21.03.2016 Print magazin - interview

Demago – The largest DIGITAL "Web-to-Print" in the region!

The largest digital "Web-to-Print" printing house in Slovenia, and to our knowledge also in the former Yugoslavia, is located in Maribor, about twenty kilometers from Austria. This is the company Demago d.o.o. We spoke with the owner and director, Mr. Dejan Fajfar, about his "printing" beginnings, the development of Demago, and plans for the future.

How did you start in the printing business, considering you are not from the graphic arts industry?
It was in 2008. We urgently needed business cards for some work and concluded that we could not order business cards anywhere in Maribor in the afternoon. In the evening, I went to a store, bought a printer, and made my first business cards. It wasn't hard to conclude that there was a good profit in this business. This is where the idea for starting this business was born. We started developing software because we wanted to run the entire business via the web. We have been developing our Demago portal since 2008, and we spend at least 4 working hours every day on new improvements, customer adjustments, adding new products, updating data... The Web-to-Print portal of Demago is probably the most valuable part of our company. We have invested years of work into it.

What is the principle of operation of your company?
There are only five employees in Demago. Our task is to take the finished graphic preparation that arrives to us via the web. Depending on the customer's priority, which can choose from three urgency options, we process the order. Customers can choose the "economy" priority, which is the most affordable, "normal" or "express," which we complete in the shortest time, most often the same day, and delivery starts the next morning. If the customer doesn't have their own preparation, we advise and refer them to our partners who can make the graphic preparation for the customer.

How many clients do you print for annually?
In the previous year, 2015, we had 3529 different customers who ordered printed products from us.

Is this turnover only related to Slovenia, or do you also work with Austria?
For now, we only work with Slovenia, although our web portal is also available in German and Croatian, and we have registered domains for these countries – demago.at and demago.hr. We spent almost three months translating it into German.

Does this mean you plan to expand to Austria and Croatia?
Our plans are to expand into the region. Currently, there are several very strong portals operating in the Austrian market that are well established, and it is difficult to take a satisfied customer away. We prefer opening a branch in Croatia and moving to Eastern markets. We believe it will be easier due to the language and less competition. Delivery to Croatia is slightly more expensive than delivery within Slovenia, and that is one of the reasons for starting the business in Croatia. We plan to open a branch in Croatia in the spring of this year. If the branch works well, we will definitely open branches in other countries in the region.

What printers do you use for orders?
For wide-format printing, we use HP latex printers, and for production printing, we have Konica Minolta, Xerox, and the latest two Ricoh printers in our printing house. The larger model is Ricoh C-9110. It is a production color printer. The print speed is 110 color pages per minute. Its features that set it apart from the competition include excellent speed, the ability to print on materials up to 400g, print dimensions of 330x700mm, and an extremely favorable print cost with very high quality. This printer was installed at our place less than two months ago, and so far, we have printed over 600,000 prints on it. So far, it has proven to be very good and cost-effective. In addition to digital printing, we also handle part of the orders in offset printing. This part of the work is done by our partner printing house.