Hansaprint and Sumo Paint launch a global print service Sumo Store
Hansaprint Ltd and creators of a Flash-based full featured photo editing & painting application Sumo Paint (www.sumopaint.com) Snap Group Ltd have launched the new Sumo Store service. Through Sumo Store, users have the opportunity to order the artwork they have created in Sumo Paint as various printed products, such as posters, canvas prints, cards and magnets.
Sumo Paint has a very wide global user base, which is growing rapidly. So far, Sumo Paint has over 10 million unique users. Hansaprint and Snap Group have developed Sumo Store in close collaboration where Snap Group concentrates on developing the online service and Hansaprint on implementing the physical part of the total service. This collaboration has enabled both to focus on their core competences that together create a first-class service for Sumo Store customers.
"In the Sumo Paint collaboration, we turned many conventions upside down. Rather than actively waiting for orders for production, we defined the various products together with Snap Group, and brought them together to Sumo Paint users. The service is based on highly automated processes and digital printing, enabling us to bring new products and services into Sumo Store in the near future. Offering digital printing services to consumers is a great opportunity also for other online service providers as our interface makes it possible to add printed products to digital services, with a low entry barrier", explains Hansaprint's Development Director Jukka Saariluoma.
"Earlier this year, Hansaprint suggested adding printed products to Sumo Paint. This suggestion came at a very good time, and our collaboration started fluently. The service has been created very quickly by both parties, and it has been easy for us to provide the required information to Hansaprint's interface. We are very excited about the announcement of Sumo Store, as we believe it to serve perfectly Sumo Paint users. We are sure that Sumo Store will become a much used success", says Snap Group Ltd's Managing Director Lauri Koutaniemi. "We make the world more creative by giving equal opportunity for everybody to access and to enjoy using world-class content creation tools. Sumo Store brings also an earnings opportunity to artwork creators, as they get a commission for each of their images that is printed. The social networking and business phenomenon is now also happening in the software / web 2.0 industry where we are a disruptive force that drives this revolution. Our goal is to have over 100 million users before 2015 and it's starting to look like we are going to reach this goal", Lauri Koutaniemi adds.
Sumo Store has six categories: canvas prints, posters, magnets, post cards, brochures and business cards. Users can zoom and pan the image and see the final product as a 3D model before making the order. There will be more products at Sumo Store to choose from later this year. All the prices in Sumo Store include free shipping anywhere in the world and the commission for the author. www.sumopaint.com/store
Additional information:
Jukka Saariluoma, Development Director, Hansaprint Oy, +358 10 542 5850
Lauri Koutaniemi, Managing Director, Snap Group Oy, +358 44 273 8311
Hansaprint
Hansaprint is a leading printing house in the Nordic region and a service company specialised in comprehensive marketing solutions. The company concentrates on developing printing and logistics services in the field of marketing communication, multichannel services and marketing services that generate measurable benefits for its customers. Hansaprint is headquartered in Turku, Finland and has subsidiaries and partners in all Nordic countries as well as in Western Europe, Russia and Hungary. Hansaprint is part of the TS Group. The other major owner of Hansaprint is Sanoma. In 2009, Hansaprint's turnover was 112 M€,
Sumo Paint
Sumo Paint (www.sumopaint.com) is a thriving online art community of over a 10 million unique users and over 200 000 registered members from over 200 countries. The primary purpose of the community is to create, share, remix, explore, comment, rate and fave the artwork of its members. Sumo Paint is a full featured photo editing / painting application, which works right in your favorite web browser. The application can be used in Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating systems. The only requirement is the Flash Player (which usually comes preinstalled in any OS).
Sumopaint.com and Sumo Paint are developed by Snap Group Ltd. Snap Group has shown the next generation of software and content business with its Sumo product platform. The first release of Sumo Paint has revolutionized people's thinking with its amazing user experience and bloggers have been praising it to be the next big thing in the software / web 2.0 industry.
Images: www.sumopaint.com/press
