Helloprint, Europe’s fastest growing print platform, today announced it has raised an additional multi-million-euro funding as part of a Series A funding led by current investors Bregal Unternehmerkapital and Project A Ventures.
With this additional funding, Helloprint plans to expand the team, continue its rapid growth and support its mission of making ordering print easier. By hiring additional team members, Helloprint will focus on its rapid European expansion and building out its platform,
Over the past four years, Helloprint captured attention with its high growth numbers in a market where most people would not expect growth. “Our growth evolves according to plan”, says Hans Scheffer, Chief Executive Officer of Helloprint. “We expect to cross the 50-million-euro revenue line in 2018, a growth rate of appr. 45% compared to last year, the fourth full year since our inception. Our business model has proven itself over the last period, and we see interesting things happening in the fast-growing online print market, an industry that is bigger than automotive, twice the size of the software industry and where the majority of the orders are still being generated offline. Therefore, we’re keen on keeping our current growth rates and expand our model rapidly”.
Helloprint operates differently from traditional online printers. Print producers can connect to the platform and sell the products they want to the client database of Helloprint. The platform then takes care of the selection of the producer, the artwork process and the payment. For many print producers it is simply not possible to sell their products, especially the smaller quantities, to individual customers because of the complex supply-chain, the high order costs and the lack of marketing capabilities in the online era, says Scheffer. By partnering up with Helloprint, they can sell their products via us as an additional sales channel without any hassle or investment, and for many producers this is an interesting opportunity.
“On the other hand, we see that customers, like small businesses, are experiencing difficulties with ordering online at traditional printers, because the process of getting your file ready and selecting what you need is rather complex. By ordering via our platform, we ensure these customers that their orders are perfectly prepared, always on-time and of great quality. It is our mission to make ordering for them as easy as -for example - buying shoes, books, hotels or food online. That's why we work with full focus on developing the most intuitive user experience and why we have a strong focus on quality and reliability. This year, we've increased our Net Promoter Score by almost 20% and our producers reached an on-time delivery rate of more than 99 %, a process that has our continuous attention"
The Helloprint platform is currently live in 7 European countries. “That’s also where our focus will stay for now”, Scheffer says. “We have a healthy mix of sales per country and we believe there’s still a lot to win in these countries. Our company set up enables us to rapidly expand geographically when we choose to do so. It is still our aim to have full European coverage with our platform model, but that’s not for now. We’ve learned over the course of the last years that growth has its limitations when you’re not designing your team and system structure in the best way. And that’s exactly what we’re currently doing”.
Founded in 2013, Helloprint’s platform business is expanding rapidly into the European market. Currently, over 200.000 customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland are ordering their printed products via the platform. Via a network of hundreds of international print and promotional producing partners, over 3.000 unique printed products are available for its customers, anywhere and when they need it. The company operates from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where it has its European HQ, and from Valencia, Spain, where the international Customer Experience Center is located.
Bregal Unternehmerkapital is part of a family-owned business that has been built up over generations. Its investment activity is free of institutional constraints, based on long-term commitment and independent of developments in the financial markets. Bregal Unternehmerkapital identifies companies with strong management teams that are regarded as market leaders or “hidden champions” in their particular segment. Flexible financing and transaction structures enable it to acquire both minority and majority stakes. In doing so, Bregal Unternehmerkapital is also able to handle complex industry spin-offs, management buy-outs and succession situations in a sensitive, non-dogmatic manner. Bregal Unternehmerkapital aims to help companies achieve a sustained improvement in sales and profitability, and provides them with capital, proven financial expertise and access to a broad network of entrepreneurs and industry experts.
Project A Ventures is a Berlin based but international venture capital firm known as a company that boosts the success of its portfolio companies by contributing its own operative resources. The company has a team of 100 operational experts in areas such as IT, Product Marketing, Brand Building, Business Intelligence and Recruiting. Besides various early-stage investments, Project A has realized huge successes with investments in other market leaders in the industry.
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