The report analyzes printing trends during the COVID-19 pandemic based on 1.3 million orders processed through Cloudprinter.com from March 2020 to January 2021. It found that photo personalization orders increased significantly while some industries like travel saw declines. Overall, e-commerce grew substantially and consumers demanded more automated and contactless ordering. The average order value decreased as volumes grew. The Netherlands accounted for over a third of orders, followed by Germany and Italy. HP was the most popular printer brand used to fulfill orders.

1. Cloudprinter.com
1 2020 - 2021
Report:
GLOBAL PRINT
DURING COVID-19
Cloudprinter.com

2. Cloudprinter.com
2
Contents
 Printing. The New Reality of the Industry
 Covid-19 and Printing Industry
 Cloudprinter.com Market Analysis
 The Most Popular Print Products
 Order Volumes and Values
 Delivery Options
 Printing Presses
 Bottom Line
3
4
6
8
11
13
14
15

3. Cloudprinter.com
3
The New Reality of
the Global Print Industry
Booming photo personalization, Amazonization of the printing
industry, and tracked delivery are shaping the digital printing
industry, according to Cloudprinter.com COVID-19 report
It’s been more than a year since the COVID-19 started to spread around the globe. The
unprecedented measures have caused a crisis and thrown the world into disarray. Many
industries collapsed and are hurting while others are doing remarkably well. Having
both, printing and e-commerce industries at our core, Cloudprinter.com has witnessed
both tendencies developing simultaneously and prepared this report to summarize the
coronavirus impact in 2020 – the beginning of 2021.
E-commerce Industry During the Covid Pandemic
offline
online
The amount of purchases during
3 MONTHS of lockdown equals the
number of purchases throughout
the last 10 YEARS
80% of buyers will
keep purchasing online
Source: Cloudprinter.com
Brick and mortar businesses were forced to change their business models and either
adapt to novel conditions or die. At the same time, the majority of online ones started to
thrive effortlessly implementing some improvements only to increase their efficiency –
serve more customers and process more orders.

4. Cloudprinter.com
4
COVID-19 and Printing Industry
Digital Printing During the Lockdown
Source: Cloudprinter.com
HORECA & TRAVEL-RELATED
INDUSTRIES
PHOTO PERSONALIZATION
INDUSTRY
Amazon, for example, hired 427,300 additional employees to meet the growing demand
and expected to exceed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever in the
fourth quarter, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet.
What is clear is that the e-commerce industry has changed virtually overnight:
 10 years’ growth in 3 months in the US, according to McKinsey&Co.
 During the quarantine, 75% of US consumers have tried different stores, websites, or
brands with a retention rate of 80% (consumers who are planning to integrate new
brands into their post-pandemic lives).
 Online delivery volume increased by the same amount in 8 weeks as it had over the
entire previous decade.
As a platform enabling digital printing and providing print automation solutions for
e-commerce, in our material, we couldn’t omit these factors too.

5. Cloudprinter.com
5
A mixed situation has developed in the digital printing industry – while the photo
personalization field was benefiting from the fact that their customers were limited in
ways of spending money, some spheres serving, for example, HoReCa and travel-related
industries experienced a considerable decline in printing needs.
Thus, it’s hard to tell that the print sector has smoothly grown throughout the quarantine,
as this growth has been distributed unevenly – some businesses printed more than usual,
while the others stopped ordering prints at all.
In the light of the quarantine, many businesses have also shifted to remote working
which for sure accelerated the trend towards paperless operations from a business
perspective (significantly fewer orders for envelopes, business cards, letterheads,
folders, etc. were made). But being locked in their homes, people started looking for
ways to spend money online.
While most offline stores were experiencing no foot traffic, the online ones called the
lockdown period a Big Christmas. Concerning photo book printing services or canvas/
Forex print companies, the holiday season usually brings 80% of sales and in 2020 this
period has expanded from the spring till October with a slight drop during the summer
and a massive boost in November – December.
Another factor to be taken into account are closed borders and national lockdowns. Due
to them, global distribution channels were disrupted while demand remained the same
and even grew. Chinese lockdown, e.g., has impacted the publishing business a lot as the
supply chain had been broken and booksellers basically couldn’t restock.
When you aren’t able to print abroad inexpensively and deliver it or preselected print
houses are shutting down due to coronavirus outbreaks, local automated printing with
orders being routed by the smart algorithms is quite a solution. As a result, domestic
markets, producers, and vendors gain an advantage over foreign competitors, as they
now cover the lion's share of country-wide print needs.
In our case, the pre-holiday period has shown similar tendencies. Clients started looking
for new fulfilment and delivery options due to coronavirus spikes that resulted in partial
lockdowns or their vendors being shut down for quarantine.

6. Cloudprinter.com
6
Cloudprinter.com Market Analysis
From a total of 1.3 million orders processed via our platform over the specified period,
we've dissected more than 65,000 random print products to have them analyzed in our
COVID-19 report.
Today we have to accept the fact that no one knows how and when it’s going to end.
The timeline is hazy and the messages about the third wave of the pandemic are
spreading around. In these circumstances, only the lazy haven’t talked about the crisis
impact or current and potential losses.
We chose another way and analyzed the print orders received and fulfilled in a period
from March 2020 to January 2021 as we believe that future projections can only be
made based on analyzable and decomposable data.
As a global printing platform connecting print buyers and print houses all over the
world, Cloudprinter.com has its own vision of the situation built on our extensive data
collected during this unprecedented period and compared to the same time last year.
Top-10 Printing Countries, March 2020 - January 2021
Source: Cloudprinter.com
The Netherlands
Germany
Italy
Belgium
The USA
France
India
The UK
Malaysia
Philippines
36.24%
13.98%
11.74%
11.06%
8.92%
6.83%
3.61%
1.41%
1.36%
0.32%

7. Cloudprinter.com
7
As we see, the coronavirus situation hasn’t become an obstacle for our users from
European countries on their way to fulfilling print needs. Although countries like Germany,
Italy, and France became an epicentre of the pandemic in the EU during the spring, they
took 2nd, 3rd, and 6th places respectively totalling over 32% of all orders.
Over the analyzed period, the US, India, the UK, and Malaysia were under strict
lockdowns with slight relaxations, meaning e-commerce marketers and enterprise
businesses were looking for ways to have their orders executed.
Compared to autumn 2019, the geography of orders doesn’t look much different – with
the Netherlands and Belgium taking the leading positions and the US, Germany, and
France following.
Top-10 Printing Countries, September 2019
Source: Cloudprinter.com
The Netherlands
Belgium
The USA
Germany
France
The UK
Australia
Denmark
New Zealand
Other countries
46.6%
22.6%
15.2%
5.0%
2.9%
2.7%
1.8%
0.9%
0.8%
1.5%

8. Cloudprinter.com
8
The Most Popular Print Products
If we get away from countries and focus on the products, we see significant growth
in the photo personalization category. But regardless of that, corporate orders show
a tendency towards steady growth starting from June.
Photo personalization products such as photo tiles, photo books, and posters
made 86.45% of all orders over the pandemic period with 46.81%, 37.57%, and
2.07% respectively.
The Most Frequently Ordered Print Products in Percent,
March 2020 - January 2021
Source: Cloudprinter.com
PHOTO TILES PHOTO BOOKS POSTERS

9. Cloudprinter.com
9
Source: Cloudprinter.com
Percent of Photo Personalization Products Ordered,
March 2020 - January 2021
51.25%
41.14%
5.00%
2.27%
0.21%
0.01%
Table tent
Puzzle
Poster
Photobook
Photo print
Photo tile
This tendency can be easily explained by the following lockdown factors:
 People got more time to arrange their trips down memory lanes and started
ordering more photo books.
 Being locked at home, people started to think more about interior (re)decoration
and strived to make their homes cosier.
 During the lockdown, except online shopping, there were not that many options
to spend money.
It’s obvious that corporate print orders are in the minority – only 13.55% of the orders
were addressing the business needs. But even if we compare the number of orders to
the similar period of 2019 (e.g. September), we witness the trend of businesses moving
towards optimization and automation of print ordering.

10. Cloudprinter.com
10
The demand for such product categories as business cards and folded cards increased
starting from the beginning of summer, after the quarantine restrictions were lifted. And
this is the moment when we started to notice even more conservative companies looking
for automated and most-contactless solutions to have their needs satisfied.
The demand for such print products as customized packaging, promotional products,
and labels/stickers has been increasing steadily during the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently,
Cloudprinter.com is adding these products to the catalogue to make sure our clients can
print highly-demanded products all over the world.
Source: Cloudprinter.com
Percent of Corporate Print Products Ordered,
March 2020 - January 2021
83.52%
8.09%
5.59%
2.29%
0.33%
0.18%
Textbook
Card folded
Business card
Brochure
Flyer
Calendar

11. Cloudprinter.com
11
Order Volumes and Values
Although the range of products is really wide and exceeds 5000+ options, the customers
tend to avoid ordering multiple products in one order and stick to one (more seldomly
two) items. The only significant exception was in October 2020 when the average
number of items per order reached 5.
This increase is most likely caused by two factors. Firstly, the upcoming holiday season
activity: both corporate and commercial buyers were starting ordering gifts and
souvenirs (e.g. in addition to usual corporate print products, the growth in orders of
calendars was seen). Secondly, the autumn became a period when the corporate sector
started recovering from the consequences of the pandemic: many businesses adapted
to the new reality and transformed – this is very well proved by the growth in orders of
business cards and brochures over the season.
Average number of items per order, March 2020 - January 2021
While finding out the numbers of copies/items in order, we also needed to split the orders
into two categories (corporate and commercial). Commercial orders (excluding wall art
– canvases, photo tiles) in the majority of cases, consist simply of 1 piece. With wall art,
these numbers increase up to 5 pieces.
Average number of copies in a corporate order, March 2020 - January 2021
With the business orders, the approach is different, as corporate orders usually presuppose
a large number of copies. The average number is 861 pieces with, for example, on average
2050 copies in the order of flyers and 645-650 copies in business card and folder orders.
Average Number of Copies in a Corporate Order,
March 2020 - January 2021
Source: Cloudprinter.com
FLYER
There are on average
2050 copies of flyers
in one corporate order
BUSINESS CARD
The average number of
business cards in one
corporate order is 650

12. Cloudprinter.com
12
When talking about the order value evolution, the tendency seems to be pretty typical.
With the platform growth and print network expansion, the average order value
reduces as it is inversely proportional to the volumes: the more we print, the lower the
price of an order is.
Several reasons are explaining this: a higher number of print partners implies orders to
be printed even more locally. This results in better and more competitive prices from print
houses. Also, the shipping distance is shortening, lowering the delivery cost.
A cross this unprecedented period, the average monthly order values were typically
fluctuating only slightly (€13.10-13.80) amounting to €13.82 (excl. VAT) on average per
order over the analyzed period.
When looking at the whole period, the tendency for an average order value to decline is
pretty clear: starting with €16.96 in March 2020 and ending with €8.15 in January 2021.
Average Order Value at Cloudprinter.com
Source: Cloudprinter.com
LARGE PRINT NETWORK
SHORT DELIVERY DISTANCE
CHEAP SHIPPING
Cloudprinter.com volumes have increased
during the Covid lockdown, leading
to a decline in average order value:
€8.15
in January 2021
€16.96
in March 2020
This aspect is to be elaborated furtherly in our next report analyzing the year of working
under COVID-19 caused lockdowns and restrictions.

13. Cloudprinter.com
13
Delivery Options
As we’ve already mentioned, delivery has become a big deal nowadays as well.
Consumers get everything delivered and pay much more attention to the shipping
methods: what are the prices and whether parcels are trackable or not.
Therefore, we’ve analyzed the delivery options chosen by Cloudprinter.com users to
receive their orders.
In the ‘deliver-everything-era’, the majority of consumers choose trackable delivery,
as they want to receive real-time updates and have the possibility to check the status
of their package any moment.
In contrast to the untrackable option, all trackable ones total up to 90% on average
over the quarantine.
In addition to standard delivery (39.94%), Cloudprinter.com Enterprise plan subscribers
are given a possibility to choose one of the delivery services they already use which
automatically implies order tracking (50.66%). This totals 90.6% print product
customers willing to have their order tracked.
As we see, the tendency for tracking is constantly increasing over the analyzed period,
while the demand for untracked options remains stable with basically no growth. This
means that the more consumers order, the more they tend to control and track – to
simply save their time and satisfy the impatience.

14. Cloudprinter.com
14
Printing Presses
Another angle of the analysis is the equipment. Within Cloudprinter.com global print
network connecting 170+ print partners worldwide, HP is an undisputed leader among
printing presses used for order fulfilment. With two-thirds of orders printed on the
company’s machines (Indigo, DesignJet, Latex, PageWide models), HP is way ahead of
the closest competitor Canon (varioPRINT, imagePRESS, Colorado, Arizona models)
that receives about 25% of print jobs. The machines from other brands (Xerox, Generic,
Kodak, Fujifilm, Ricoh, Mimaki) were used in 6.5% of orders.
Most Popular Print Presses, March 2020 - January 2021
Source: Cloudprinter.com
HP
Canon
Xerox
Kodak
Other
68.7%
24.9%
2.9%
1.2%
2.3%

15. Cloudprinter.com
15
Bottom Line
It would be presumptuous to make strong statements about the post-corona
period as we don’t know when it will end, but here are our 4 conclusions based
on the analysis results:
Eventually, it all comes down to a simple truth: only those
who adapt and innovate will survive!
Both global e-commerce stats same as Cloudprinter.com data show the
similar: the coronavirus crisis is likely to accelerate existing industry trends.
It means that the field of online purchases and delivery will grow
continuously – no matter are those corporate orders or individual.
From the vendor’s perspective, order processing automation is sought-after.
The demand for highly automated and fully integrated workflow
systems is growing as consumers are expecting the Amazonization of the
whole e-commerce industry. This tendency forces all marketers to speed up.
Automation is becoming crucial, both on equipment and workflow
levels. Highly skilled engineers can’t be replaced quickly. Easy-to-operate
systems requiring fewer skills make it easier to find or replace operators.
Going back to the typical model of making business may be a long
way off and no one can predict when the borders will open again. Instead
of waiting and hoping for the better, Cloudprinter.com clients choose to
transform to meet their customers and business needs.

16. Cloudprinter.com
16
ms@cloudprinter.com
linkedin.com/in/marta-stetsko-513483112/
cloudprinter.com
E-MAIL
LINKEDIN
WEBSITE
Report:
GLOBAL PRINT DURING COVID-19