MOQ of One: How Virtual Packaging Built EnvironPrint - an Online Printing & Packaging Platform Powered by a Landa Press
Shaun Robertson has been at Virtual Packaging for fifteen years. He started in pre-press. Now he's VP of Operations overseeing two companies, including one that didn't exist until the Landa press made it possible.
That company is EnvironPrint - an online printing and packaging platform where any customer, from a one-person brand to a mid-size retailer, can order as few as one unit of any product. No minimums. Four-to-six business day turnaround. The whole thing runs on production infrastructure that starts with a Landa Press.
What Virtual Packaging was before
Virtual Packaging has operated out of Grapevine, Texas since 1996. The original business was packaging prototypes - structural mockups that helped brands visualize what their packaging would look like before committing to a production run.
Good work, steady clients. But there was a built-in problem: every time a brand moved from prototype to production, they took that job somewhere else.
"We've always been much more of a digital style company than traditional offset or traditional die cutting," Robertson says. "Everything that we do in-house is digital currently."
The question was how to keep those customers past the prototype stage without going analog.
The press that closed the gap
Virtual Packaging installed a Landa S10 in 2019 - the first in North America. 41" format, offset-class quality, no plates. Alongside it, a Highcon Beam digital cutting and creasing system. Between the two machines, a job could go from file to finished product without a single analog step.
That combination solved the prototype-to-production gap. But it also made something else possible.
Launching EnvironPrint
The idea had been in the back of owner Monty Patterson's mind for a while. The pandemic pushed it forward.
"With everything closing down, we were able to start the EnvironPrint online e-commerce business," Robertson says. It went live in March 2021, built on a straightforward premise: take the digital production capability already running at Virtual Packaging and point it at a market that traditional packaging printers don't serve - small businesses and emerging brands who need 100 boxes, not 10,000.
Minimum order quantity: one. On any product in the building.
"That usually stands out to be a great entry-level and sample audition for our company," Robertson says. There's no hard cap on the other end either. "We'll try and work that out until it makes the right price for the client."
The jobs that prove the model
The strongest example Robertson gives is Turtle Soup - a sole businesswoman producing large volumes of custom bookmarks and reading accessories.
A typical order from her: 35 to 55 different front-and-back designs, all custom shapes. Bookmarks shaped like worms, cats, characters - with drill holes for tassels and intricate outlines. Every design printed in full seven-color on the Landa, then laser-cut to shape on the Highcon. She orders 2,000 to 3,000 of each design, which means Robertson is running 80,000 to 100,000 individual bookmarks through a single production cycle.
"I can stack the entire sheet, have all 40 to 50 designs on one press, cut at one time," he says.
On offset, each design would run separately. The plate costs alone would kill the economics. On the Landa, every design sits on the same B1 sheet, and the Highcon cuts them all in one pass.
"The amount of colors, the amount of ink usage, the amount of detail alignment would just be very unachievable versus the digital space," Robertson says.
Then there's Drew Murray, a traveling illusionist who performs residency shows at hotels across the country. Murray needs custom pocket folders for each show - different venue, different location, different branding. Sometimes he gets booked with two weeks' notice. Robertson's team has been producing his materials consistently for three to four years. Each run is different, each one needs to look sharp enough to hand a guest at a premium venue, and the turnaround can't slip.
That kind of recurring, high-variability, fast-turn work only makes economic sense on a digital press with B1 capacity.
Sustainability that's structural, not cosmetic
EnvironPrint's brand identity leads with sustainability. What makes it credible is that the environmental story isn't a marketing overlay - it's how the production floor actually works.
No plates, so no aluminum waste. Water-based Landa NanoInk® instead of solvent-based chemistry. The Highcon handles cutting and creasing digitally, which means no physical dies manufactured and discarded after a single job. And because the Landa makes short runs economically viable, there's no overproduction sitting in a warehouse waiting to be obsoleted.
"The Landa helps a lot whenever we're trying to promote the environmentally friendly aspect," Robertson says. "It definitely always helps to be able to show what a certain ink has in it. We've had great responses and positive feedback from our clients."
Through a partnership with GreenSpark, EnvironPrint tracks and publishes its environmental impact: more than 2,000 trees planted, over 4,400 plastic bottles diverted from ocean pollution, nearly five tonnes of carbon offset.
What 2026 looks like, and beyond
This is the year Robertson is pushing for growth. EnvironPrint has launched a redesigned website. For the first time, the team has two dedicated marketing and SEO hires focused on driving traffic.
There's also a shift in how customers are finding them. "People are finding us through ChatGPT and Grok," Robertson says. Staying visible in AI-driven search is now part of the strategy alongside traditional SEO.
After five years, the production infrastructure is proven and the customer base is real. The question is scale - getting more of the right work through the door, particularly packaging jobs where the Landa's 41" format does what no traditional setup can match at short-to-medium volumes.