Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions: Expanding into Web-to-Print

When a family-run company with a 50-year legacy in printing decides to offer tech solutions, a successful transition is no guarantee.

Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions (TPMS) is a San Antonio, TX-based printing company with a wide range of services.

TPMS responded to customer demand for web services in 2007 with an in-house network order management system powered by DemandBridge. However, as it became increasingly essential to develop custom client websites, expand e-commerce offerings, and look for additional niche marketing opportunities, a more modular solution was needed. A front-end HTML5 editor was preferable.

Customers wanted small, personalized sites that would let them order online with templates, previews, and online approvals. Simultaneously, TPMS was expanding its e-commerce offerings via Superstore Printing (superstoreprinting.com). The forthcoming client sites and e-commerce site would need to be mobile-accessible and affordable. The TPMS web team researched and tested over a dozen providers before settling on Racad Tech / Web to Print Shop (Booth 148).

“Online print ordering is a growing segment, more than 4% per year. Our clients were asking for online solutions to order and print products at their convenience,” explains David Thompson, President of Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions.

Flexible solutions

Racad Tech’s range of products and services enabled TPMS to cover many bases, from creating a template-driven, strict brand site for a B2B customer, to designing a CMS or bootstrap site for a public-facing site.

Racad Tech focuses on best web practices and HTML5, setting Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions up to be future-proof and mobile-first, two of their primary goals. Racad Tech’s price points, patient instructors, dedicated support teams, and communicative management made the integration process easy.

TPMS was able to bring all their websites under one roof, and manage a number of CMS platforms and customer needs in a few months. This largely thanks to the cross-platform integration of multiple Racad Tech products.

The web team was able to build sites the way they wanted. This flexibility allowed the team to design order portals for client websites, and gave them control over the structure and design of Superstore Printing. The uDraw plug-in gives the site an online editor independent of the product information and order history. The team is free to build every desired site feature without being constrained by a proprietary, turnkey solution. Order history and customer information are the property of the site owner, separate from the web-to-print system.

Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions expects expansive customer acquisition, and additional revenue streams moving forward.