- Describe your company – a high-level description of what your business does.
PrintReleaf helps companies turn paper consumption into a customer retention and revenue tool. We automate sustainability in the form of environmental offsets, like reforestation and carbon offsets, tied to a customer’s print volume. This gives MPS providers a plug-in sustainability offer they can attach to any contract, at low cost per page, with minimal operational lift. For dealers, it’s a new lever for differentiation, engagement and retention – and environmental responsibility.
- How does your organization generally support the managed print services (MPS) landscape, and what has been your relationship or involvement with the MPSA local and or global community?
We create an ecosystem where PrintReleaf is at the hub, working directly with MPS dealers – some of whom are MPSA members; OEMs; software integration partners; and global reforestation partners to embed a sustainability solution directly into existing print management platforms.
We joined the MPSA so that more of its members could learn about the built-in value we bring to the industry – for business results as well as positive climate impact. We’re proud that our solution doesn’t require heavy lifting for our partners or their customers, but they get a lot of valuable deliverables in the form of tangible impact to share
We’ve been an MPSA member for under a year so far and in that time we’ve leaned into the community to understand what MPSA members are looking for in a partner and found that it’s similar to the MPS industry as a whole: simple, cost-effective solutions that are provable and sellable.
- From your perspective, what is the most significant way your organization, or businesses is making (or can make) in terms of a positive impact to the broader MPSA community (For example – how do you work or support the dealer OEMs, Dealers, Software providers, Supplies, the channel – e.g. technology solutions, distribution networks, warehousing etc?)
We give dealers a way to compete on something other than price. In a market where hardware and cost per page margins keep compressing, PrintReleaf gives sales teams a differentiator in RFPs, a reason for renewal conversations, and a low-cost add-on that improves customer stickiness. We make our partners’ offering more valuable without adding complexity.
- Can you describe a time when your organization had to adapt to a major shift in the MPS or production print industry? What did you learn, and how did that experience shape the way you support your customers today?
This could relate to changes such as the move from analog to digital, hardware to services, mono to color, seat-based licensing to recurring revenue models, or broader disruptions like COVID. How did you lead your team and customers through the transition? What obstacles did you face, what worked well, and what best practices or lessons learned might be valuable for others in the industry?
COVID-19 hit office print volumes hard, as is well documented across the industry. For us, that meant the core of our business: office-based reforestation tied to print volume – needed to expand, not just survive. So, we did two things: we broadened our reach beyond office MPS into commercial printing, where volume held up differently, and we grew our product line from reforestation-only to include a carbon offset option that dealers could bundle with reforestation or offer as an add-on for select customers wanting broader environmental impact.
The lesson was simple but important: don’t tie your value to one print environment or one product. Diversifying gave our dealer partners more ways to keep sustainability relevant to their customers, regardless of what was happening to office volume. Today, that shapes how we build: we design offers to flex across print and now packaging and publishing environments and give dealers options rather than a single fixed program, so they can match the offer to what matters most to each customer.
- “Reflecting on our conversation, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for innovation and collaboration within the managed print community?”
The real opportunity is making sustainability a standard, built-in feature of every managed print contract – the same way security or reporting became baseline expectations – something a dealer has embedded into the initial proposal that requires no extra work to deliver or prove. Getting there takes collaboration, education and leadership, but the infrastructure is already built: PrintReleaf’s software integrations, APIs, certified reforestation partners, verified carbon offsets, etc. That’s how it stops being a nice-to-have and becomes standard.
- How have you benefited from the MPSA community? What are the biggest attributes? What improvements are needed?
The biggest benefit has been valuable conversations with dealer and industry leaders who can provide feedback from their unique perspectives. We’ve reevaluated how we think about our product and our pitch in ways a typical sales call never could. The community’s strength is that leadership access, paired with a real willingness to share what’s working and what isn’t. What would help most going forward is more programming like webinars and focus sessions that let us reach members on an ongoing basis.
- What is the one or key two messages (take-aways, insights) that you would leave the audience today – so they resonate in the minds of our audience (locally and globally).
Sustainability is one of the few remaining differentiators in a competitive market. Sustainability can be a company value to include in a sales pitch or webpage, but can also be leveraged for valuable business benefits and growth. It can be a low-cost, easy add-on for every customer account that just happens to give your sales team a reason to have a renewal conversation that isn’t about price alone. Treat it as a business tool, and it pays for itself in retention alone…let alone the positive environmental impacts!
