by Significans Automation
With errors cut by 90%, proofing time by 95%, throughput increased from 150 to 400 orders per day, and an estimated $250,000 yearly savings in labor, Stickerbeat is better poised for future success.
Stickerbeat, a Toronto, ON-based web-to-print business with 40 employees, was founded in 2016 by Carmine Caravaggio. In 2021 its sales reached $1.5 million (USD). In 2022, that number increased to $2.5 million, then it grew to $5.1 million in 2023, and $7.3 million in 2024. It’s on track to reach $9 to $11 million in sales this year! Stickerbeat specializes in custom stickers, magnets, labels, and decals. Most importantly, the company offers a seamless online ordering process, free online proofing, and fast turnaround times. But it wasn’t always that way.
In 2021, it was processing over 120 orders per day that usually resulted in over 250 individual products with their own complex production requirements. However, errors and production delays were increasing. Something had to be done. So, in 2021, the Significans Automation team, led by Sean Davis, VP of technology, partnered with Stickerbeat’s production team, led by Bruce Petroff, corporate production control manager and analyst.
Path to Automation in Stages
Significans’ strategy saw the first North American deployment of its S-Launch solution, which included a dynamic, fully customizable ‘Form Builder’. Businesses can do whatever they want with it—create a contact form, an order-submission portal, a request-for-quote page, and more.
“At first, Stickerbeat was mostly all manual in terms of operations, and had no automation software,” Davis recalled. “Zendesk, a support ticketing system for IT, was being used as their MIS to track orders. Dropbox was used as their production server. Google Sheets were used to further track production in-house, based on the orders they were tracking in Zendesk. However, there were ongoing issues that included constant dropping of orders, and accidental editing of Google Sheets.”
In Stage 1, Significans used Enfocus Switch to build an end-to-end, 100% hands-off e-commerce platform that automatically onboards and processes new orders. “Their Canadian and U.S. sites were running off Shopify,” said Davis. “The new, customized solution automatically processed new orders from Shopify, downloaded customer-supplied items within that order, pre-flighted them to make sure the files were error-free, then generated an online proof that was sent to the customer for approval.”
Stage 2 involved automating Stickerbeat’s incoming telephone orders. The Significans team set up an ultra-efficient ‘backdoor’ ordering system, built using S-Launch. Now, when employees receive a phone order, they type the information into a customized electronic form, upload the files, then follow the same procedure used to process Stickerbeat’s online orders from Shopify.
Stage 3 built an automated process to create UPS shipping labels—no manual typing of addresses. The result? Fewer human touchpoints, faster, accurate shipping, and happier, more loyal clients and repeat customers. All this collaboration has helped to radically transform the company.
Time Saving and Cost Cutting
“With our current four employees in prepress, we could easily achieve $20 million dollars in yearly sales without adding more staff,” said Petroff. “If we didn’t have this highly customized set-up from Significans, I would likely have to spend another $250,000 in labor just to do what we were doing before. We can now generate a proof within 40 seconds of an order arriving. Proofing times have been cut by 95% and costly human errors have been reduced about 90%. My ultimate goal is to be able to locate any job in seconds, know exactly where it is in our workflow, and access every detail about it with the click of a mouse.”
For more information on Stickerbeat, please call 647-248-1676 or visit stickerbeat.com. For more information about Significans, please call 1-877-463-4465 or visit significans.com.
May2025, DPS Magazine
