Over a month ago, Oluyomi Ojo, the Founder of Printivo took a bow as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the digital printing company. Following his stepping down, Oluyomi also announced Ibukun Oloyede (former Chief Operation Officer) and Temitope Ekundayo (Growth Chief) as his joint replacement.
As explained by the former CEO, the new appointment will help Printivo attain greater heights moving forward.
Printivo is disrupting the Nigerian printing industry through its efficient printing expertise, a wide range of design templates and the reach of the internet. The web-to-print platform is offering Nigerians affordable print products and on-time delivery.
In a chat with Ibukun Oloyede, Printivo’s Co-CEO, we learnt how the digital printing platform is further disrupting the printing industry in Nigeria.
Can we formally meet you?
My name is Ibukun Oloyede, professionally, I’m a designer, photographer and printer. Prior to the journey of Printivo, I worked with a company called Urbanbaze Designs now known as Hallo Creatives.
I started learning how to design and in my six months of starting the job, I was moved to the post of Art Director.
Owing to my printing background, I was able to learn faster on the job as a designer, making it easier for me to be a print designer. My work was around art directing and operations.
In my first year at Printivo, I was the head of design then another portfolio was added to double my initial position as head of design and production. Subsequently, I was moved to the head of operations before this recent appointment.
Given your 10 years of experience in the printing industry, how has it evolved?
I started from the brick and mortar part of printing, and when I say the brick and mortar parts, I mean the plates, the impression, and everything related to it, while not forgetting that all these things are still existing as people still use them.
However, as technology evolves, those things tend to fade out of fashion. In this digital age, you need to diversify, because machine keeps evolving with different kinds of models, thus it will be good for you to keep upgrading yourself.
Back in 2006, I was a 201 Machine Operator, a machine that I can operate very well, however at a point, I had to ask myself, “What if this machine runs out of fashion?”, what if this 201 machine is no longer in vogue?” , “What will I be doing?”, so I said to myself, “I need to go learn how to design.”
That was what led me into the digital era, which started in 2009 as an intern in an advertising agency, because I see beautiful designs, I see when people bring designs to print.
I wanted to know how to make these designs, I don’t just want to be at the backend as a 201 operator, running designs that people do.
So that’s actually basically my transition from the brick and mortar printing into this digital era
How has the journey of placing Printivo as the number one online printing platform in Africa been?
Well, you can’t really say this is what the journey looks like, especially when you’ve not gotten to the destination, however, it hasn’t been a smooth journey.
Competitors will always come up, either you have the first-mover advantage or the last, even if you have the most beautiful idea, competition will still show up, thus you need to keep on upgrading yourself.
The journey hasn’t been easy, but it can only get better.
Is there a point in time, when digital online printing takes over brick and mortar printing?
For every digital, you still need analog, because the computer won’t print directly as you still need machines and every other related part of the production unit to print.
So the point of digital is to attract new customers, to make things easy for people such that people in need of printing services, can get it done conveniently.
And that’s the problem Printivo has been able to solve for years, however, you can’t still take away brick and mortar to some extent. Just to add, we have a production facility here as well.
What will you be bringing to the table for Printivo with your new appointment?
One of the first things is making sure your first customer is happy and when I mean your first customer, I mean your staff, my staff, because if the staff are happy, they will deliver more, thus your customer will be ultimately happy.
We understand that customers are kings and that is the way we see them at Printivo, in short, we even have a department for happiness, specially dedicated to serve customers’ needs.
Another thing we have come up with is the Print Partnership, a marketplace on our platform for printers to get onboarded.
It’s just simply like the way e-commerce platform gets good delivered to you, they don’t own the goods, they are just a marketplace where stores have plugged in.
So we are infusing the same thing into the printing industry with Print Partnership, we want to be the platform everyone thinks of when it comes to printing.
For instance, if you are in Abuja, you don’t need to get your order transported from Lagos, Print Partnership makes it possible to get it done at Abuja at the same quality.
A printer in Abuja picks up the order, gets the job done and delivers to you while he gets a commission.
So that’s what we are working on currently as we have already onboarded printers here in Lagos.
Finally, our actual dream of expanding our market across is Africa is very much on the table.
What else can we know about you?
I love to enjoy myself, travelling doing photography, anyways as I mentioned earlier, I am a photographer, with so much interest in capturing images in landscape format.
I also love eating, meeting new people, music as well as I am learning how to play the keyboard. I am also fitness aware as I enjoy doing exercise.
Featured Image: Ibukun Oloyede, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Printivo
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