As a follow-up to the company pitch that ran on Thursday, StartUp Beat conducted a Q&A with Earthtone’s CEO, Nader Alaghband.  Comments are welcome below!

SUB: Who do you consider your primary competition?

Alaghband: Leading online printing solutions include VistaPrint and FedEx Kinko’s/Office.  Earthtone is, however, the only comparison site that gives users hundreds of independent printers to choose from.  As the printing equivalent of Expedia or Travelocity, we obviously offer our users a quite distinct set of value propositions to those offered by the printing equivalents of AmericanAirlines.com or BritishAirways.com.

SUB: What is the commission you charge print providers?  Is this the only charge?  Does the service include any other revenue generators?

Alaghband: Our standard commission rate is 12.5 percent, although this is reduced for early adopters.  At launch this will be our only charge.  We have identified a further four other revenue streams—plus advertising—that we may investigate over time.

SUB: How are you marketing and promoting Earthtone?

Alaghband: In terms of customer acquisition, our primary focus will be on SEO, SEM, banner advertising and press coverage.  In terms of vendor marketing, we’ve focused on direct mail, telesales, business development and press coverage.

SUB: What is your ultimate goal for Earthtone?  What do you envision the company being in six months?  A year?

Alaghband: We want to make Earthtone a market leader in online printing.  It’s difficult to know where we’ll be in 6 or 12 months, but we’ll be listening intently to feedback from our users and working hard to drive through the kinds of useful innovation that people need and want.

SUB: What about new and emerging mediums, like mobile and standalone applications?  Might these types of offerings be part of Earthtone’s mix in the future?

Alaghband: We recognize that the explosion in mobile computing and the ubiquity of public internet is dramatically changing the way people work.  But printers, like servers, are by their nature immobile.  So while it’s easy to create, edit or share a presentation from a Starbucks, an airport lounge or a hotel room, it’s much harder to find somewhere to get it printed.

We believe that the mobile generation represents a significant opportunity and Earthtone is designed with their needs in mind.  A few examples of this include:

• Providing a mobile-optimized portal for people who’re using a small-screened device or a low-bandwidth mobile connection
• Offering free online document storage—and email based file uploads—so people can upload, access and print their files, wherever they are and from any device
• Facilitating location-based searches so people can find and use the nearest printer, wherever they are
• Making it easy for hotels, business centers, airport lounges, etc. to connect their printers to the Earthtone network, allowing users to print conveniently to more locations

Standalone applications for both mobile and PC, as well as a range of snap-ins and widgets, are on the agenda and we hope to be able to release further information in the near future.