Adobe Chooses a Print Partner for Express

Today, Adobe announced that you can design and order print products directly from Express. However, this is an exclusive partnership with Zazzle.

Didn’t they do this before? Back in 2007, Adobe put a “print” option into Acrobat, leading to a debacle, in which every print provider that wasn’t the anointed one (FedEx Kinko’s, at the time) took great offense. Imagine that you were a commercial printer, paying Adobe an arm and a leg for software over decades, when suddenly (and during a print downturn) they give your competitor an unfair advantage? It is no wonder that the “print” option went away in short order, given the instantaneous feedback.

When I asked Adobe Express contacts about this, they were unanimous that we are living in a better time, where such a partnership does not hard code in a specific print provider.

My favorite Adobe Express feature, extensibility, combined with the modern computing stack that Express and most printers use these days significantly changes the game. The fact that Express is a Web App, with one-click install of add-ons, combined with the ubiquity of RESTful APIs, makes it far easier for printers to make Express their own, and lead Express users to their services.

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