Print4biz is an alliance of printers, all successful stand-alone businesses with their own price structures and clientele, who offer their off-peak production time at knock-down prices over the internet.

How do we keep prices so low?

We are gang* printers.

We don't print one job at a time. Imagine photocopying a business card - it's small enough to put 6, 8 or 10 different cards up together on a sheet and copy them at the same time - well that's how we print.

We produce 4, 8, 16, 32 or even 64 orders at a time on a large printing press - larger than A0 size. This means that the printing set-up costs can be split between a number of orders which helps keep the cost per customer very low.

*See wikipedia for a more detailed explanation of 'gang-run' printing.

Print4biz handles all the enquiries, prepares all the quotes, makes sure the artwork is 'print-ready', supplies proofs and organises payment, in other words all the 'client-side' stuff - which leaves the associate printers to simply log-on to the system and download whatever jobs they need to fill any spare capacity they may have on that particular day.

Pete, who takes care of all website and promotional activity, says: 'Print4biz has the contacts, the equipment, the tradesmen and enough joint capacity to print anything, any size, any quantity. The associates are all online and linked by digital communications and with overnight delivery within the UK mainland, they're confident that you'll never have to look elsewhere for commercial printing.'

Although it has the facilities to satisfy all printing requirements Print4biz is primarily offering small scale full-colour printing - a product that most organisations need and something that can be very expensive indeed if inappropriate equipment or outdated technology is used. This is why only price lists for this type of product are being published at the moment. Ultimately a much wider range of prices for printed material, artwork and graphic design will be displayed - and also (security permitting) facilities for online proofing and accounting will be developed.

Pete says: 'Print4biz isn't trying to be the quickest or the cheapest and it certainly isn't trying to compete with your local high street print shop. Instead it's offering something new - a national printing service aimed specifically at internet aware businesses.

'The sales and marketing is online and offers a combination of convenience, quality, reliability and cost that's far in advance of most traditional printers. Your competitors will be staggered at the quality and when you tell them the price - they simply won't believe it.'

This is the way all printing will be done one day - national prices with national delivery. It's already done this way for newspapers and magazines but the enormous investment involved has previously ruled it out for small commercial printers. Print4biz has changed all that.

The website, which is under constant development, is deliberately simple and straightforward with every page being just one click away from the opening screen. Logon to www.print4biz.org.uk today and compare the prices, you're in for a pleasant surprise.