Software built for photo and personalised product shops.
Your customers order prints, canvases, photo blocks, frames, albums and personalised gifts, and every one of them arrives with its own files, its own size and its own production setup.
PrintBlocks connects the store, the customizer, the files, production, collection and shipping into one run. The customer chooses, uploads and pays, and your team gets everything it needs to start making it.
Take small orders without typing them in
A photo shop can take dozens or hundreds of small orders a day. When each one has to be handled by hand, processing it takes longer than producing it.
The customer picks the product, uploads the photos, fills in what is needed and pays. The order lands in the system and carries on into production without anybody re-entering it.
Every file stays with the right order
Each image the customer uploads is kept with the product and the production job it belongs to.
Your team knows which file goes on which product, at what size and by which method, without hunting through email, WhatsApp or a shared folder.
Let customers place the picture themselves
Put the customizer in the order flow and let them position, crop and resize their photo, add text and watch it on the product as they go.
What they lay out is what prints, which is the difference between a file you have to interpret and a file you can send to the machine.
Decide how each product is ordered
Per product, choose whether the customer designs it in the customizer, uploads a file without designing, or hands the files to your team for a proof and an approval instead.
That gives a mug a one-minute flow and an album the controlled one it actually needs.
Set each product up once, in millimetres
The print area is defined on a photo of the real product and measured against a ruler you draw on it, so it is held in real millimetres rather than in pixels that mean nothing at the press.
It is set per product, per side and per variation, so the area on the large canvas is not the area on the small one, and the design renders for production at 300 DPI.
Sizes, materials and variations
Offer a product in as many sizes, colours, materials and formats as it comes in.
Each variation carries its own price, its own stock and its own print area, so the customer is choosing a real thing rather than a label.
Each product reaches the right department
One order can hold several products made by different methods in different parts of the shop.
A job can be routed to a department automatically, either by the printing method it uses or by the category the product belongs to, so the framing bench and the press each get what is theirs without anybody sorting it.
Download a day of production at once
Select the jobs going out and pull every production file down as one zip, foldered by job, instead of opening each order and saving each file.
Collect every part before packing
When an order holds several products, each one joins the order's bin on the packing board as it reaches a status you count as finished.
Only once the last one is in does the order read as ready, so the frame does not go out while the album is still being bound.
Tell the customer it is ready
A message goes out when the order is done, sent by a rule rather than by somebody remembering, and the customer can open their own order page to see where it stands without calling the shop.
Open a store, or connect the one you have
Run the store PrintBlocks gives you on your own address, or put the order flow and the customizer into the website you already have. Either way the orders, payments, files and customer details land in the same place.
A shop like Jaco Print
Jaco Print lets customers order photo printing and a range of personalised products online: canvases, photo blocks, frames, albums and display stands among them.
The customer picks a product and a size, uploads their photos and finishes the order on the site. Behind that simple experience sit a great many small orders, a lot of variations, and a pile of files that all have to reach the right product and the right job.
A shop shaped like that is the one this was written for, because every part of it has to arrive on the floor together:
- A catalog of products, sizes and variations
- Photo uploads inside the order flow
- A customizer for placing the picture
- Production files attached to the order
- Store and WhatsApp orders on one list
- Products routed to the right department
- A day of production files in one download
- Every part gathered before it is packed
- Payment, collection and shipping
- The customer told when it is ready
Instead of downloading images, renaming files, building folders and typing orders in by hand, each order arrives with its product, its variation, its files and its customer already attached to it.
Questions shops ask
Does the customer have to use the customizer?
No. Per product you decide: design it in the customizer, upload a file without designing, or send the files to your team for a proof and an approval instead.
Where do the customer files live?
With the order and the production job they belong to, alongside the mockups, and on the customer's own account if they have one, so a reprint next year does not start with "can you send it again".
Can we set a different print area for every product?
Yes, and for every side and every variation of it. The area is drawn on a photo of the real product and measured in millimetres, so the large canvas and the small one are genuinely different setups.
What comes out for production?
The design renders at 300 DPI against that measured area, and the customizer shows the customer the effective resolution of their own photo as they place it, so a picture too small for the size they chose is visible before the order is taken rather than after.
Can we manage several sizes of the same product?
Yes. Sizes, colours, materials and formats are variations, each with its own price, stock and print area.
Can we download several production files together?
Yes. Select the jobs and download their production files as one zip, foldered by job.
What happens when an order holds several products?
Each one can be routed to its own production job and to the department that makes it. The finished parts gather in the order's bin, and it reads as ready only once they have all arrived.
Do we have to build a website?
No. The store is part of the system and runs on your own address, or you can add the order flow and the customizer to the site you already have.
Can customers order without an account?
Yes. Guest checkout lets them pick a product, upload their photos and pay without opening one, which is what a shop taking a hundred small orders a day actually needs.
How does the customer know it is ready?
A message sent by rule when the order reaches the status you chose, and their own order page to check it against at any time.
Turn every photo into an order that is ready to make.
The customer chooses, places the picture and pays. The photos, the product and the order arrive on the right job together.