Text: Paulo Galvão | Photos: Mauro Mota
“We want to become world market leaders in two years”
They started working from their own homes and meeting each other through Skype. Two years later they occupy a house in the borders of Ericeira, from where they are about to conquer the world, with a business that is as successful as it is hard-working. Proving that the hotel, restaurant and surfing businesses aren’t the only ones to prosper in Ericeira, we went meeting Cardpresso, a technology company which exports almost the entirety of its production. João Lucas, an Ericeira native and one of four partners, provides us with a guided visit through this made-in-Ericeira company.
How did Cardpresso begin?
Cardpresso was founded by four people, three of them connected to the computer business and the card market, that had just left another company, Number5, which was a world leader in this area and meanwhile got sold to an american company. And so we decided to found our own business in the area of ID software: with the experience acquired in that company, but with a software entirely developed by ourselves. We proudly claim to be the only ID software company that produces a software which is supported in MacOS and with the possibility of being used in Apple products.
And how was your software developed from scratch?
One of the four founders spent a year and a half developing the initial product, of the Cardpresso production, and by the beginning of 2012 we founded the company.
Tell us a bit more about your product.
What Cardpresso provides is software for the design, printing and encoding of a plastic card. Meaning, we do not print cards for other companies; we give our clients that possibility. What we did was develop a product that allows our clients to do all the printing work, by purchasing a card-printing machine. Afterwards, each one of these cards may or may not include connections to databases and encoding data, such as magnetic coding, smart card coding, coding with no contacts, etc.
Over 99% of our business comes from abroad.
Let’s imagine that I have a factory with ten thousand workers…
Exactly! Let’s imagine that you want to make an access card to the facilities. From the large array of options that Cardpresso offers, what we do is provide a software that allows you to make all the card’s design, to print that card and, eventually, to code data in that card, both in its magnetic stripe or its chip. How that data is read afterwards is no longer a responsability of Cardpresso.
And who are your final customers?
We do not know. It’s true…we do not know who our clients are. We have an idea, but we don’t know 95% of the buyers. We know it’s being used by a lot of people, but we don’t know which are these companies for a very simple reason: our 86 distributors scattered all over the world are the ones who contact the final customer.
What’s the share of the portuguese market in your billing?
Less than 1%. I can say that over 99% of our business comes from abroad, with Europe clearly ahead, followed by Asia. We now start having a stronger presence in the American market, after participating in a fair in the United States.
So these fairs are somewhat important…
They are fundamental. We were 15 days ago in Dubai, in a fair that went very well for us, and we will be in Paris next week, for a fair exclusively devoted to plastic cards.
During the next year we will be the ID Software company that will introduce the most products in the worldwide market.
How has been the sales performance?
The growth has been a sustained and exceptional one. We knew well the market and its worth. Globally, we can affirm that from a year agor, we were able to place in the market about 500 packages or licenses per month.
What’s the price of each package?
It depends, we have prices starting from €65 up to €1995. However, we have discounts provided by each one of our distributors.
What are your next steps?
First of all, we aim at intensifying our presence in the american, asian and middle-eastern markets. Eight people now work in Cardpresso, but we’d like to have a significant growth next year, which implies thinking on new facilities. We’d like to have some local support regarding that, but it doesn’t look like it may happen. We don’t want financial help, but on logistics. Something like a business park, where a company like this is able to grow.
And where is that growth taking you?
We want to become the world market leaders in two years time, and it is with that in mind that we are working. During next year we will be the ID software company that will introduce the most products in the worldwide market. I have absolutely no doubts concerning that and we want to keep doing it from Ericeira.
Esta publicação também está disponível em | This article is also available in: Portuguese (Portugal)
