Run Ink – Celebrating Running through Art & Design
Getting art into the hands of a customer is a key challenge for artists offering their work for sale. At Run Ink, a micro graphic design studio whose primary goal is to deliver beautifully-designed art of the highest quality to our customers, finding the right partner to print and ship our art was our biggest challenge. With just three of us working on design and order fulfillment, around full-time jobs and full lives, printing and shipping ourselves was not a feasible endeavor. We also saw the potential for economies of scale to lower our costs, and therefore deliver greater value to our customers, with a partner that could push the production speed we desired for our customers.
With a little luck and searching, we were able to find the perfect partner in Automated Photo Technology (“APT”). There are a handful of larger print-on-demand services out there, but none offer the speed, individualized customer service, or paper size and quality choice that APT does. Customization and personalization are important to our customers and APT works closely with us for custom paper sizes that require shipment within 24 hours. APT’s online ordering, a feature that is necessary for us to fulfill orders quickly, allowed us to keep our holiday ordering open longer than usual and got Christmas gifts safely to their destinations on time for many holiday surprises!
APT’s commitment to continuously improving their service and willingness to work with us to expand our own offerings are two features that set them apart. We have been able to provide customers framing at a competitive price through APT, and consolidate the printing of our stickers and race tracking maps all with APT rather than the multiple printers we had to use in the past. While APT did not offer these options for our products historically, they were excited to work alongside us to find the best way to get these products out to our customers and troubleshoot the challenges that inevitably come with new product launches.
Run Ink celebrates achievement with modern art. We strive to create beautifully-designed art for runners to show off their personal successes in their homes and offices and for supporters of runners to honor their loved ones with unique gifts. We aim to raise awareness for the diversity in journeys of runners, celebrating accomplishments big and small whether a marathon is run once or every year! Run by long-time friends with shared values of celebrating personal journeys, we use Run Ink’s platform to promote an inclusive running community. We work directly with charities and running non-profits to create tailored maps while also sending a portion of proceeds back to the charity. Through our work we hope to inspire runners, artists, and the community to focus on celebrating achievements together and giving back to their communities.
Our work is available on the Run Ink website, https://www.runink.net/. Run Ink’s personalized print series, “City Race Maps”, was created in 2014 as a response to the Boston Marathon bombings to bring the focus back to the runner and their race experience. The City Race Map series has been featured in Women’s Health magazine, The Boston Globe, Zelle by Runner’s World, and Buzzfeed. We also design an exclusive City Race Map collection each year for the Chicago Marathon, sold only on the Chicago Tribune’s online store. Our two newer series, the Iconic Course Map and the Virtual Race Map, have quickly become popular orders on our site. From our starting point in Boston, we have grown to celebrate running and triathlon achievements globally. We are soon expanding the ways we celebrate through a new series, Life Ink. We know that APT will be our primary printing and shipping partner as we grow our business and celebrate more of life’s achievements and our art with the world!