Ordering business cards used to mean a trip to the print shop and a week of waiting. iPrint moved the whole job into a web browser. Customers designed cards, letterhead, checks, mugs, and t-shirts on its site, and iPrint sent the orders to commercial printers it had picked. The Redwood City company went public in March 2000, the same month the Nasdaq peaked. It bet that every small office would buy its printing online.

A Print Shop With No Presses

Royal Farros founded iPrint in February 1996 and launched the online service in January 1997. The company owned no printing presses. Its software handled design and ordering, then routed each job electronically to an outside print vendor. That cut the back-and-forth of a traditional print order. iPrint also ran private-label print shops on other companies' websites, and lost money as it grew.

Ten Dollars at the Peak

iPrint sold shares at $10 on March 8, 2000, on Nasdaq under the ticker IPRT. The dot-com crash began weeks later. In October 2001 it merged with Wood Associates, a seller of promotional merchandise, and took the name iPrint Technologies. Losses continued. In 2002 shareholders voted to transfer the company's assets through an assignment for the benefit of creditors, a way to wind down outside bankruptcy court.

Cover: The Etcher's Press - The Printmaker's Shop, Abraham Bosse. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a printmaker's shop and press.