My1Stop Makes It Your Last Stop For All Of Your Printing Needs

There are quite a few printing options available around the internet. Each business has at least one special trait that they hold claim to which helps them draw in their customer base. Some offer lower than average pricing, others offer higher than average quality, while one business might be more flexible then the next. My1Stop has their own edge over the competition as well. Besides their “award winning online printing solutions”, they offer a business which is based around the theory that the customer comes first. They serve their customer as they are looking to be served. So when it’s time for that individual or business to reorder, it’s no surprise they would want to come back to My1Stop.

In a recent interview, Michael Del Chiaro, the President of My1Stop, has shared with us some information about the business, their goals and his own personal experience.

What inspired you to launch My1Stop?

We saw a real need for an online printing website that leveraged best in class technology with world class customer service. We used new technologies to provide instant online pricing for custom printing and we backed it up with real people to help solve problems and answer questions. This is still a novel but effective approach in the online commercial printing space. Further, most online printing companies are very narrow in their product offering. Our vision and motivation was to create an online custom printing superstore where businesses could purchase everything from A-Z in printed products instead of having to go to multiple sites, multiple carts, and multiple vendors. Lastly, I believe in the internet and believe in the transformation of marketing as we know it from a push model to a pull model. Viable business plans must take this into consideration.

How many printing options does your business offer? What are some of the ‘favorites’ among your customers?

Wow. That’s a great question because we offer so many different custom printing products — many with unique options. In general, most of our commercial printing options are for size and shape, material, printing colors and product-specific options like folding or laminating or gluing as examples. Among our commercial printing customers, I’d have to say or photo-quality printing is a big favorite. We are one of the few online printing sites offering photo quality printing at traditional printing prices. Our biggest sellers are Labels, Presentation Folders, Magnets and Plastic Card products. We supply the world’s largest online retailer with their distribution labels, small business their custom gift cards, and all size businesses marketing materials and unique direct mail campaigns. Our breadth of products and depth of expertise is truly an asset for any business to have on their side.

What do you enjoy most about custom print manufacturing? Why?

Every custom printing order is unique. That’s so unusual when you think about it. I mean, ordering a polo shirt for one of your kids is pretty straight forward, size and color and style and that’s it. Custom printing, though, well, it’s just that, custom. That makes custom commercial printing enjoyable and challenging. We are constantly dealing with a unique customer with unique commercial printing needs, that’s just plain fun!

At the end of the day when we help a world class retailer to eliminate fte’s, reduce cost, and reduce errors because of our labeling expertise, or we help a business grow because of our direct mail expertise, or pull off a miracle delivery during gift card season — these things are the rewards of filling a true need and making a difference in the lives of other businesses that give us true joy.

Have you always had that entrepreneurial itch? Why did you decide to take the path of starting a business?

Actually, I have personally started 3 companies that are all doing very well; I am not the owner but work for an owner that is a visionary and has appeased me by throwing a shoe string budget at some of these ideas. www.My1Stop.com started out on a very tiny budget; however, after the owner saw the instant success of the model; larger budgets have no longer been an issue.

Yes! When I was a kid, I had 3 paper routes simultaneously and worked 3 jobs into my twenties until starting my own small businesses. Early on I would sneak the zuchinni and other vegetables out of my mothers garden and go to neighbors and knock on their doors offering to sell them for 10 cents each….I was not even 6 years old. Soon after I had all the lawn mowing jobs on my street. So yes it’s in my blood. I would notice the other kids on my block had lemonade stands. I took an entrepreneurial approach even then — I added licorice ropes and soda to my stand! I advertised free napkins, too. It worked! Even those lemonade consumers appreciated my 1 stop shopping approach! It was in the spirit that we launched My1Stop.com. We didn’t see any one else doing what the customers needed; no one was offering a 1 stop solution for online printing. No one was offering a blend of online printing tools and off-line customer service. We thought starting our own business was the best way to ensure that we met the market need.

In the beginning, when you were still preparing to launch your business, were there any problems that you encountered? What were they and what have you learned from it?

Not a lot of problems, really. We did have some challenges defining and then building the right online printing solutions. Because custom printing is so configurable, there are no canned-e-Commerce solutions to plug-and-play. We learned a great deal about pricing configurable products like commercial printing — online. Like I said, the difference between polo shirts and custom printing is huge when it comes to getting technology to provide a customer-centric interface.

How has My1Stop changed over these past 3 years?

Well, we changed our name from my MarketingStop.com to My1Stop.com. We did that when we responded to customer’s needs for more than marketing materials. That was a big change. We also have changed from thinking we might be a technology company to knowing that we are not. At the end of the day, we’re about being a single online printing stop for our customers. The technology is an enabler, but it’s not what we are or we are. One very good change, well more of an ongoing change, has been the constant tweaks to our site. We add new commercial printing products almost monthly and we conduct focus groups to learn how we can improve the site for our customers. Those small but frequent changes have helped us win back-to-back WebAwards from the Web Marketing Association. 2006 Best Manufacturing Website and 2008 Best Publishing Website.

Do you think you’ll ever consider venturing into other areas of business?

I think so. I mean, think about the change we made from MyMarketingStop.com to My1Stop.com. We did that in response to the online printing needs of our customers. We’ve recently added thousands of ad specialty and promotional items to our custom printing offering. We just launched online printing tools for international ordering of commercial printing, that’s a new venture for us. Yeah, if there’s a need that we can fill for our customers and it makes sense to fill that need, we’ll do it.

Do you have any milestones you’d like to reach within the next year or so?

Modest ones. We do plan on being the largest online printing superstore in the world. We’d like to include even more of the Fortune 100 to our custom printing customer list. Mostly, though, we focus everyday on providing all of the online printing solutions that we can for each of our custom printing customers. If we keep getting that right, we’ll meet our milestones every time.

Why do you think My1Stop stands out from other printing options found online?

I almost don’t want to say, because it sounds so simple. We stand out from other online printing sites because we have award winning online printing solutions — and — because we are more than just online. Our online printing solutions are not tech based, they are customer based. That’s how we approach the business; we serve the customer first with whatever tools or tech it takes. And this is really important; we will work with our customer online or off. We have great people with years of experience meeting custom printing challenges online — and off. Many, many of our customers come to us offline, and we just love it. It’s another way for us to excel for them.

What is the first thing an entrepreneur should consider before entering the printing business?

Consider any other business, first! The printing business used to be about capabilities and inks and papers, and while we still use ink and paper, today printing is increasingly about meeting challenges for your customers — finding the right best solutions for them. It takes a lot of years of experience to do that well. You can learn to run anew press in a few weeks and that draws new entrepreneurs into print all of the time. But learning about how to meet the commercial printing needs of your customers is no easy task and there are no short cuts. To have the success like that My1Stop.com, you need a team made of players who have been in the custom printing game for a long time. That’s our edge and that’s something every entrepreneur must have before entering the custom printing business.

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