Updates live most of the day by Morten B. Reitoft 

10:30 Managing Director Jos Steutelings welcome the 140 attendees - a few are delayed because of heavy traffic. The event takes place at the amazing Antwerp Zoo facilities - and the big whale skeleton hanging over the audience gives an amazing surrounding to an exciting day!

10:40 Bernd Zipper is on stage giving today's keynote. Resilence Superpower.

1. Optimism
2. Acceptance
3. Approach to Solution
4. Leaving the Victim Role
5. Taking responsibility
6. Orientation of Networks
7. Future Planning

How the COVID influenced the online printing industry - and giving examples from a business that decided to fight against closing - now good!

Moving to a more "fun" topic - the future. Bernd is talking about Digital Commerce - E-commerce/Mobile Commerce/Social Media Commerce and - damn, I missed the last "commerce" - slide shifted :-)

Market places are the fastest-growing - not online shops - talking about the differentiation within the commerce platforms. Printers should adapt to the new channels - think Amazon!

Bernd Zipper describes the price development in German online printing over years. What has happened during the COVID - and in general, prices are increasing - for some up to 40+%.

Customers increasingly accept price increases. Time for smart alternatives, for example Print on Demand (PoD)

Online printing is according to Zipper becoming "the normal" and traditional printers are falling behind.

Service is the most important asset when you are selling - but online. The market for customized products is expected to grow.

An interesting graph where you see the technology development and adaptation!

Do you have:

Online Support
Personalized service
Online Support for POD
Enabling service for mass customization
Simplified configurators + editors
Faster delivery/faster RMA processes
'Mobile' shops

And...

Go Lean - Go headless - rethink your business!

Always be on your customers' side. Headless E-Commerce is about having a backbone that communicates via APIs to the number of needed storefronts!

Each shop can be customized to the audience, but also to various platforms!

Become the "Buddy" of your customers - even the digital ones!

11:20 and now Niek Veraverbeke from Cartim talking about the amazing growth the printing company has had for the past 30 years. Today more than 8 million euros revenue with 35 people employed - only selling to other "printers."

Niek is explaining the number of orders, paper usage, and how they are changing. They are in the progress of changing their organization - and he is now describing a slide with technical and human changes. He is also talking about the "smart" factory. 

Carmit developed a new (2nd generation) webshop that enables clients (and remember it's only professional customers) to calculate the prices themselves. Now 70% of the offers are calculated by the customers, freeing up a lot of time within the company!

Niek describes the order intake flow: 
Pressero is used for Carmit's storefront
Subcontractors which more correctly are printers that flow work directly into the workflow
And all is connected and managed with Enfocus Switch
Heidelberg Prinect is used for ganging.

And yes - Carmit still takes orders manually as well!

11:50 Ruben Baestaens on stage with "Design as a Service" called Simba Service. The company is 1,5 years old and founded by 27-years old Ruben. Today 16 people working for Simba Service. 

Ruben describes how they got to market with their service. 

They identified a need for high quality, lower price service and decided to address this market. He talks about how brands require consistency in their use of colors, fonts, etc. So the cheap services are maybe not the solutions for brands!

Good design is:
Visually Attractive
Initiate Emotions
Create actions

...and damn - too fast :-)

DaaS or Design as a Service (a personalized design solution for a client when he needs it)
Expertise
Speed
Efficiency (core focus on own services)
Cost-effective
Impact

Simba Service delivers within 48-hours on the weekdays. If needed they also deliver the needed print service.

13:40 Miki Rubin from Imprimu, Panama - long trip, and now here at the VIGC BOPE22 event.

Miki starts introducing himself and how different Panama and Latin America is compared to Europe.

Miki is describing the markets - and just to put it in perspective - Colombia has 15,000 PSPs for a population of 51 million. Or what about Mexico - 25,000 PSPs on a 129 million population. Mexico is among the world's top-10 largest print markets and exceeds by far France - as an example!

70% in Mexico has now internet access and 43% are less than 25 years old!

Regardless - The Latin American Market (LATAM) is an untapped market!

Miki Rubin explains that LATAM people typically leapfrog hops - going from the 'wondering Salesperson' to 'Browser' to 'Mobile' - not using Yellowbook and Emails, i.e.

Online print meets Conversational Ecommerce with Support, Design, Order, and Reordering.

Miki Rubin explains how complicated shipping/logistics is as the addresses are very different from the US and Europe. 

Imprimu takes advantage of the lower operational cost in LATAM - 10x cheaper labor, local raw material, timely delivery, 800$ free of duties and taxes - very competitive and an opportunity for selling into the US market as well!

Great presentation!

14:10 Next speaker is Jesse Marynen, CEO of Buroform. He never thought that business cards should change his life - but here we are! He was (like myself) inspired by moo.com.

"What's the added value of print and how will print evolve in the next 10 years?" he asked himself!

Today there are 450-490 printing companies in Belgium, and Jesse expects this number to decrease further. Consolidations, mergers, closings, to mention a few of the reasons!

Jesse got rejections at every investor meeting. Ended up with an €88,000 project in East Europe that didn't succeed. After recovering he realized that he didn't want to be a copycat but to build a new solution based on his own values. He wanted to build a solution brick by brick.

The future for Jesse and his company is to offer Niche premium print products and in a e-commerce context.

Build brick-by-brick is not the backbone of Inko Print and Buroform. 

14:40 Martijn Ten Pas, DWCprint, Ate Bontjer, X-Interactive, and Robert Hartman, Dataline is now on stage talking about a solution implemented.

DWCprint wanted to build a new webshop where orders are handled fully automated. Keywords: Safe, Flexible, and well - again - I wasn't fast enough - reading, typing, etc... Sorry :-)

Essentially a "big-boys" solution where as much as possible is automated. A solution probably many would LOVE to get :-)

There are a few more sessions, but this will conclude my coverage from today - a really great conference.