Ten years after the multi-million dollar sale of Drukwerkdeal, Marco Aarnink is once again building a print empire. This time via a buy-and-build strategy with Print.com, the domain he bought in 2017 with the intention of becoming a domain broker. 'We have alreadya couple of times big time on the integration of a purchased business, because we wanted to go too fast.’
Marco Aarnink's previous entrepreneurial adventure ended in 2014 with the sale of his business Drukwerkdeal to American Vistaprint, for which he pocketed 24 million euros. The born entrepreneur from Deventer has no shortage of unbridled ambition. With his new business Print.com - 52.5 million euros in revenue by 2023 - he plans to do it all over again, but in a better way. Aarnink likes to talk in aviation terms, a concept around which he has built his new brand Print.com. 'Originated as a joke. Customers order frequent flyers, our best-selling product. And people just have positive feelings about vacations.'
How do you like your new adventure?
'So far it has been a very turbulent flight. I could never have imagined in 2017 that I would start again in the printing industry. I had planned to start a business in domain trading, in my experience the real estate of the future. Domain brokers are getting huge amounts of money and domain names are becoming increasingly scarce. Especially the .com domain names. So I could see trade in that. When I saw Print.com pass by, I didn't hesitate for a moment. Because if I wanted to take a gamble in domain trading, Print.com would be a suitable name to resell with my network.
But it just became the start of your new print empire. How did that come about?
'News of my purchase leaked out fairly quickly due to a mistake by the domain broker. I was suddenly being pulled on all sides. I thought: bizarre that there is still so much interest, we quickly need a site where people can leave their details. Within no time we had thousands of responses from people all over the world who wanted information about Print.com. Of course, we couldn't ignore that. I say 'we' and 'us' advisedly, because at that time I already had a team of people around me with whom we were building a business in the fintech corner.
You had already created a database of potential customers before Print.com was a business at all.
'We were surprised about that ourselves. We then invited over a hundred interested people from this list to dinner on Valentine's Day in 2018 and asked them to think about our business model. The needs of these hundred potential customers were very diverse. Some were looking for certain print products, others for certain services. So much came up that a new print platform could be viable. We decided to make "co-creation" the common thread of our business model. We sell only to creative professionals, such as agencies, designers, print companies, other print companies. Parties that resell print work and often can't or don't want to produce it themselves, but like to grab a little margin on the print work for their end customers. So we made our business model closed.
Your competitors and previous business Drukwerkdeal were certainly not happy about that?
'Well, I don't know. Everyone has to make their own choices and define their own target audience. I believe that every landscape has a very big pie to share. There is room for everyone, as long as you are clear about your offer and target audience. In this I believe very much in the customer relationship which I approach as much as a love relationship.'
Hence your choice to invite potential customers on Valentine's Day in 2018?
'Right! What often goes wrong in relationships is genuinely paying attention to each other. It's no different in a business relationship. If you lose sight of a customer, a customer very quickly finds love with someone else. And so we approach every customer relationship as a love relationship. You start with a flirtation. With a conversation. With a date. With courtship. Living together. These stages match how we have customers in our ERP system. Everything for us is about giving attention at the right time, and that's how we build something together.'
But you're an online business, which by definition is a lot more impersonal, right?
'That's true, but we keep our customer base small because we print only for graphic professionals and resellers. And then it's much easier to give personal attention. Each customer is very explicitly tracked in our customer system and placed in the various stages of the relationship. For example, our system signals which customer has placed their first, tenth or hundredth order. And then we know who to call or where to visit.'
With that favor factor, you now hope to conquer the international market as well.
'I just really enjoy getting to know different people and cultures. I like to challenge myself. Currently we are in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and Austria. We are working on England and Denmark, Sweden and Spain. It's not just expansionism, more the volumes we need to offer our products competitively.'
Most entrepreneurs underestimate how much work it is to conquer a foreign market. Was that the case with you as well?
'Most of the work has been in building the platform. It's just a matter of rolling it out. At least, that's what I thought. Doing business abroad I too underestimated. The different cultures make it challenging. A German buys different products than a Dutchman. And a Belgian expects a different service. For that reason, we sometimes had to adjust the sales targets per country.'
You have also mapped out a buy-and-build strategy and very carefully pick out the businesses you want to add to your group.
'In 2019, we acquired textile printer Brezo in Kampen and TMB Image Center in Oss. Mainly motivated by a tight labor market, there were too few good people available in the market. I took over TMB Image Center together with Koninklijke Drukkerij Em. de Jong. They also came to the table with the selling party. It seemed smart for us to act jointly. It turned out to be a good match. In 2021, they even joined as a minority shareholder in Print.com. I in turn bought a small part of the shares in one of their printing companies, Kampert Nauta in Oss. A printing company where we outsourced a lot of work at the time. This gave us even more capacity and, above all, a bit of control over that capacity.
It sounds like you want to own the whole chain.
'Yes, we not only take over production companies, but also smaller labels that we let merge into our businesses. Like recently Converdy, which allows our customers to easily create landing pages, a simple website or even their own online catalog with Print.com products. But also Digi Promotions for example, a fellow business that fits perfectly into our business Brezo. This way we make the group more stable in terms of customers and product range. Moreover, last year we acquired all the shares of the production company TMB Image Center from Em. de Jong, as well as part of the machines and activities of the production company Kampert Nauta. As a result, production now falls entirely under Print.com, which makes it a lot easier to streamline our volumes efficiently and deliver them to our customers on time.'
Is it a winner takes it all market?
'No, absolutely not. But it was the only opportunity for us to quickly capture more market share. We are in a fairly competitive market where everything is about automation and optimization. You just have to drive that from one side. Never mind that we also do business with more than 150 other printers throughout Europe who produce for us. We are and remain a platform. But the fact remains that printed matter must be delivered on time. Our customers like the fact that there is always an undercurrent of reliability thanks to our own production companies.'
Taking over another business is relatively easy. Instead, it's about proper integration to reap all the benefits. How do you take care of that?
'With the acquisition of a business, you also take over a business culture and people who have not necessarily chosen you as an employer. Change is often complicated for people. It does take some time to win over people from the old business and convince them that you want to be good to them. Still, we have bitten our heads off a few times because we wanted to go too fast. I always say: success is in the details. It starts with good coffee, a new chair and some investments that make people's jobs easier. Then you pick up the policy together with the people. Above all, communicate and keep communicating. But details go beyond that. I can send someone back five times if I don't like a color yellow. And that's not meant to be nasty, but you only make a first impression with customers once, so it just has to be right. For many people this takes getting used to, but in the end they see that the business and themselves are the better for it. An acquisition always involves changes. That is nothing against the previous management, but purely to show positive movement.'
You've been on the road with Print.com for almost seven years now. Do you already have a final destination in mind?
'We want to become the global platform for delivering and distributing personalized products. To realize that, we have to keep making acquisitions. The bit of expansion is something we just really enjoy as entrepreneurs. In addition, our mission is to be leaders in changing the printing landscape in terms of sustainability. The printing industry is huge, bigger than the auto industry. Just look around you, almost everything is printed on. From the paintings on the wall to the little logo on the bottom of a coffee cup. We cannot be left behind in introducing sustainable products and production methods. Otherwise our market is doomed and I haven't worked so hard for that all these years. You see, I'm not at all concerned with an exit yet.'
