Gráfica rápida: Customer Collaboration Turns Printers into Creative Hubs

Customer collaboration has the potential to transform how printers position themselves, opening the door to becoming creative hubs for ideas, partners, and execution.

Printers are surrounded by customer relationships that are far more complex than a job ticket suggests. Customers bring business goals, timelines, budgets, internal constraints, creative ideas, and outside partners into every engagement. What varies is not the presence of collaboration, but how intentionally it is designed

For many printers, customer collaboration happens tactically. A file is reviewed. A problem is solved. A deadline is met. The interaction ends when the job ships. That approach works, but it limits what collaboration could enable.

The opportunity is not just to collaborate more, it is to collaborate differently.

That idea surfaced clearly in a recent episode of Podcasts From the Printerverse, Moving into Obsession with Tobias Degsell, founder of Combiner and the former Curator of the Nobel Prize Museum, whose work focuses on how innovation emerges across disciplines. One insight from that conversation applies directly to print: meaningful progress rarely comes from isolated effort; it comes from creating the right conditions for collaboration early in the process.

CUSTOMER COLLABORATION

Customer collaboration starts with how printers structure engagement, not how they price jobs or scope services. It begins by asking where customers are being forced to manage complexity on their own and where earlier collaboration could prevent friction later.

Where are customers juggling designers, marketers, data providers, mailing requirements, the post office, shipping, and logistics teams without a central point of coordination? Where are decisions being made without production insight until it is too late to influence outcomes?

The goal is not for printers to take control of everything. The goal is to create a collaborative environment where customers are supported from idea to execution, even when multiple partners are involved.

This is where printers have the opportunity to function as creative hubs.

Not by rebranding themselves or claiming a new title, but by intentionally designing customer collaboration that brings the right people into the conversation at the right time. That might mean introducing partners instead of handing customers off. It might mean hosting working sessions that align creative intent with production realities. It might mean creating structured moments where customers, designers, and production teams can collaborate before work fragments into disconnected steps.

None of this requires printers to become agencies or consultants. It requires them to decide whether customer collaboration is incidental or strategic.

When customer collaboration is intentional, customers experience continuity instead of coordination fatigue. Ideas are developed with execution in mind. Fewer assumptions are made. Fewer revisions are needed. Outcomes improve because decisions are informed earlier.

Customer collaboration also reshapes how printers engage with the broader industry. Relationships with technology providers, manufacturers, associations, and service partners become more valuable when they are activated in service of the customer experience, not bolted on as afterthoughts.

The opportunity is not to compete with agencies, platforms, or technology providers, and it is not to pretend that one business can be everything to everyone. The opportunity is to own the middle of the customer experience, intentionally, visibly, and confidently.

Printers already sit at the intersection of ideas, execution, and production. The shift is recognizing that customer collaboration can activate that position. By strengthening internal processes and openly inviting partners into customer-facing conversations, printers can become the place where solutions come together, not just where jobs are produced.

This is where customer collaboration stops being abstract and starts being operational. Where partners are introduced, not hidden. Where capabilities are explained, not implied. Where customers are welcomed into a connected environment instead of being sent elsewhere to manage it alone.

The printers who lean into this mindset will not be defined by what they sell. They will be defined by what they enable for their customers.

Consider this question in your planning for 2026:  Will you remain one piece of the puzzle, or will you become the place where the puzzle comes together?

##

See Deborah’s recent post: Opt-In for Making Printed Bills and Statements Creative and Choose-Worthy

See all posts by Deborah

Deborah Corn is the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse at Print Media Centr and Executive Director of Girls Who Print, a global nonprofit supporting women in the industry. She’s a ‘Print Buyerologist’, international speaker, blogger, and host of Podcasts From The Printerverse. Deborah also leads the Print Production Professionals Group on LinkedIn, the largest print group on the platform.

She is the founder of Project Peacock, an educational initiative that has connected with more than 8,000 print customers, students, and printers through live events, online programs, and streaming video content on ProjectPeacock.TV. She is also the founder of International Print Day, an annual global celebration of print, and the recently launched PrintFM Radio, the first 24/7 global internet radio station dedicated to print and graphic communications.

Through all her work, Deborah delivers printspiration, education, and valuable resources to print and marketing professionals around the world. She’s the recipient of multiple industry honors, including the 2016 Girls Who Print Girlie Award, and serves on advisory boards and technical committees supporting print education and career development, including the Advertising Production Club of NYC, Graphic Communications Education Association (GCEA, Lewis-Clark State College, and Five Keys Schools and Programs.

Connect with Deborah on LinkedIn

Explore Podcasts From The Printerverse

PrintFM Radio: Turn UP the Volume on Print!

Calling all Girls Who Print!! Check out our NEW Member Platform and Program!

ProjectPeacock.TV is streaming PRINTSPIRATION to brands, agencies, students, and printers!

Please subscribe to PMC’s News from The Printerverse for topical posts and information delivered to your inbox.