5 ms·

Ask HN: What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery

7 points by zackattack 17y ago

The idea's simple: you upload a PDF, and then a hard printout is mailed to you ASAP. Useful if you don't have a printer, or want it mailed to someone else, etc. Like FedEx Kinko's except way simpler and only solving the one problem. If you know of some place already solving this please let me know cuz I have some PDFs to print and I don't want to have to go to Kinko's..

bluesmoon 17y ago
about 10/11 years ago, this company called homeindia.com used to do this. The idea was that a whole bunch of Indians work in the US/Europe and use email every day, but their families back in India have no internet access. They provided a service where you'd email stuff to them, and they'd print it out and snail-mail it to the destination for a small fee. I have no idea if they survived the dot-com crash of 2001. They still exist today, but looks very different from what they were back then.
- revorad 17y ago
  DTDC couriers used to do that too.
revorad 17y ago
I'm struggling to think of a genuine use case. The problem is the waiting time. It might work if your target user was someone who didn't need the printout immediately. Otherwise, you'd have to deliver the printouts pretty damn fast. Faster than Amazon to deliver a printer. But then, you'd have to charge loads, so there may not be a viable business there. You might want to look for people in some specific profession who have printing problems. Otherwise this might be a solution looking for a problem.
- zackattack 17y ago
  i agree, i'm mostly looking to see if anyone else has this exact same problem
  - JarekS 17y ago
    Invoicing - you create an invoice and you want printed version to be delivered to your customer.
  - revorad 17y ago
    Ok. What exactly is your problem though? Why wouldn't you just buy a printer? On second thoughts, this service might actually be useful if the printouts are to be sent to someone else so that you don't have to deal with the handling and postage. For example, web or print designers might find it useful to send hard copies of their initial designs to prospective clients as a way of giving a quote. Small high street businesses and shopkeepers who don't have an online presence would probably find it more convincing to see something in the flesh rather than on a computer. In fact, designers could probably do this without even being asked for a quote. Find the postal address of potential customers and snail mail them some designs with a quote and your contact details. Does that make any sense?
papaf 17y ago
I don't have access to a printer this week and this would have definitely been useful for me. When sending to third parties, its not just the effort of printing that's being saved but also buying the stamps, having enough envelopes and going to the postbox. If this was also available internationally it would also cut delivery times down if the printing was done in the local country.
cjg 17y ago
This could come in useful for large documents or many copies of a document. It could be significantly cheaper to print 1000 copies of a ten page document on dedicated hardware (and have those copies delivered) rather than try to print that sort of volume locally.
cjg 17y ago
From the suggestions made so far, it sounds like there are a variety of niches where this might be suitable. Tailor your offer to each niche - for example, you could offer a high speed courier (i.e. motorbike) option for those who are speed (but not price) sensitive. Perhaps offer a range of quality vs. cost.
paulsingh 17y ago
Actually, I do this: www.mailfinch.com It started out as a joke -- partly inspired by Dustin Curtis' Snail project and the fact that my dad (and a bunch of his friends) sent a lot of flyers for their small businesses.
- revorad 17y ago
  Awesome! What's the response like?
  - paulsingh 17y ago
    Well, I sent ~5500 pieces of mail during February (my 3rd month in existance) and we're on track to finish March with ~20K. So, pretty good, I think.
- Shamiq 17y ago
  That's pretty cool. What do you have that's automated?
  - paulsingh 17y ago
    The back-end printing operations.
ahoyhere 17y ago
I just bought an expensive course on writing articles faster & more effectively, and it was from a dude in NZ - he had it printed, bound and shipped to me by: mimeo.com. They offered great, very fast service and excellent customer service (had a problem with deliverability in Austria & they dealt with it right away). So the idea of routing around printing is good, but I'd say you should tweak your use case.
pbhjpbhj 17y ago
Looks great to me. I don't personally have need of it, though if I found I had need to send letters in the US it would be cheaper than airmail it seems (from the UK). If you want international trade you should probably list paper sizes in cm and as standard measures (A4?, US Letter?) and give paper weights in gsm. Do you only handle PDF? Are you planning on using something like TinyMCE, http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/ http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/, in your "type in your letter" box? If you need someone in the UK then I'd be interested...

7 points by zackattack 17y ago

bluesmoon 17y ago

about 10/11 years ago, this company called homeindia.com used to do this. The idea was that a whole bunch of Indians work in the US/Europe and use email every day, but their families back in India have no internet access. They provided a service where you'd email stuff to them, and they'd print it out and snail-mail it to the destination for a small fee. I have no idea if they survived the dot-com crash of 2001. They still exist today, but looks very different from what they were back then.

revorad 17y ago
DTDC couriers used to do that too.

revorad 17y ago

I'm struggling to think of a genuine use case. The problem is the waiting time. It might work if your target user was someone who didn't need the printout immediately. Otherwise, you'd have to deliver the printouts pretty damn fast. Faster than Amazon to deliver a printer. But then, you'd have to charge loads, so there may not be a viable business there. You might want to look for people in some specific profession who have printing problems. Otherwise this might be a solution looking for a problem.

zackattack 17y ago
i agree, i'm mostly looking to see if anyone else has this exact same problem
- JarekS 17y ago
  Invoicing - you create an invoice and you want printed version to be delivered to your customer.
- revorad 17y ago
  Ok. What exactly is your problem though? Why wouldn't you just buy a printer? On second thoughts, this service might actually be useful if the printouts are to be sent to someone else so that you don't have to deal with the handling and postage. For example, web or print designers might find it useful to send hard copies of their initial designs to prospective clients as a way of giving a quote. Small high street businesses and shopkeepers who don't have an online presence would probably find it more convincing to see something in the flesh rather than on a computer. In fact, designers could probably do this without even being asked for a quote. Find the postal address of potential customers and snail mail them some designs with a quote and your contact details. Does that make any sense?

papaf 17y ago

I don't have access to a printer this week and this would have definitely been useful for me. When sending to third parties, its not just the effort of printing that's being saved but also buying the stamps, having enough envelopes and going to the postbox. If this was also available internationally it would also cut delivery times down if the printing was done in the local country.

cjg 17y ago

This could come in useful for large documents or many copies of a document. It could be significantly cheaper to print 1000 copies of a ten page document on dedicated hardware (and have those copies delivered) rather than try to print that sort of volume locally.

cjg 17y ago

From the suggestions made so far, it sounds like there are a variety of niches where this might be suitable. Tailor your offer to each niche - for example, you could offer a high speed courier (i.e. motorbike) option for those who are speed (but not price) sensitive. Perhaps offer a range of quality vs. cost.

paulsingh 17y ago

Actually, I do this: www.mailfinch.com It started out as a joke -- partly inspired by Dustin Curtis' Snail project and the fact that my dad (and a bunch of his friends) sent a lot of flyers for their small businesses.

revorad 17y ago
Awesome! What's the response like?
- paulsingh 17y ago
  Well, I sent ~5500 pieces of mail during February (my 3rd month in existance) and we're on track to finish March with ~20K. So, pretty good, I think.
Shamiq 17y ago
That's pretty cool. What do you have that's automated?
- paulsingh 17y ago
  The back-end printing operations.

ahoyhere 17y ago

I just bought an expensive course on writing articles faster & more effectively, and it was from a dude in NZ - he had it printed, bound and shipped to me by: mimeo.com. They offered great, very fast service and excellent customer service (had a problem with deliverability in Austria & they dealt with it right away). So the idea of routing around printing is good, but I'd say you should tweak your use case.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago

Looks great to me. I don't personally have need of it, though if I found I had need to send letters in the US it would be cheaper than airmail it seems (from the UK). If you want international trade you should probably list paper sizes in cm and as standard measures (A4?, US Letter?) and give paper weights in gsm. Do you only handle PDF? Are you planning on using something like TinyMCE, http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/ http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/, in your "type in your letter" box? If you need someone in the UK then I'd be interested...