Snap promotes online publishing with Quark

Printing franchise, Snap, teams up with Quark to launch Australian online publishing service, Snap Promote.

The online service, which goes lives on 1 September, provides customers with a range of templates for business cards, post card-sized mailers, glossy tri-fold brochures and other marketing materials which they can customise via downloadable software on the Snap website.

“We’ve been keen to go into the web market for some time,” said Grant Vernon, Snap’s CEO. “Snap Promote will allow people to access online print and publishing products without having to leave their desk.”

Ray Schiavone, CEO of Quark, said that the relationship is a first for Quark, and the company is looking to roll-out similar models in other countries.

Pictured: Snap happy, Ray Schiavone (left) with Grant Vernon.

Schiavone admitted that Quark has faced an uphill battle in attempting to regain the market share gained by rival, Adobe. “We lost the dominant share years ago, but in enterprise publishing we’ve got double-digit growth,” he told Print21. “This [deal] gets Quark into a new market.”

He also confirmed that there will be a new Quark software release “in the not-too-distant future.”

Snap quick to make a move on marketing
Last year, Snap rebranded from its former name, Snap Printing, prefiguring its other announcement, that the company will also expand its services to include marketing and e-marketing.

According to Vernon, the printing industry has seen 38 quarters of decreasing prices along with dramatic shifts in the industry which have been occurring for the last decade, making Snap’s move to the marketing arena a “natural evolution”.

In announcing Snap’s new marketing services brand, Snap Level 2, Vernon said that traditional print and copy providers had to “move with the times” and continue growing.

“Print is still an important part of Snap,” he said. “We’ve removed it from our logo, but not our vocabulary.”

Looking to the future, Vernon said that the company may consider offering other services to customers, including database management.

“With personalisation, database management is a critical issue for all businesses now and that is one example of how we can extend our business,” Vernon said.