Canadian Startup Printchomp Has Big Plans Beyond Business Cards

Joseph Puopolo launched his printing marketplace startup at large tech event in September. A quick stroll around the show room may have served as the best validation.

“I still saw a quarter-million dollars of printed goods sitting around, so what does that say when you’re in one of the most technologically advanced events and you still see that?” said Puopolo. “It says to me that this isn’t going anywhere soon.”

Puopolo’s waterloo-based startup is Printchomp, the real time marketplace for print jobs, or more simply, the Kayak or Expedia for print. With over 650 printers signed up throughout North America, over half a million business cards printed and 11 employees working since their launch, the company is looking to take advantage of a space that is too often underestimated.

“The print industry alone is an $80-100 billion dollar addressable market,” Puopolo told Techvibes. “So it’s really a huge number to tackle from an industry perspective and the whole industry is quite disparate. It could use some glue such as Printchomp.”

That glue wants to claim at least 2500 print outlet partnerships by the end of the year.

SEE ALSO: PrintChomp Debuts at TechCrunch Disrupt

They spent three months building a minimal viable product and continue to improve on it. The company can send any order of any size to one of many printers in their network to figure out who is the best option based on price, turnaround time and quality. Thus far they’ve attracted several thousand users.

Puopolo may have gained his flare for entrepreneurship and technology when he got his first computer at five years old. Soon he was repairing computers for his entire neighbourhood. A number of high-level marketing positions throughout his career (including vice president of business development at his last company) led him to branch off on his own.

The constant business-card swapping environment of the tech world is as prevalent as any industry, and Puopolo knows people will continue to buy in the immediate future. The biggest barrier seems to be based on people ordering within the time frame that they need them and Printchomp has focused on tackling this issue.

They spent three months building a minimal viable product and continue to improve on it. The company can send any order of any size to one of many printers in their network to figure out who is the best option based on price, turnaround time and quality. Thus far they’ve attracted several thousand users.

Puopolo said that a persistent problem for a consumer is that there’s no way to customize an online order in any sort of mass way. The print industry is just one of many customizable verticals that he intends to tackle in the future with the “Chomp” brand.

He wants to build a great business and a great culture surrounding it. “I wasn’t interested in just building something and selling it for $20 million bucks,” said Puopolo. “I wanted to build a larger platform and something that could go into multiple verticals and really be disruptive and I feel this has the capability of doing that because customized goods is just a huge place.”