“Over the last few years, we’ve achieved sustained double-digit growth with high profit margins,” said Alessandro Tenderini, Pixartprinting CEO until 31 October this year. “The new management team has been chosen to remain faithful to the history and DNA of this unique business, while also bringing new ideas and skills from their experience in other sectors.”
Pixartprinting’s success is based on strategic and operational insights that have allowed it to constantly reinvent itself, as Paolo Roatta explained: “The company is built on twin strengths: production and technology blended with sales and marketing, perfectly synchronised to create new solutions that anticipate market needs.”
Product innovation
Perfect synergy between production and marketing is the competitive edge on which the Pixartprinting business model is built. Product innovation is at the heart of this strategy, allowing the continuous addition of new revenue streams that drive growth. By creating customised products in ever smaller quantities at competitive prices, the company is able to tap into demand that didn’t previously exist and reach customers who wouldn’t have imagined that they could enjoy this type of offering. “The ability to create new markets gives us the freedom to set prices and obtain healthy margins that can be re-invested to consolidate growth,” Roatta noted. “Given that, on the demand side, the switch from traditional to digital has barely begun and our print volumes represent just a few percent of the global market, we have a blue ocean before us that promises enormous potential for future growth. To head in this direction, we will continue working on the product, combining new offerings with increasingly sophisticated marketing strategies.”
International expansion
The company’s ethos is to stay focused on the customer in an ever more crowded market. While in 2000 Pixartprinting was a pioneer in an historic shift, offering pure web-to-print for the first time in Italy, today the landscape has altered considerably, with numerous firms now operating online. But deploying a business management model to cement international expansion requires a different approach. And that’s the focus of the new management team, Paolo Roatta explained:”We plan to expand our successful model, not just in Italy and countries where we are already a leading player, like Spain, Portugal and France, but across the rest of Europe and beyond, targeting markets with major potential.” This growth will leverage the cutting-edge technology of the production department, headed by new Plant Manager Alessio Piazzetta.
Technological innovation
At every level of the company, there is a constant quest for something new, and this is what drives Pixartprinting’s technological innovation. Whenever an opportunity to improve competitiveness arises, there is a concerted effort to implement new solutions: every offering on the market is analysed and very often standard technologies are re-engineered to meet specific needs. This continuous striving for innovation means that none of the firm’s plant is more than three years old.
Recently, for example, we decided to fit our offset machines with UV LED technology for drying inks,” said Piazzetta. “We are also developing our expertise in laser cutting and other innovative technologies that help us keep ahead of the curve and stay competitive.”
Strategic partnerships
“A long tradition that we intend to build upon is Pixartprinting’s exceptional ability to structure the business around strategic partnerships with suppliers,” Piazzetta added. “It’s a skill that leverages technological innovation and the ability to find effective solutions as part of a shared vision for the future, and applies to producers of machinery and raw materials alike.” This experience is recognised globally by Cimpress, so much so that the Quarto d’Altino site, which covers 27,000 m2, is the group’s pilot plant: it’s a place where new technologies and processes are tried and tested, developed and matured for export to the group’s other production sites.
Sophisticated marketing
Just like production and finance, marketing at Pixartprinting is also driven by technology, innovation and passion.”That an Italian manufacturing firm like ours boasts a 40-strong marketing department is a happy anomaly and a significant competitive advantage,” said Andrea Pizzola, Sales & Marketing Director at Pixartprinting.
“We are pursuing a holistic marketing strategy by creating sophisticated tools and content which are very much web oriented, and targeted at our entire customer and user base.”
The Cimpress Group
“Belonging to a global network like Cimpress means we can leverage economies of scale and pass on the benefits to our customers,” Piazzetta stressed. Being a global group also allows member companies to share technology and know-how between sites scattered around the world. By creating a shared worldwide infrastructure, the new management team at Pixartprinting is laying the foundations for future growth.
