Kaps Finishing Director establishes NFT printing business

Jack Thompson created the business, called JJ Prints, which sells digital prints of NFTs directly to customers, along with his friend Joshua Barthaud.

The couple had previously been active in the fast-moving NFT trading market, where people buy and sell the unique digital works of art online using cryptocurrencies.

NFTs are unusual when it comes to digital art, because they are guaranteed to be unique in a complicated mathematical calculation, which means that there can only be one real ‘owner’ of the piece – the one who has the token.

Owners of NFTs therefore place great emphasis on being sole owners of their digital art, according to Thompson, some pay exorbitant amounts to own more desirable works.

He told Printweek that many of the couple’s customers were collectors who wanted to display the NFT works of art at home or in the office.

He said: “If you are a collector, owning one is great. It’s like owning a Picasso, in the old days. “

The Bored Ape Yacht Club series of NFTs, which show cartoon monkeys in various costumes and sober modes, sold at one time individual pieces for 100 Ethereum, equivalent to £ 400,000.

Thompson said: “As much as it may seem like a vulgar image of a monkey that looks like it’s on drugs, it’s worth £ 400,000.

“It’s a very valuable piece. That holder will probably have a pretty nice house or will have a very elegant office, and he or she will want to mount it on a wall to exhibit. “

While Thompson and Barthaud put in a short period of time to swap pieces, he said it was a “mentally draining” business: “It’s very, very intense and uses a lot. [of time and energy]. “

Instead, using the contacts and communities they had met through trade, the couple has now succeeded in printing the NFTs on premium acrylic glass and selling bespoke prints to the community.

Thompson, co-director of Kaps Finishing at Basildon, was ideally placed for the move, as he could use Kaps’ two wide-format Yotta printers, 2.5×1.3m YD-F2513R5, and 3.2×1.6m YD-F3216R5, for writing. out the NFTs while working around Kaps’ regular jobs.

The print is placed on clear acrylic glass, then baked with a layer of white ink.

The small, family-run nature of the Kaps business, he said, made it significantly easier to pick up the new work for JJ Prints.

He said: “[A larger business] will not stop a machine to make wood acrylic prints. It’s not worth their time.

“While we are a small business, a family business, we can do such things. I can be late for work tonight and print a few prints. ”

Thompson added that he expects success with the investment, and pointed out that there are as few as three companies around the world that print NFTs, and the enormous interest in the company’s project from society.

It has been contacted by a number of influencers, some of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers, in the hope that JJ Print can set up a campaign discount with them.

Thompson said that in addition to flexibility, the business offered a cost-effective service – in some cases a quarter of the price of competing products. He added that Couples can beat the competition on quality as well, as many only offer a paper print sandwiched between two layers of acrylic.

JJ Print’s own process also gives customers a personal touch. Each printout shows the name of the NFT, the owner and the timestamp of the purchase, through a QR code on the piece.

“It’s very personal,” Thompson said.

“People do not buy random NFTs, they buy their own that they may plan to keep for many years.”

Fulfilling the desire for a physical representation of a valuable property, he added, gives people something to touch and show off.

“It’s almost like a massive Pokémon card.”