Serving over 65 million users and delivering 20 million orders a year! How is Century Kaiyuan finding new growth opportunities?
For a long time, the traditional printing industry has faced persistent problems that haven't been solved-like rigid mass production models, long delivery cycles, high costs for personalized customization, and mismatched market supply and demand-which have continuously limited the industry's growth potential. Against this backdrop, Century Kaiyuan Smart Printing & Connected Technology Group Co., Ltd. (hereafter Century Kaiyuan) has always focused on innovation as its core strategy, continuously breaking new ground across four areas: model iteration, full-chain digital upgrades, AI-driven empowerment, and full-scenario product layouts. This has led to the creation of China's first industrial internet system for printing that focuses on small-batch, personalized customization.
Starting in 2001 as a small street-side photo printing shop in Jinan, Century Kaiyuan gradually grew into an industry benchmark recognized as a National Printing Demonstration Enterprise and an Industrial Internet Pilot Demonstration Unit. With over 20 years of dedicated development and innovation, Century Kaiyuan has carved out its own path to high-quality growth. Today, the company has served over 65 million users, delivers more than 20 million orders annually, and steadily improves and expands its core businesses, including photo printing, commercial printing, and customized packaging, achieving stable growth amid the wave of transformation in the traditional printing industry.
Breaking Through Industry Deadlocks, Focusing on Small-Batch Customization
Looking at the development of the domestic printing industry, it has long been accustomed to a model that 'prioritizes large orders while neglecting small and custom orders.' Traditional printing companies mostly rely on large-scale bulk orders to reduce production costs, while the fragmented, small-batch, and personalized customization needs of individual consumers and small-to-micro businesses have long been overlooked.
Having been deeply involved in the industry for many years, Century Kaiyuan keenly identified three major market pain points: first, the threshold for custom orders is high, with unit prices for small orders being relatively expensive, making it difficult to meet the personalized needs of a large number of small and medium customers; second, custom design is costly-exclusive visual design not only takes a long time but also comes with high fees; third, production and operational efficiency is low. When faced with multi-category, fragmented orders, traditional companies often rely on manual scheduling, data entry, and quality checks, which not only lengthens delivery cycles but also increases labor costs. With these multiple problems compounding, overall industry revenue growth continues to slow down, and low-price homogenized competition is becoming increasingly intense.
Based on an accurate understanding of these market pain points, in 2008 Century Kaiyuan made a key strategic decision: it closed all offline stores and shifted its entire team and channels to the online e-commerce track, becoming an early player in the field of internet-based personalized customization and achieving a first industry breakthrough through business model innovation. Since then, Century Kaiyuan has steadily expanded its business footprint, officially entering the business printing sector in 2015, and in 2022 became the first to invest in dedicated AI model research for the printing industry, beginning a leap from an internet printing platform to a digitally intelligent industrial internet enterprise.
'Making printing easy for everyone' is Century Kaiyuan's core mission and the starting point for all its innovative initiatives. Different from traditional printing companies that focus on expanding production and competing on low prices in a saturated market, every innovation by Century Kaiyuan is designed around three core goals: activating growth in the fragmented custom market, reducing full-chain operational costs, and increasing customer repurchase rates and order value. By precisely tapping into the blue ocean of small-batch personalized customization, the company has also achieved years of sustained growth.
Disruptive Innovation: Four-Dimensional Drive to Strengthen Barriers
Unlike traditional printing companies that follow a rough development model of 'expanding capacity, price wars, and fighting for existing market share,' Century Kaiyuan precisely captures the development opportunities in small-batch, personalized customization. Through innovation upgrades in four key areas-business model, end-to-end digitalization, AI intelligent applications, and scenario-based product layout-it has formed a complete chain logic of 'expanding market boundaries, reducing operating costs, improving production efficiency, and amplifying business growth,' building a core competitive barrier that is difficult to replicate. Various innovative measures are not implemented sporadically or superficially but form a closed-loop, step-by-step chain that continuously drives both revenue growth and profit quality for the company.
1. Business Model Innovation: Activating Growth in the Small and Micro Customization Market
Addressing the traditional printing industry's pain points of 'large orders, small and micro orders being ignored,' Century Kaiyuan specifically established a C2B personalized customization model. Leveraging advantages in full-domain, cross-channel traffic and paired with a flexible production system, it has completely broken the industry's high minimum order norms. Through digital and centralized order management, it effectively resolves the industry's high costs and execution difficulties associated with small-batch customization, fully activating massive long-tail demand from individual consumers and small and micro businesses, and creating a distinctive competitive advantage compared to traditional printing companies.
2. Independently Developed Digital Foundation: End-to-End Digital Transformation Upgrade
To address the traditional printing industry's problems with scattered small-batch order processes, high manual dependency, and high loss rates, Century Kaiyuan independently developed over 300 digital systems to build a comprehensive digital operation foundation covering order placement, intelligent production, quality control, logistics, and enterprise management. This effectively reduces labor input and production loss while continuously improving capacity utilization. This mature digital lean operation system provides solid technical and operational support for the efficient and low-cost execution of small-batch, flexible customization orders.
3. AI Empowering All Scenarios, Reshaping Timely Momentum
Building on digital operations, Century Kaiyuan has also proactively entered the AI track in the printing industry, deeply integrating AI technology into enterprise production and management. Relying on its self-developed proprietary AI models, the company has successfully built capabilities in intelligent marketing and smart design, reshaping its growth logic and making intelligence a new driver for enhancing business efficiency. The intelligent design system significantly shortens the manuscript finalization cycle, while the smart service system boosts customer response and service efficiency, fully tapping into the value of existing clients and steadily increasing the value per customer.
4. Diverse Product and Scenario Layouts, Opening Up Growth Space
To avoid the risk of cyclical fluctuations and growth ceilings from a single business, Century Kaiyuan continues to drive all-scenario product innovation and expand business boundaries. Starting from its core imaging and printing business, it has steadily expanded horizontally into business printing, customized packaging, cultural and creative customization, and other diversified business segments, creating a multi-category, one-stop printing customization product matrix. Through cross-business collaboration and complementary development, it effectively spreads the risk of single-business operations, breaks the growth bottlenecks of individual businesses, and ensures long-term stable revenue growth.
Currently, the digital transformation of the cultural manufacturing industry is accelerating, and new productivity is being implemented rapidly. The transformation and upgrading of the traditional printing industry has become an unstoppable trend. Looking ahead, Century Kaiyuan will continue to focus on its core track of 'Internet + Smart Printing,' ramp up investments in AI industrial internet R&D, iteratively upgrade flexible smart factories, and explore new paths for digital and intelligent transformation in traditional manufacturing. At the same time, Century Kaiyuan will deepen its focus on cultural and creative customization, brand packaging, and exclusive enterprise customization, driving high-quality growth through innovation and creating replicable industry benchmarks for the domestic printing industry's transformation and high-quality development.