Caldera launches WebShop 

New Caldera eCommerce solution

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Caldera Webshop Image Caldera
Caldera Webshop Image Caldera

French RIP software specialist Caldera has announced the launch of Caldera WebShop. This is a new e-commerce offering that will enable its customers to go digital by creating a bespoke storefront, which can be integrated into a streamlined web-to-print solution. WebShop has been created in response to a digital transformation trend that has been accelerated and intensified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution on offer is a low-cost bundled services product to enable digital printing, short runs, and reshoring as businesses move to a new way of working.

The driving force behind the WebShop initiative is to enable Caldera users to run their businesses with a reduced level of social interaction. Lockdown and social distancing have resulted in a surge in demand for online services, and fulfilling this demand will be critical for businesses to thrive, particularly for textile and direct-to-garment printers.

According to Caldera’s VP Marketing, Operations and IT, Sébastien Hanssens, “Our intention is to help our customers with their digital transformation by enabling them to build effective storefronts for web-to-print operations. Our web-to-print services team will guide them through setting up the components they need, including storefronts, prepress, production, and logistics.”

The tangible benefit of Caldera WebShop is that it provides an eCommerce platform that has been specifically developed for wide-format printing businesses. It’s a comprehensive solution that allows users to build their storefront, take and fulfill orders, and build their online marketing via one integrated package. “We felt it was important for printers to be able to deliver a user-friendly buyer experience,” says Hanssens. “The costly upfront processes of providing clear product information and dealing with pricing and quotes have been streamlined. WebShop makes it easy to respond to high volumes of smaller orders by automating the path between storefront and production.”

The package includes a wide range of complementary features that allow users to shape their digital transformation to suit their business. Key among these are the customizable online product catalogs, graphic templates, and premium themes for personalized storefronts. Users can further tailor the WebShop to their needs by creating their own categories within the customer database management suite and within the sales portal, from where orders, invoices, and shipping are managed.

WebShop comes with an advanced dashboard that allows the sales and production teams to track orders and jobs as they happen and a range of reporting options that can include user-specified customer information. “Caldera has always put the user experience at the heart of new business developments,” explains Hanssens. “With this latest innovation, we’re now focusing on helping our customers prioritize the user experience of their own customers, as they respond to the demands that are emerging in the post-COVID business world. Caldera WebShop takes web-to-print functionality to a new level, in keeping with this changed way of working.”

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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