With wireless technology really beginning to catch on with both consumers and retailers, it’s certainly been trend watching season lately and it appears the imaging industry is truly beginning to catch on.
Liberty recently announced a unique all-in-one Community Print Location (CPL) printing solution for wireless devices. The company is offering a mobile printing solution to its retail customers, enabling them, as a Community Print Location (CPL) to provide mobile printing services to their wireless consumers. Consumers can print virtually any file—including Word documents, PowerPoint, Excel documents—from any wireless device—PC, laptop, or wireless handheld, such as a cell phone or PDA to a Liberty Community Print Location.
“Liberty is actively developing products and services to create new revenue sources and drive profitability to our customers, and our Community Print Location solution is part of this offering,” said Garry Green, president of Liberty Photo Products. “Also, as minilab solutions shrink in footprint, the ability to drive new sources of revenue increases and we see onsite community document printing and its ability to easily fulfill the needs of wireless and mobile consumers, as an exciting next step in a changing industry.”
Liberty has partnered with PrinterOn® Corporation, a leading developer of mobile printing solutions and Ricoh Americas Corporation printers to offer this mobile printing solution to its customer base. The standard CPL printer hardware is the Ricoh HotSpot Printer, a Liberty-enabled color laser printer embedded with PrinterOn’s PrintSpots™ mobile printing software—no additional hardware or software is required. An embedded keypad allows for direct input of print release codes. Custom hardware printer solutions are also available according to customer requirements.
“With our partners Ricoh Americas Corporation and PrinterOn we have created a turnkey solution for our customers and for consumers,” said Duke Chadsey, sr. vice president, product development and marketing for Liberty. “Like a mini print shop, our CPL lets consumers leverage any means to print—whether they are on the road and send their files to a specific retail location to eventually pick up, or are on site and send the image for print from any device on-hand—their printing needs are met.”
Consumers can print to the CPL by sending the print job via email to the printer’s email address, or can upload the file using the CPL’s web printing page, or interface directly with the printer via a virtual print driver. The print data is encrypted using 128 bit AES and standard RSA public/private key pairs, ensuring that documents can only be decrypted with decryption keys known by the PrinterOn® software. Documents are held in an encrypted state until the user provides the code to release their document, then they simply input the code into the keypad and their files print.
“Liberty’s CPL solution addresses the growing international demand from mobile workers for driverless, mobile printing services,” said Ken Noreikis, vice-president of sales and marketing for PrinterOn. “We were the first to market with mobile printing solutions and Liberty recognized our expertise, as well as the market opportunity to deliver a much-needed mobile printing service to the Liberty customer base of over 16,000 retail locations.”
“Ricoh’s new HotSpot Printers make it simple for business professionals to print important documents no matter where they are,” said Ann Moser, senior vice president, Printing Solutions Division, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “These new printers fill an essential need for all types of organizations who seamlessly want to integrate this technology into their existing network infrastructure. This capability enables customers to enhance and maximize document workflow from anywhere at anytime.”
This is a new business model for Liberty and delivers a way for its retail customers to leverage the space vacated in the lab by new and smaller technologies and offers advanced technologies to manage print imaging needs. It also improves the profitability per square foot while improving loyalty with retail consumers.
