The Dead Pixels Society podcast

Revolutionizing Print: HelloPrint's Hans Scheffer on Innovation, Sustainability, and the Future

May 30, 2024 Hans Scheffer Season 5 Episode 168
Revolutionizing Print: HelloPrint's Hans Scheffer on Innovation, Sustainability, and the Future
The Dead Pixels Society podcast
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The Dead Pixels Society podcast
Revolutionizing Print: HelloPrint's Hans Scheffer on Innovation, Sustainability, and the Future
May 30, 2024 Season 5 Episode 168
Hans Scheffer

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Ever wondered how a young event organizer could transform into a trailblazer in the print industry? Join Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society in a chat with Hans Scheffer, the visionary founder and CEO of HelloPrint. Hans takes us through his captivating journey from needing efficient printing solutions for events to creating FlyerZone and eventually revolutionizing the print ordering process with HelloPrint. Learn how HelloPrint leverages technology, data, and user experience to create a seamless print ordering experience, partnering with over 300 global suppliers to bring his vision to life.

Also, discover how HelloPrint is pioneering sustainability in the customizable print products industry. Scheffer shares the obstacles and strategies in transitioning to eco-friendly practices while maintaining profitability. Explore the growing print market driven by mass customization and the creator economy, and get insights into HelloPrint’s operational model and its ambitious plans to expand into the U.S. market. Don’t miss this chance to hear from an industry leader committed to making a difference in the future of print.

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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning

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Ever wondered how a young event organizer could transform into a trailblazer in the print industry? Join Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society in a chat with Hans Scheffer, the visionary founder and CEO of HelloPrint. Hans takes us through his captivating journey from needing efficient printing solutions for events to creating FlyerZone and eventually revolutionizing the print ordering process with HelloPrint. Learn how HelloPrint leverages technology, data, and user experience to create a seamless print ordering experience, partnering with over 300 global suppliers to bring his vision to life.

Also, discover how HelloPrint is pioneering sustainability in the customizable print products industry. Scheffer shares the obstacles and strategies in transitioning to eco-friendly practices while maintaining profitability. Explore the growing print market driven by mass customization and the creator economy, and get insights into HelloPrint’s operational model and its ambitious plans to expand into the U.S. market. Don’t miss this chance to hear from an industry leader committed to making a difference in the future of print.

Energize your sales with Shareme.chat, the proven texting platform. 

ShareMe.Chat 
ShareMe.Chat platform uses chat-to-text on your website to keep your customers connected and buying!

Mediaclip
Mediaclip strives to continuously enhance the user experience while dramatically increasing revenue.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the Show.

Sign up for the Dead Pixels Society newsletter at http://bit.ly/DeadPixelsSignUp.

Contact us at gary@thedeadpixelssociety.com

Visit our LinkedIn group, Photo/Digital Imaging Network, and Facebook group, The Dead Pixels Society.

Leave a review on Apple and Podchaser.

Are you interested in being a guest? Click here for details.

Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning

Erin Manning:

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pegeau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau:

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Hans Scheffer, the founder, CEO and chief bottle washer at Hellop rint in the Netherlands. Hi Hans, how are you today?

Hans Scheffer:

Very good, Gary. Thanks for having me.

Gary Pageau:

Listen, Hans, you and I have chatted a couple of times and thought we'd do a podcast about your company, because you've been in the industry a long time but you're not exactly a household name. Can you kind of talk about where you started in the industry, like two and a half decades ago?

Hans Scheffer:

yeah, so I'm in this industry for quite a while maybe too long, I don't know but I'm still pretty much enjoying it. No, so I'm all jokes aside so I started almost 25 years ago, when I was 18. I'm now turning 42. So as a young kid, as an event organizer, I needed a lot of printed materials flyers, folded leaflets, posters, etc. Tickets. Back in the days there was no social media, as you and I know, so a lot of the promotion was done on physical paper and, long story short, I decided to look for a way to make that more efficient buying those promotional materials and came up with the idea of printing all the flyers that we needed for like a couple of months beforehand, and ask a big printer how many flyers would fit on a big sheet and then cut them loose. And that was like the start of my career in, uh, in in print actually. Uh, with a company called flyer flyernl and poster posternl.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, back in 2000, uh, in a time where internet was on the rise, e-commerce was, uh, another not a definition yet, right, uh, google, google was introducing google adwords. We were trying a little bit of that new way of advertisement and that worked out pretty well. You can fairly say we were there on the rhythm of an organically changing world with a lot of luck. Back then, the company called FlyerZone. We developed that company into a leading company in the Netherlands and Belgium, sold that company in 2010 to a listed company from the UK, printingcom. Yeah, and in 2013, I thought, well, why not go back to this industry again and start our new adventure, which is now a HelloPrint already for 11 years?

Gary Pageau:

Okay, so what kind of events were you organizing as an 18-year-old entrepreneur?

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, so first events for myself and my friends. The main trigger for starting organizing events was the uh divorce of my parents. My mom was in for a party and she said there's nothing for my age here. Can you organize some? Uh, organize some parties. And I started to do some back to the 70s, 80s, disco events etc. In my hometown and it worked out pretty well and before we know it, when I was 18, I quit school and we had 10 full-time people organizing 150 events a year. Wow, yeah, so that's yeah. It kind of exploded, I think.

Gary Pageau:

Cool. So it sounds to me like you've always been kind of an entrepreneur, kind of a high energy person, always looking for opportunities. So in 2013, when you started kind of what the basis of HelloPrint has become what did you see as the opportunity at that point?

Hans Scheffer:

I was already active in this industry, obviously for a couple of years, and when I was redefining my future, in the gap year that I had between selling the previous company and starting my new company, I was looking into various opportunities, various industries, etc.

Hans Scheffer:

I was looking into various opportunities, various industries, et cetera, and when I redefined my adventure in print, it became clear to me that this industry was actually so much more interesting than I ever thought, also when I was already in that industry. So it's an enormous industry and highly fragmented, a lot of small players and back then, but even now, so primarily offline, right. So those three characteristics they combined they give a very interesting play field, I think, and that was, for me, the driver to, yeah, to basically start hello print in that industry again with all the knowledge, that knowledge that we had gained over the past decade, with a new philosophy solely focused on technology and data, without printing anything ourselves. We said, okay, so what if we can make ordering printed materials as easy as buying a book at Amazon or shoes at Zalando or something online at Walmart? And with that philosophy, we started to develop a focus on user interaction and user experience first, which was back then quite new for the industry, I think.

Gary Pageau:

Was that always the focus when you started HelloPrint? Was that always the focus when you started HelloPrint was to be sort of a focal point or a nexus for printing as opposed to doing stuff yourself? Or is that something you learned over time?

Hans Scheffer:

Well, I mean so we are not print guys, although I come from the industry, so I can't fairly say anymore that I'm not a print guy. Obviously, if you're active for 25 years in the industry, you should call yourself a print guy, but it's fair to say that the majority of the people in HelloPrint we were with around 200 people, most of the people here, but also in the ministry we are technologists or data engineers or marketeers, and print is the product we sell, and with that philosophy, it became very apparent that we would never print anything ourselves. So, uh, the whole philosophy of building a marketplace or a infrastructure or a network with with high quality print producers who are all very good in their own niche, um and and connect them to an infrastructural layer of technology and data yeah, that that was always our view on future.

Gary Pageau:

So walk us through this whole, how this works, in case people aren't familiar.

Hans Scheffer:

We are a network that connects with over 300 global suppliers of printed materials and also like 30 to 50 logistical solutions, and all that data is in our databases, and smart technology defines where something is being produced and who is shipping it, based on where something needs to be delivered and when, and so those variables, they define how the network works, and we have a lot of producers connected to that model. Most of them are there for a very long time. We have a very low churn there, and that gives us two benefits. Basically, it gives our customers way more options in terms of a product offering, but also in terms of delivery times, et cetera, and it also gives us the opportunity to optimize our production network and leverage the qualities of all those players, or all those producers that we have at the back end of the platform.

Gary Pageau:

People don't really work with HelloPrint. Consumers aren't going to HelloPrint to place prints. They're working with your customers who are being matched with output providers.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, but the transaction is always between us and the customer and between us and the producer Right. So we believe that ordering print is a complex thing, so we make the deliberated choice, or our technique is making the deliberated choice where something is being produced and when. And we gave our customers the certainty that their file is always right, so we always do file optimization. No-transcript, so we always do file optimization, we check everything, et cetera. We're there for them to help them place the order and we are there in the order process.

Hans Scheffer:

And for our producers, they can rely on a very automated flow with us, with a very steady output and always a good file and always a smooth flow. And for both parties I think it's very interesting to work with us. So at one end, the customers they are having like much more options to order, but they also take, take care of the planet in a better way. Uh, because network, we produce as local as possible and also our logistical services are as local as possible. Right, because our volumes. We have a very attractive price which can compete with the, with, with the market, and for our producers, it gives a an additional revenue stream in a very automated and and flexible and easy way.

Gary Pageau:

So so you're providing some of the oversight, like you said on the file, right? So somebody submits a file and file and it's you know the fonts are included or there's problems with it. It's not going to get to the producer. You're going to stop it at that point.

Hans Scheffer:

It's our automation, it's our team that checks that and it only arrives in the API of the producer or in the supplier portal that we have or in their email, whatever connection we have. If the file is checked and if we are absolutely 100 sure that the order can be produced instantly, because that's one of the challenges I would see on the producer's side.

Gary Pageau:

Right is you're pretty, you're getting in this basically anonymous work. Right, you have no relationship with the customer really. So you want to make sure, from a from an efficiency standpoint, that you're not dealing with any typical problems. Let's put it that way yeah, exactly so, absolutely right.

Hans Scheffer:

So, and that's also why producers love to work with us, because they always know they have a steady stream of orders. They always know that the power is right. They have one contact person when something goes wrong.

Gary Pageau:

There there's one escalation point and they get their money in uh from one uh from one uh source and that's yeah, that is quite a, quite a nice way of extending your revenue streams what has changed from a technology standpoint since you started, from an output standpoint, because what I'm seeing in the marketplace is there's just so much more uh substrates people can print on now than they did from you know. So, let's say, 10 years ago. You know there's there's all kinds of different printing technologies. There's foam, there's glass, there's wood, there's cloth, there's everything and you've got to manage all that now.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, yeah, it's way, way more complex. So we have over 10 million SKUs that we offer to our customers. So it's our goal to to offer basically everything that that can be printed to our customers, regardless in which industry they are. So it's one of our strategies is adding as much products to the, to the, to the catalog that we have, and offer them to our customers and also make that catalog available for other professional parties who don't have the ability to build the catalog themselves right, but have the ability to sell. So one of our models that we have developed over the course of the last years is our api model, which gives direct access to the largest catalog of printed products in the world, which can instantly be used by large industry players, online printers or parties who are selling other stuff to small and medium enterprises and extend their product offering to them in a very easy way.

Gary Pageau:

Where do you see the growth in the product categories? Where do you see that? Because I'm seeing a lot of people talking about the directed garment that that seems to be going crazy right now. Are you seeing the similar growth on that?

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, so I mean. So print is very wide, scattered, I would say. So. You have so many subcategories, et cetera. And look around you, like everything around you is printed, from the table in your T-shirt, to the photo product on your desk, to the thing on your iPhone, et cetera. So we see a lot of growth in various categories.

Hans Scheffer:

For example, direct-to-gar is is a growing industry, of course, but also, like sustainable gifts, we see that companies are making much more conscious choices when it comes down to to gifting etc. And and and and uh presents for their employees or customers, etc. But also in terms of packaging. So a couple of years ago, if you were a small perfume maker as a mom and pop shop, you could not make your own packaging, because that was only possible for industry players with large quantities. Nowadays, you can make like 10 packages for your perfume, or 10 labels, et cetera, or 100 labels. So the industry is changing on the back of also the technology revolution, of course, that we also see in print. Mass customization is much more present than 10 years ago and that significantly changes the behavior of customers and also, yeah, the offering of producers.

Gary Pageau:

Right, so let's talk a little bit about the sustainability piece, because I think that's sort of the uh, the unintended benefit, maybe intended benefit. But one of the benefits of this is you get the advantage of local production. You're not shipping, not putting things into a container and shipping it across the ocean in quantities.

Gary Pageau:

There's less waste, uh, less material waste and all those kind of things was that one of the things you originally considered, or is this sort of coming over now understanding you're in europe and I think the europeans are far more environmentally conscious than us Yankees over here, so that's another thing.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, so you're completely right. So I think Europe is more conscious and within Europe so we are. In the Netherlands, it's even a way more conscious country, I would say. So we are on the forefront of the sustainability transition and I think it's actually a good thing and I would lie if this was one of my drivers 11 years ago when I started this company. But it's also fair to say, gary, so we work with the smartest people on the planet in our company. They're young, they're progressive, they have a very different view on on how the planet will evolve over time, and that also changed my mind, to be very honest.

Hans Scheffer:

So a couple of years ago, we decided to either do nothing with it or go double down on it, and we we choose the latter one. We chose the latter one and we said, okay, we want to become earth's largest, but also earth's most sustainable platform for customizable printed products. We said, okay, the only way we're going to achieve that is set really high standards and incorporate sustainability in all the departments that matter in the company. And that's actually what we've done, and we set the bar to become a B Corp, a company that has incorporated in their bylaws that they balance profits and their impact on planet. So it's quite an impactful thing, sure, and a couple of months ago, we've achieved that certification. Sure, and that's for us, that's a nice milestone, but it's also the start of something more so, because of the fact that we have such a big network, we want nice milestone, but it's also the start of, uh, of something more so, because of the fact that we have such a big network, we want to be the advocates, and also the example, of how you can implement more sustainability practices into your way of working, and it is possible.

Hans Scheffer:

And we are very conscious about the fact that we are in a very polluting industry. Make no mistakes, and we need to be very honest as industry leaders. We we need to acknowledge that. Right, so we are in a very insustainable industry. A lot of the things we do is single use, but there are ways to change that, and I know in the States this might not be as vocal as in Europe, but it will come, and it's also a necessity to do so, and we, as HelloPrint, want to be front runner there. That's also why we've recently introduced our new label, merged by HelloPrint, which is only focused on sustainable sourced materials and products, and we see that there is appetite for that model. And are we there yet? And is it a change that will happen over tomorrow? No for sure not. But do we want to lead the change? Yes for sure.

Gary Pageau:

Let's talk a little bit about the pieces that go into sustainability, because it means it can be a lot of different things. It can be how you buy your energy, where you source your materials, from, what the materials are made out of you know, shipping, storage, all of those things. What were some of the big challenges you had in setting the requirements for your partners? Because, like you said, you don't print anything yourself, right? So it's not like you can say, hey, you know, we're buying recycled paper or whatever. You've got to set those standards for your partners, and your partners may say guess what? We don't want to comply with that.

Hans Scheffer:

No, exactly so it's. It's also not something that we want to define top down instantly. And then we said, when we started with this, with this transition a couple of years ago, we said, okay, let's first start with awareness. So so, map out what. What does it mean to become more sustainable? And basically, that start first starts with what kind of products do you offer? So, if you think about it, for example, a roller banner that you use once for an exhibition. It has an aluminum cassette, there is a print in it and you throw it away after one time use. That's, by essence, quite strange, right, if you think about it right uh.

Hans Scheffer:

And so we started to think what can we come up with alternatives for that? Can we do a carton, uh, one, for example? Uh, is it really necessary to offer a? Uh, a t-shirt that you can wash one or two times and then throw it away, or is it it also possible to have better materials? So we started by investigating what alternatives would be available to offer to our customers, and when we had that clear, we started to discuss with our network hey, what are you doing? So we did a full survey, or investigation throughout the network. What kind of energy are you using? What kind of materials are you doing? So we did a full survey, or investigation throughout the network. What kind of energy are you using? What kind of materials are you using? How is your facility built up? Et cetera, et cetera.

Hans Scheffer:

And slowly but steady. You see that if you keep repeating that, people are making more conscious choices, and I think that's also the only route to go. So it's not about blaming people about what they do wrong. It's about helping people to make a slow but steady change in their behavior, and sometimes that that that lasts for five or ten years, and sometimes it goes quicker because there's new leadership or there is an event or there is people are, yeah, intrigued by something or inspired by something and we want to play a role there, and we're not the ones who are saying, hey, you do this right or wrong, but we just want to be vocal about it now one of the other things that you know I've been doing some reading on the uh, the b corp thing is you're not necessarily sacrificing profitability by pursuing sustainability no, I mean so.

Hans Scheffer:

so in in an ideal world, those two can go hand in hand, right, uh, and I think that's also uh, the only way to to to, to really make the sustainability transition work globally, not only in print, is when there is actually a business model behind it. We need to be clear about that. So it's nice to be very idealistic, but in the end, transitions go quicker when there is an economic motive behind them. So for us, it's also a method, of course, to serve a different target group, a much more sustainability conscious target group. And for us, it's also a method, of course, to serve a different target group, a much more sustainability conscious target group, and offer them products that were not available for them in the past.

Gary Pageau:

Well, and that's the thing is. I mean, you know, there's certainly a lot of, like you said, among younger people, much more interest in sustainability. They want to know it about it, they want to be aware of it, they want to make sure they're supporting companies that aren't contributing to climate change. So that's a marketing advantage as well as an ethical advantage, if you will.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, for sure. No, I think you're absolutely right about that, although we're not shouting from the roofs that you should buy with us, because we are the most sustainable platform in the products in the world. Of course, it helps to also market it.

Gary Pageau:

Well, I mean, I imagine you probably have some customers on the front end, right Brands who want to be able to use that as part of their marketing message, right, and they certainly don't want to be caught saying, yes, we're sustainable and their vendors aren't actually sustainable, right, so you can actually provide that information, yeah.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, absolutely. And so there's also new legislation in Europe that make it mandatory for European companies to not only do their financial statement thing per year, but also your CSDR statements per year. So what have you done that impacts the planet? So that's something that in the States, you can hardly imagine that would happen, but in Europe it's a real thing, so, and it will happen. And so yeah, of course. So, if we can provide our customers with much more information about the transparent supply chain that we have, the materials that we use and the carbon footprint that their actual products that they've ordered via us has on the planet, yeah, that helps them to be more compliant.

Gary Pageau:

Have you had to boot someone off because they can't meet your goals, sorry, have you had to? Have you had to remove someone from?

Hans Scheffer:

not really so. Um, like I said, it's, it's an, it's an evolution that you need to evolve and persuade, and sure, but we also have a limit there, of course. So, very, very few partners. They are not really communicative about it or they think, okay, my time will come. Yeah, at a certain moment in time, we say no to them or they just get less and less and less work, because that's also how the algorithm works. So we feed sustainability ratings that we have for our producers to our algorithms and, yeah, if those sustainability ratings are too low, yeah, you just get less work, same as your if your price is too high, or your delivery time is too, uh, too long, or the quality of what you deliver it's actually not on par.

Gary Pageau:

So that's how the technology works, yeah that's interesting that you would actually include that as part of your method yeah and that's pretty interesting. So what's been the response to that? I mean, I'm just curious, because you're sort of introducing another vector in there for for.

Hans Scheffer:

For a lot of those company leaders it helps them also to tell the internal story when a client is requesting something. It's a very good driver to start doing it. Yeah, and we have very progressive and really good partners in the network, all high quality. Those partners, those producers, they want to survive over the next decade or two or three decades. They have to adapt to new standards and to new market circumstances, so this helps them as well to make that pivotal change.

Gary Pageau:

We were talking before, just how big the print market is, do you think? And it's growing because of the availability of actually printing, like you said, 10 perfume bottles, right, I mean, it is one of those things where you can now economically do very, very short-run prints.

Hans Scheffer:

Absolutely. Yeah, it helps growing the market, obviously. So. Print changed the world from Gutenberg onwards right, so it's still a very powerful methodology to spread your message. And, although we do a lot online, the the print market has never been as big as now and and obviously mass customization it helps fueling that. So there are way more ways to to personalize a gift, a product, a t-shirt or whatever you want to personalize.

Gary Pageau:

It helps the market grow well and the other piece of it, too, is sort of the creator economy piece, right, where you have people who are actually becoming brands or have a message they want to share or they want to create something and share it with the world, and before it was very difficult to do that at a reasonable cost and not have a lot of waste. Right, you were. If you were a uh, you know a band and you wanted to have t-shirts, you know you had to print them by the hundreds, right, instead of 40 for a gig, right?

Hans Scheffer:

yeah, now you go to to printful, to printify or to zazzle, to etsy and you can sell it and buy it, and it's a fantastic way to yeah, to to become your own brand and to become your own influencer or to whatever you want to become, uh, and and spread that message in a physical way. I think that's fantastic.

Gary Pageau:

You know, you're just reminding me I need I need to set up the dead pixel society merch store. Can you hook me up with that? Are you always looking to add partners or are you kind of at capacity? I mean, what's the? I mean I mean you're in a lot of countries already. You're in what you know, 31 countries. You got 300, some partners.

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, so, so. So the first thing is we're growing, so we're, we're, we're growing, and we're growing at a nice pace. We're constantly adding new geographies. The US is on our roadmap for later this year. Very much looking forward to that, because it's also a long life ambition to bring the HelloPrint brand there. But also in terms of so, what we always want to achieve is not to fully optimize volumes, but we want to give our partners the work they want, and our approach is fairly different than others. I think so.

Hans Scheffer:

so the more partners we have, the more we can balance out their capabilities but also their desires right so some part of the partners in the network, they they love working for us, but they don't necessarily want to work in november and december because of the festive season right, but they do want to work in January and February, while for other partners who are not in the festive season business or not in consumer business, it's the other way around. So then we try to balance that and that's also what people love on our model. We're always long term. It's not an auction model, it's long term price setting, it's long term service contracts, it's long term collaboration, it's long-term collaboration, it's long-term trust and helping each other, and I think that's that's one of the reasons of existence for us, that we do that in that capacity I mean, I know, there are networks where you basically just bid on stuff and yeah, that's not that's not what you're doing, not at all.

Hans Scheffer:

So it's all like long-term price setting. Our partners get insights about what they can do better and, for example, it's not only about price but if you maybe do your cutoff time two hours earlier, you might get more work or you can increase your price, your cost price even, and that helps our partners to also optimize their margins in a much more, I would say, neutral way than being active on an auction marketplace, because then you get the parties who have overcapacity only, and for our partners, they need to have capacity to work with us. So it's a deliberated choice to incorporate the HelloPrint model in your business model for long term, and we help you do that. We help you automate, we help you grow, we help you become more sustainable, but it's a long-term and we help you do that. We help you automate, we help you grow, we help you become more sustainable, but it's a long-term commitment that you have with us.

Gary Pageau:

Yeah, so let's talk about that. What does it take to be part of the Hello Print Network? Let's say, for example, you come to North America and you start looking at partners. I mean, you said commitment. What is that commitment?

Hans Scheffer:

Well, it first starts with be honest people and be fun people to work with and that sounds like funny, but it is actually the case. We only want to work with nice people and obvious people, and so it starts with that. And then the other thing is so have a technology mindset. That's a very important thing, so, and if you don't have the technology capabilities yet, we can help you. But you need to have the open growth technology mindset to work with us, and luckily, nowadays that's what most of the companies have, so that's not a problem anymore.

Hans Scheffer:

But yeah, when I started, that was quite a problem, and also even 10 years ago, when I started HelloPrint, we really needed to educate partners to work with us. But also in the US, we see that so many companies are very well developed in terms of technology and data. So have a standardized offering that fits our product portfolio that we're offering to our customers. And, the most important thing, have a really good reliability rate in terms of on-time dispatch and in terms of quality. For us, that's the most important thing, because that's what we guarantee to our customer that order is always on time and it's always superb quality, and otherwise you get it for free, and that's super important and have a long-term commitment to work with us. So don't use us as a temporary filling of your machine park, but just make a deliberated choice to work with us for many years and grow with us towards future.

Gary Pageau:

Okay. So you're really not looking for somebody who says, hey, listen, I need some. You know, like you said, I'm in the. You know I'm a consumer company, so I have I'm very busy in the fourth quarter and I'm just looking for some answer volume in a few months out of the year. You're not looking for a light commitment.

Hans Scheffer:

No, I mean so, especially not in the first phase of launching a country. So now we're looking for partners who are deliberately choosing to work with us in this capacity, and later on we're going to optimize more. The good thing is now that over time we have established also a little bit of a name in the US, as I noticed. So we are approached by quite some people who want to work with us. That's really nice to see and hear. So we're quite confident that we can build up a really good network overseas for us as well, and then we're going to start building the network in the in the U S.

Gary Pageau:

Awesome. Well, people are interested in more information. How do they reach you or the company?

Hans Scheffer:

Yeah, Just drop me a message on LinkedIn. Or Hans at HelloPrintcom they can just reach out to me. Or Nick at HelloPrintcom. Or Erwin at HelloPrintcom the co-founders. We're all still in the company and we're very motivated to make this work with like-minded people who are fun to work with.

Gary Pageau:

I get the fun. I'm getting the fun vibe. You're smiling a lot, so I like that Perfect. Well, great Hans, great to connect with you. Looking forward to talking to you again soon and best wishes.

Hans Scheffer:

My absolute pleasure, Gary. Thank you so much.

Erin Manning:

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.

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