A group of local IT professionals is embarking on a new venture aimed at revolutionising Western Australia’s retail printing landscape.
Sarah Wilson, her husband David, and colleague Kevin Manship, have established online business Rebel Print, which they say will reduce the cost to print stationary by an average of 30 per cent.
The trio has a global vision for the business and will launch in the UK and other markets after successfully attacking the Western Australian market.
According to Ms Wilson, Rebel Print would operate in a manner similar to sites such as Amazon, where people browse, select items, and purchase them.
Information such as graphics are also saved in the system and clients can log-on and re-order items.
“Retail printers have very large overheads because they have shopfronts. We don’t have that; we have low overheads and we can pass those costs on to the customer,” Ms Wilson said.
“When we were getting stationery for our IT company we were shocked by the cost to have 500 business cards printed off. We did quite a bit of research and worked out the margins the [retail] printers were making.
“What we can do is offer customers printing at a third of the cost, and that’s worldwide. We will be the cheapest printer in the world.”
The business will compete locally with Snap Printing, Kwik Kopy and Scott Printing.
The trio plans to expand the business to the east coast and internationally and, if all goes to plan, this will generate large volumes of work for the local wholesale printing industry.
“We think the UK market will really like this because of the exchange rate. We would print it here and ship it back,” Ms Wilson said.
She said that, while some commercial printers offered online services for clients, they did not offer complete electronic transactions.
“Other printers offer online but it is to get a quote; you still need to go to the printers,” Ms Wilson said.
“With our business you log-on and register for what products you want.”
Mr Wilson said while there were other global online printing businesses, such as Vista Print, Rebel Print would still offer much lower prices.
