Making the business effortless – an interview with Eric Kickert, CEO at Peecho

Peecho’s cloud-print technology allows platforms, apps, and creatives to effortlessly order and sell their digital content in premium print. With a single integration, users can connect with a global network of premier printing facilities.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: What is Peechos’ relation to the photo market?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: Peecho is a solution that lets internet companies sell their user’s digital content as beautiful print products without any hassle. We’ve set up a whole suite of software tools that lets any company instantly connect to a group of 35 printers all around the western world. Those companies can sell their users’ premium content, print products, and whether that’s magazines, photobooks, dibonds or posters, we can do a lot of different product types.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: Do you plan to offer also different kind of products?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: Yes, we are planning to broaden our product range. Now, we are looking at calendars, greeting cards, business cards, even mobile phone cases for a specific customer that’s interested in that. We work with the A-list of print facilities who can do a very broad range of products and it’s quite easy for us to add new product types. If we see that there is demand from a specific customer – that’s enough for us to say – ok, let’s set it up all around the world. We make sure to do the quality assurance and double-check that the product is the same whether printed in the US, Germany or in Australia. The geographic location of the customer doesn’t matter, they will always get a great product.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: Your partner companies, I mean printing houses, are of the best quality, “top-notch” – how do you check this?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: We work with some of the largest print houses in the world or printers that have been referred to us by trusted partners. Before starting a cooperation with a print house, we do a very extensive sampling process in conjunction with some of our key accounts. We also have an eye on what’s happening in the ongoing process because we handle customer service for our clients as well. Because of this direct contact with end customers, any feedback or issues relating to the product can be directly fed back into our quality control processes and instantly addressed with the printers. We also see books from our printers throughout the year, so we can check the quality and compare it to other products printed all over the world. We keep a close eye on that to really make sure that we are doing the best we can.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: If I would be the end customer here, in Poland, and I would like to order a dibond from one of your client’s site – where would it be produced and shipped from? From Europe somewhere?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: It really depends on what type of product exactly you are ordering. For dibonds, we currently have 5 different printers in Europe. So, based on what’s you are going to order, the printer is always going to be relatively close to you, somewhere in Europe, for example in Germany or in the Netherlands. This way, it can be very easily shipped to Poland with a very reasonable shipping price. But the cool thing is that you’re not just connected to one printer, making the wall-décor products. You’re connected to 5 specialty printers, each a master of their own product categories.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: And what about the shipping? Do you also offer this?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: Yes, of course! Our solution handles the entire print operations for our clients, including delivery to the end customer. We spend a lot of time when we find a new printer to make sure that their shipping package is optimal for their geographic region. The first months of cooperation, what we typically do is go to the printer to look around for shipping companies. We’ve spent a lot of time onboarding that. We know that for customers it’s not just about the print, but shipping is just as important as the print. So, everything has to “click” together and be affordable.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: And you cover the whole world.

Eric Kickert, Peecho: Yes, our printers can provide services to almost anywhere. Printers are mostly located in the western world, but from there we also fulfil the needs of the rest of the world. If we see that, for example, a certain company’s sales from Asia really picks up – we would be the first to add a printer in that specific country, or somewhere close, to be able to fulfil their needs cheaper and more efficiently.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: Why is it important for Peecho to team up with software companies like Printbox?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: I think that it is extremely important to have a strategic partnership with Printbox. At Peecho, we get in contact with a lot of customers that are not yet printing. They see the potential and know that’s the way of increasing their revenue, so it’s a win-win situation. But still, if they want to design a really premium photoproduct generator, this is super time-consuming for them. With a company like Printbox,  clients can have a software solution out of the box, directly connect to Peecho’s printing network and get started tomorrow rather than developing something for months or even years. That’s a huge added value and the whole world of customers suddenly opens. Our common business clients can start printing not in a year from now but tomorrow.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: What makes your service at Peecho an ideal solution for Printbox users? How can our users grow their business with your technology?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: It’s a solution specifically for clients that don’t yet have their own printing facility in place. I think Printbox and Peecho together make a big added value if a client wants to sell premium content as print products. A company like this can have a very good relationship with Printbox but then it has to attach a printer to their software and if the company would like to print globally, it has to connect multiple printers. Each printer requires different API’s, bleeds, crop-marks, you name it. It’s all different. Plus, the company must usually commit to larger monthly volumes of orders to get a contract with a printer. Peecho doesn’t work like that – one of our customers could print one book per year and they can still use the same service as a client that sells 10’000 books a year. Our API is super-simple, and it lets companies print all over the world. We provide a simple API and software suite where they just have to simply drag & drop a little button into their interface to start printing and they’re up and running. I think that’s where the value is.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: What’s your superpower?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: That’s the state-of-the-art network with the best specialty printers all around the world, and it’s a full-service. Our clients really don’t have to know anything about print or have to set up any operation. We take care of the customer service, file processing, connection to the best printers around the world, invoicing, etc. We take care of everything. The customer only has to say “Oh, yes, I like to start selling print”. Then at the end of the month – the customer will get the money. That’s all they need to know about print, they don’t have to become experts on that. It’s completely outsourced service. We have very often better rates that they will be able to negotiate on their own from PSPs. So, I would say – that’s a superpower: Peecho’s service makes generating print revenues effortless.

Katarzyna Michałowska, Printbox: Is the penguin still your mascot?

Eric Kickert, Peecho: The penguin is going through a metamorphosis. It’s definitely very much alive and is still the mascot, but like anything, it should grow along with the whole company.

Thank you.