From Yearbooks to a Multi-Million Dollar Company

The world of wholesale printing is populated by companies of all sizes, with an array of print and finishing options. Their range of options, schedules and pricing makes trade printers a popular choice for print buyers of all types. Those buyers populate the pantheon of people in the supply chain, from graphic designers to agencies, and print brokers to printers who want to extend their options.

Given the definition, Canva, the popular online template website, might not seem to meet the criteria, but they do. While they came to our attention as the place to find unique templates or a partner to create our intuitive browser-based tools, Canva has grown to take its place among global trade services providers.

It is a logical step for Canva, which began as a browser-based solution for building school yearbooks in Australia. With a library of templates and the online design tool, the goal was to make the process of creating school yearbooks easier for students and their advisers. With the infrastructure built, Canva went on to commercialize access to the platform by growing libraries of templates for reports, posters, menus, business cards, flyers and yard signs. There are also templates for most social media platforms and, of course, presentations. 

In mid-2020, Canva and Office Depot announced a partnership that provided a clue to new growth horizons for Canva. Office Depot embedded access to Canva templates into the "Business Services / Design Services" section of the Office Depot website. While not the complete collection, it opened access to templates for the most common business printing requests at Office Depot. It included templates for dinner party menus and grand opening flyers, as well as the usual business collateral, with the option to print through Office Depot services. Canva also launched a similar initiative with FedEx Office in 2020 to enable faster design-to-print for their customers. 

Canva and their partners say that the uptake has been positive and that use of the platform continues to grow. Laura Haines, head of Print & Partnerships for Canva, said that while they launched with FedEx Office and Office Depot, they have continued to grow their trade printing footprint. Staples Canada, Kmart Australia, TradePrint UK, Zoomin India and Print Buddy Mexico are all offering access to Canva templates, fonts and stock photography as part of their print services, and there are more companies set to sign on this year. 

Beyond partnerships for companies with walk-up print kiosks and storefronts, Canva has the Print Provider Network, which is expanding into the world of trade services. Canva Print is the growing fulfillment platform that links users to the complete trade services supply chain. Canva began by looking for qualified partners who work by the same values, and then continued by building strong relationships with global print-on-demand partners. Their goal, Haines said, is to “continue to make strategic expansions in our supplier network for additional localized production.” One of those expanded services will be the ability to print and collect from some of the network partners, bringing even more convenience to clients. They are also continuing to grow the network of print partners. 

With such a strong online design presence, Canva did not need to move into print services. Haines said that they decided to build the provider network after five years of platform development because Canva “has thousands of amazing templates for our community to choose from, and we’re seeing 80 designs per second created.

“Our community is creating content that really counts, from designing all of their business’ marketing material to starting a movement or organizing a community event; each often involving a print need. Our mission is to empower everyone to design and publish anywhere in a seamless way. For many users, that end goal is a printed product, so we established Canva Print in 2017 to make it easy for them to bring their designs to life. Our network of print providers are a massive reason we can do this successfully.”

Canva sits on the intersection of trade services and partner network. Their hybrid approach gives a wide audience access to their extensive template library and stock photos as well as access to a global print network. Canva Print is already a productive trade service provider, with 29 print service providers in their network. When paired with the growing Canva print partnerships, expected to grow to 24 affiliates in early 2021, they cement their place in the global print market.