per Investopedia, the top five eCommerce platforms are BigCommerce, Wix, Magento, Squarespace, and Shopify.
Before you choose a platform, evaluate the solutions and confirm if they meet all your needs. You can connect with their support staff and solve all your queries. You can even test the features yourself by starting a free trial.
The biggest problem with building an eCommerce store from scratch is its high cost. Custom development costs depend on your business requirements and the functionality you choose. The more complex your project is, the more investment it requires.
Another option to save you cash and time is a ready-made web-to-print storefront. It comes with all the features that you need to launch an online store quickly.
For instance, PrintXpand aims to provide ready-to-sell B2B and B2C Web-to-Print Storefronts for established businesses and startups. The web-to-print solution allows them to customize an online store according to their needs and business logics. Moreover, the storefront comes with easy-to-integrate customizable themes that enable businesses to build a store accordingly.
It is unquestionable how important it is for businesses to streamline all their operations. With robust web-to-print solutions that integrate all the essential features like inventory manager, print job manager, etc., it gets even easier to simplify a multitude of print workflows.
In short, when picking a technology partner to kickstart your journey, you need to ensure that their web-to-print solution includes a product design tool.
Printing is a competitive market, and one way you can differentiate your business from competitors is through your unique selling proposition. And so, offering customization with a product design tool will differentiate your products from others and enable you to attract more customers to your store.
2. Have a Solid Marketing Plan
Undoubtedly, you can reach more prospective customers with an online store. However, you will have to get them to your store. There are tons of ideas to market your printing business. This section will discuss some of the easiest ways to attract customers to your website.
A. Engage with Customers on Social Media
Social media platforms are among the best ways to increase engagement and build a community of followers. The first step in developing a social media strategy is determining the platform you want to market on.
“It’s important to be where your audience of potential customers is today and where they might be tomorrow. It’s better to be ahead of the curve than behind.” — Andrew Delaney, Social Media Marketing Manager at HubSpot
When choosing a platform for your printing business, consider your target customers and where they hang out.
For instance, if you have a B2B printing business, you would want to spend more time on Facebook since a higher percentage of users are on Facebook for professional purposes.
On the other hand, if you want to target the younger crowd, you can consider creating a business profile on Instagram. In the US, 28.3% of Instagram users are aged between 25 – 34 and users from ages 18-24 account for 26.5%.
Once you decide on the platform you want to focus on, it’s time to create engaging posts. Check what your competitors share and determine how uniquely you can promote your products or services.
B. Work on SEO Strategy
You may ask if SEO is right when you are just starting. There is no right or wrong marketing approach at any given time. Sooner or later, you must start investing in SEO strategy as nothing can beat a strong, organic search engine visibility.
Before you improve your rankings, here’s a little heads up: – (a) SEO may take more time to show results, especially if you are in a competitive market, (b) you will face high competition from paid ads as they occupy more space on SERP.
Having said that, the core of a Google-friendly website is high-quality content your audience seeks. Great content, website speed, and keywords will determine the success of SEO.
When it comes to optimizing your pages, you also need to take care of on-page optimization, mobile friendliness, better user experience, schema, high-quality backlinks, etc.
Also, consider creating a Google My Business Account. It is a free and easy-to-use tool to manage your online presence across Google.
Are You Ready?
Aspiring entrepreneurs in the print industry should start with coming up with different ideas for their business. But it’s not just about what you sell. What truly makes you successful is the value you provide to your customers by solving a problem they face.
With PrintXpand’s designer tool and web-to-print services, entrepreneurs can easily start and grow a successful printing shop business. Backed by over 10 years of experience, our solutions are designed with quality in mind to help business owners manage their web-to-print business smoothly and efficiently. Visit our website to learn more!
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