Solopress Launches Forge, a Trade-Only Print Platform That Keeps Brokers in Control of Their Margins

The UK’s online print market has spent two decades perfecting the consumer journey: product pages, configurators, search-friendly pricing. Solopress, one of the country’s highest-volume trade and trade-facing printers, has now built the opposite of that machine – and launched it at The Print Show 2026.

What Forge is

Forge is a new trade print platform for verified printers, resellers, brokers and print managers. Unlike Solopress’s public storefront, Forge is invisible to the general market. Approved members log in to exclusive trade pricing that is never displayed publicly, apply their own margin, generate branded quotations and place orders directly into Solopress production. The design brief is a familiar trade pain point: how to quote more work, protect margins and tap supplier capacity without relying on public ecommerce pages or exposing trade rates to end customers. In the traditional model, a broker’s value – and their margin – leaks away the moment a client can comparison-shop the same specification online. Forge closes that leak by making the trade relationship the only route to the platform.

Two ways to start a job

The platform supports both spec-first and artwork-first ordering. Members can build a job from practical requirements – size, stock, finish, binding, page count, quantity – or upload artwork first and let the system identify the product and specification from the file. That second path matters more than it sounds: a large share of trade enquiries arrive as “here’s the artwork, what will this cost and how fast?”, and every step removed from that workflow costs the broker time. Built-in artwork tools flag potential file issues before an order is placed, cutting down the manual preflight loop and the reprints that follow undetected errors. Forge also handles more complex requirements, including multi-version jobs and orders split across several delivery locations – the kind of work that historically required an email chain with a sales rep.

White label, no fees, human backup

Orders placed through Forge are produced by Solopress, with white label fulfilment available so deliveries arrive without any Solopress branding. For resellers, that means their client relationship stays theirs end to end. Beyond the paper catalogue, the platform hosts a wide range of customisable promotional products that extend beyond what is listed publicly on solopress.com, giving members a broader offer without expanding their own supply chain. Pricing mechanics are deliberately simple. There is no licence fee, no monthly subscription and no setup charge for approved trade customers. Solopress describes the intent plainly: members should be able to treat its production capability almost like their own production hub, whether they need to quote faster, take on work beyond their own equipment, or offer clients a wider print range. “Online print has been shaped for more than a quarter of a century by product pages, search engines and ecommerce journeys built for general buyers,” the company said at launch. “That model has worked very well, but it does not always reflect the way many professional print buyers need to source, quote and order work. Forge gives verified trade customers a different route.” The company added that one of the platform’s most powerful features is the control it returns to members: “It lets printers and resellers keep their customer, keep their brand and decide their own selling price and margin, while having Solopress production behind them.”

A strong reception at The Print Show

Unveiled at The Print Show 2026, Forge drew a strong response from trade customers interested in faster quoting, exclusive pricing and a more direct route into Solopress production – a signal, the company suggests, of how widely that need is felt across the trade. Forge sits alongside Solopro, the company’s established account management service, as part of a continued investment in trade services and partnership-led growth. The pairing is deliberate: the platform automates the routine quoting and ordering path, while human support remains available for the jobs and exceptions that software handles poorly.

Why it matters

The launch reflects a broader recalibration in online print. As consumer-facing print marketplaces commoditise straightforward products, the profitable volume has shifted toward trade relationships: brokers, agencies and print managers who need capacity, consistency and speed but sell through their own brand. Platforms that formalise that relationship – with verified access, protected pricing and white label logistics – convert a printer’s production scale into a distributed sales force. For UK print resellers, Forge offers an operational shortcut: instant access to high-volume production, preflight tooling and fulfilment infrastructure without capital investment. For Solopress, it locks in trade volume and data that public storefronts rarely capture. Either way, the message from Southend-on-Sea is that the next chapter of online print may be one the public never sees.

The trade capacity question

The launch also speaks to a structural shift in UK production capacity. As smaller regional printers exit the market, resellers and print managers increasingly depend on a short list of high-volume trade producers. Platforms like Forge formalise that dependency into something manageable: transparent trade pricing, predictable turnaround and a digital audit trail that replaces email chains and phone quotes. For brokers who used to maintain relationships with three or four local trade houses, a single platform that handles quoting, preflight, ordering and white label delivery consolidates the entire supply workflow into one login – and Solopress gets the aggregate demand data that public storefronts never capture.

Source: Solopress announcement via WhatTheyThink (whattheythink.com).