It may seem like embracing digital transformation is obvious now, but tell that to the brick and mortar shops who have faded away.
Founded in 1999 in Markham, ON., SinaLite came into being just as the digital bubble was about to burst. Originally, the print shop operated using traditional marketing methods: trade shows, word of mouth, print advertising, direct mail, etc. And as a local storefront, the company prides itself as an ace in customer satisfaction and providing that great in-store experience. An admirable trait that was challenged by the digital future.
As the print business began to stagnate as it went digital, the company began the process of growing across Canada and the U.S as an e-commerce wholesale trade printer in 2008.
SinaLite is nominated for ITWC’s Digital Transformation Awards, being held June 14 in Toronto. Though nominations for this year are now closed, we’re covering every nominee that we’ve received in ITBusiness.ca ahead of the big event.
“SinaLite has always focused on customer service and going online eliminated face-to-face interactions with our customers. We had to find new ways to provide the same high quality of customer service in a remove format,” said Brian Meshkati, vice president of SinaLite in the company’s nomination.
In its growth in the digital age, the company has grown from 30 to more than 140 employees, including the addition of digital marketing, development, and production teams. The SinaLite digital marketing team expanded past the average print shop in the last year using promotional emails, Google ads, social media, and other forms of online content created daily to keep customers engaged.
Relying on these teams became a necessity as the company transitioned into e-commerce and moved away from printing one of its core products, corporate publications.
“Annual reports had driven our storefront business, but sales were decreasing as more companies chose to release digital copies,” said Meshkati. “In order to appeal to the national market, we expanded the product selection we were offering to print resellers. An internal ERP system, monitored by our in-house development team, had to be developed to collect e-commerce orders and to fulfill them from start to finish.”
In order to maintain that customer service the company prides itself on, it is using new digital features to make processes as easy as possible. This includes improving the user experience from placing an order to tracking a shipment, creating a user friendly website and digital storefront, and eliminate the wait time required for price quoting.
“Our marketing efforts are not the only driving force behind our growth. Ensuring customer satisfaction is how we receive over 500,000 print jobs a year,” said Meshkati.