HP widens Print Station reach

By Alex Kayle for HP

Johannesburg, 31 Aug 2009

HP plans to expand its printing services footprint to include small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and not only larger enterprises. This emerged at the company's channel partner conference, to interact with HP Print Station store owners, held at Ingwenya Country Escape outside Johannesburg, last week.

HP's Imaging and Printing Group created the Print Station programme to provide companies access to professional graphics solutions for specialist print jobs such as signage, advertising banners and billboards.

The Print Station programme has been rolled out across the company's Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa and central and Eastern Europe regions. According to HP, the Print Station programme offers organisations of all sizes an opportunity to conceptualise brand material, create it and print it.

Paolo Dal Santo, programme and sales manager for IPG LaserJet and enterprise solutions for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), predicts there will be a huge growth opportunity for HP Print Station across EMEA within this year.

“HP Print Station is a way to address business printing needs. We now have 24 stores in SA; a year-and-a-half ago we started with only eight stores. Our goal is to reach 40 stores by December. And next year, we want to roll out another 100 stores.”

The company is currently strong in SA, Iberia, Egypt and Morocco. Dal Santo adds that the next phase for HP Print Station is to target developed Western countries as well as emerging regions.

2010 prospects

“I believe, from an economic perspective, that even though SA is in a slowdown, there's a big printing opportunity in the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Companies looking for business visibility will be spending on marketing and printing initiatives,” says Dal Santo.

“There will be a lot of people coming into SA for business. There will be a lot of events before and after the World Cup and HP will provide a place for them to print their marketing materials.

“In SA, the most used sales tool is not e-mail, but sales printed materials such as business cards, presentations, and brochures,” he adds. “Having the right printing materials makes an enterprise and SME look more professional.”

Dal Santo revealed that HP is driving its green strategy to make its printers more energy efficient. The HP Print Station printers are equipped with 'Instant-on' technology, meaning the printers are programmed to shut down automatically at night.