As the UK’s largest online printer, we’re incredibly excited to celebrate our 1 millionth customer milestone with our customers and team.
Back in January we officially reached our 1 millionth customer since we first started in the print business. The customer was Electric Cycle Café, a local business based in Surrey! Celebrating the success, instantprint founders Adam Carnell and James Kinsella reprinted their last order free of charge and hand-packed it to mark the occasion.
An absolute landmark that has put instantprint on the map, we’ve taken the time to reflect on just how far we’ve come in recent years. Since opening our doors to customers, we’ve totalled 4.6 million orders which is an astounding 7.2 million jobs.
Where Did It All Begin?
When instantprint was founded back in 2009, our Directors, Adam Carnell and James Kinsella, never knew just how far the business would go. Starting with a simple goal in mind and recognising that creating print should be easier for small businesses, they made this their mantra and it’s still at the heart of everything we do today.
Fast forward 14 years and instantprint are now celebrating a huge milestone…1 million customers to be exact!
It’s safe to say that instantprint has come a long way since first launching. Delivering a wide range of new products, creating handy online services and features, investing in our factory, expanding our premises and launching a new sustainability strategy are just some of the things we’ve ticked off our list, but there’s still plenty more to be done.
instantprint’s founders Adam and James are both incredibly invested in helping like-minded business reach their goals. From the Small Business Hub to hiring Account Managers to take care of customer accounts, their investment into instantprint has helped over 1 million small businesses boost their brand with print over the years. With over 5 million small businesses in the UK alone, that’s a whopping 1 in 5 choosing to print with instantprint.
‘Celebrating our 1 millionth customer is such an exciting time for us here at instantprint. We both think back to when we first started out with just two members of staff in a tiny office in Newcastle. Now, we’re the UK’s largest online printer, fulfilling thousands of jobs each day. It’s such a monumental milestone for us and we couldn’t be prouder of our team and of course, our customers who have helped get us to this point. We can’t wait to share what the future holds for instantprint.’
You can read more from Adam and James in our blog The instantprint Story.
Celebrating Our 1 Millionth Customer
The business, unbeknownst to them until recently, to become our 1 millionth customer was Electric Cycle Café, an artisan coffee and ebike specialist in the heart of Farnham, Surrey.
Placing 13 orders in the last 2 years, we’ve successfully supported Electric Cycle Café’s marketing by printing a range of business cards, posters and flyers for their shop. Their latest purchase of 500 350gsm silk business cards from us are currently being used as loyalty cards for customers visiting their shop and as a thank you for being our 1 millionth customer, founders Adam Carnell and James Kinsella reprinted and hand packed the order!
When we asked them how they felt about being our 1 millionth customer they shared with us - ‘We were very surprised that our tiny cafe had been picked out from such a mountainous market. ebikes can change the world for the better and we want to tell everyone the good news. 'Make hills disappear' is our motto but maybe not this mountain.’
Electric Cycle Cafe are an independent shop, not part of a chain, that cares incredible amounts about the environment and the local businesses around them. All the energy used in their cafe is from renewable sources and they even heat the cafe with a form of 'air-source heat pump', extracting warmth from outside, without the need to burn fossil fuels to keep their customers warm while enjoying a coffee. Similarly to instantprint, as part of our recently launched sustainability strategy, we made sure that our Manvers factory also runs solely off renewable electricity! We love when we find customers who share our vision for a greener future. We’re committed to creating world-class print in a way that preserves the planet.
Owner, Peter, also told us that his top print tip for other businesses in this industry is to ‘Use a printer that has a fast turnaround on their products! instantprint are fast, reliable, and reasonably priced! We’ve found this also applies to when you’re ordering larger quantities say 500 or 1000 business cards, posters or leaflets, like we have in the past.’
You can read more about the Electric Cycle Café here in their client spotlight where they tell us more about how print has helped them accomplish their marketing goals and thrive in business.
instantprint in Numbers
With such a big milestone to celebrate, we thought we’d take the time to reflect on just how far we’ve come. Since we were founded in 2009 we’ve racked up over 30 million website visits, 14 awards and 13,900 Trustpilot reviews and sold a total of 7 billion individual product quantities using only Forest Stewardship Council™ certified paper stocks.
The team at instantprint have also been proving opportunities to over 1700 employees since 2012, now home to a strong team of over 490 team members. A large majority of which are responsible for looking after our customers. Since 2015 we’ve totalled a talk time of over 1300 days. That’s 31,200 whole hours talking to you, our customers about all things print.
Of course, instantprint wouldn’t be complete without products! In the last 12 months, we’ve launched over 15 new products and stocks. This includes our exciting range of merchandise, luxury book-binding capabilities, new creative stocks, notepads and deskpads! Amongst these new products, we’ve completed and sent out an outstanding 350,000 orders. That's a whopping 200 million product quantities in total in just 12 months.
We won’t be slowing down any time soon, continuing to launch exactly what our customers ask for when they need it!
We’ve also spent some time catching up with Adam and James to bring you the timeline of instantprint. Our printspiration blog is also home to some great business tips and insights to help you understand exactly what it takes to bag a 1 millionth customer. From company culture to making strategic decisions, you can read all about it.
A Huge Thank You!
Here at instantprint we couldn’t be happier to be sharing this milestone with those who have made it all possible. We just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of our customers past and present for their support!
This is only a drop in the ocean for us! With a drive to become bigger and better, we want to make instantprint the go-to place for small business print. Keep a close eye on us over the coming months, we’ve got plenty planned to support our customers…
