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As an industry expert with a keen sense for upcoming trends, Bernd Zipper made a name for himself years ago. Now, the founder and CEO of the consulting company zipcon and chairman of the board of Initiative Online Print e.V. has published a new white paper on the topic of Agentic Print. The key message is this: Print shops that do not make their offerings searchable in a machine-readable format will no longer play a role in the online retail landscape of the future—in fact, they won’t even appear there at all. In the age of artificial intelligence, purchasing decisions and transactions are increasingly shifting from humans to AI agents—and this is fundamentally changing the business model of (online) print shops.

What is Agentic Print all about?

The impetus for this paper comes from a development not in the printing industry, but in the retail sector: In January 2026, Google unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at the National Retail Federation’s retail conference in New York—in collaboration with Shopify, retailers such as Walmart, Target, Etsy, and Wayfair, and other partners from the payments and retail sectors. At the same time, OpenAI and Stripe are working on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), while Anthropic is developing the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It remains to be seen which of these three standards will prevail in the online retail of the future. What is certain, however, is that major platforms are simultaneously building the infrastructure for a retail environment in which machines make purchases.

Zipper is certain that this shift is changing the very foundation of the online print industry’s business model. After all, it is no longer the customer who clicks through stores in search of a product based on defined criteria; instead, an agent reads a machine-readable profile of the online store’s offerings, which is stored at a fixed address on the domain. What isn’t listed there simply doesn’t exist for the agent. As Zipper already emphasized at the Online Print Summit 2026, even large online printing service providers are often not found by agent-based systems.

But rather than simply pointing out the critical issues, Bernd Zipper also highlights in the new white paper the opportunity presented by this new development: the shift away from pure price competition and, as a result, the rise of Agentic Print.

According to his estimate, online-generated print revenue (OGPR) in the D/A/CH region stands at around 8.1 billion euros. In this market, price has been the primary deciding factor so far. An AI agent, on the other hand, when given criteria such as “delivery today” or a verified CO₂ value, sorts the offers based on whether they meet these requirements—not on the lowest price. According to Zipper, this makes differentiation machine-readable—and thus affordable again.

The white paper also highlights the downside of this trend: When it comes to price, deadlines, or compliance with sustainability certifications, the comparison becomes ruthless. After all, in the age of Agentic Print, trust in the agency channel is built not through campaigns, but through proof of and adherence to commitments.

However, when Zipper refers to “Agentic Print,” he isn’t just talking about the demand side. The cycle is only complete when agent-driven demand converges with fully automated, AI-supported production. The building blocks for this—print-on-demand, mass customization, and increasingly automated print shops—already exist; they just need to be integrated in new ways.

An initiative to develop a UCP Print vertical has already been launched

To ensure that even configured, file-based print products are accurately represented in the new standard, the Initiative Online Print (IOP), together with BVDM and Intergraf, launched the development of an industry-specific UCP vertical, dev.ucp.print, back in May 2026. dpsuisse, VIGC, CIP4, the Ghent Workgroup, and PRINTING United Alliance have also joined the project, making the UCP Print Vertical an international initiative. The submission of a formal enhancement proposal is already planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. This is the first step toward an official industry standard for print in agentic commerce.

Invitation to a Discussion

zipcon’s new white paper is explicitly intended as a discussion paper, not as an expert opinion. It cites numbered sources and identifies the six strongest counterarguments, as well as the conditions under which the thesis could fail. In terms of content, it addresses, among other things, a definition and delineation of the term, the economic logic behind the shift, the growing role of trust and verifiability, the six typical objections along with responses, and a concrete framework for action to help print shops get started with this topic. The paper’s target audience includes executives, as well as those responsible for strategy and digital initiatives at online print shops and print service providers.

“Anyone who currently lists their services only in PDF price lists is invisible to an AI agent. This isn’t just a pipe dream—it’s already a reality. Those who help set the standards write the rules of the game—those who wait will have them imposed on them,” says Bernd Zipper, author of the white paper and chairman of Initiative Online Print e.V., explaining the background of the industry-wide effort.

Download

The white paper “Agentic Print – Print Becomes Infrastructure” is available for free download. The German version can be requested at https://zipcon.de/agentic-print/, and the English version at https://zipcon.de/en/agentic-print/. The download link will be sent via email after you enter your contact information.