Blooming Color’s automation story begins with a problem many print businesses recognize: How do you serve customers better while processing more work without simply adding more manual steps? As the company moved deeper into e-commerce, orders that once numbered in the tens began multiplying, creating a need to move work through production differently. Early investments in workflow automation became the foundation for a technology strategy that helped Blooming Color progress from producing tens of jobs per day to thousands. What can look from the outside like being in the right place at the right time is really the accumulated result of decisions, calculated risks, experimentation, and a willingness to keep learning.
That journey hasn’t followed a perfectly drawn roadmap. Blooming Color has tested technology that worked, encountered approaches that didn’t, accumulated technical debt, and learned to become more intentional about where it invests next. One of the most useful ideas from this Dscoop Automation Club discussion is that technology isn’t automatically the answer to an operational problem. Sometimes the process needs to be fixed first; adding software to a broken process can simply make the problem more expensive and complicated. Even successful automation keeps creating new questions, because as one constraint disappears, another part of the operation may need attention.
Today, Blooming Color operates a sophisticated stack that includes Enfocus Switch, Odoo, Ultimate Impostrip, PitStop, web-to-print technology, custom development, and other connected tools and partners. That infrastructure also demonstrates its value as the company grows physically. After adding a second production facility, existing workflows could be duplicated and extended to the new operation, helping that plant move from shipping about 40 orders per day to roughly 1,000 within 90 days.
The conversation makes equally clear that scaling technology requires scaling leadership and expertise alongside it. Blooming Color has invested in people dedicated to systems and technology, local leadership, and strategic growth because a larger, more automated operation needs people who can own those increasingly complex areas.
The Dscoop Automation Club is taking shape as a place where Dscoopers can get beyond broad conversations about automation, AI, and robotics and talk about what implementation actually looks like: what worked, what didn’t, what it cost, which problems appeared next, and what other members might learn from the experience. The goal is peer learning rather than selling, with members, partners, and experts contributing knowledge that can help others make better decisions about their own operations.
There is no single automation stack or perfect sequence of investments that every printer should copy, and Blooming Color’s experience reinforces that automation is never really finished. The opportunity inside the Dscoop Automation Club is to build a community around that reality — bringing together people who are experimenting, implementing, succeeding, struggling, and learning so everyone can ask better questions and move forward faster.
