Paul Baron has spent his career as an entrepreneur taking products manufactured across the world and marketing them in the United States—from a baby bottle made in Austria to a headband from China. When Baron was introduced to a vertical machine that could print any image on any wall, he knew he had found his next venture.
In 2019, Baron founded and became the CEO of The Wall Printer, initially introducing the product to American and Caribbean markets and continuing to scale the business ever since.
The Wall Printer’s eponymous product is a 5-to-8-foot-tall machine starting at $39,995 that prints images (such as logos or murals) of any height, width, indoors, or outdoors, in full high resolution color on many different materials. Users of The Wall Printer download their desired image onto a USB stick which is put into the device for printing.
Baron said he saw the opportunity for the scaling of The Wall Printer due to the limited number of ways to put artwork up on walls, such as putting wallpaper up, hanging a picture or hiring an artist.
With a printing speed of 20 square feet per hour, the efficiency of The Wall Printer is a key part of its appeal as a machine; a 5-by-8-foot wall mural can be printed in just two hours. Baron said that while muralists and artists promise creative talent, The Wall Printer offers a more efficient way to actually put their images and paintings on a wall.
“There’s no real reason for a muralist to sit there and paint at the pace that they can paint at and spend days or weeks doing something that we could faithfully do in hours to represent their art on a wall,” Baron said.
Baron brought the wall printing technology to the Americas and the Caribbean—and ultimately the entire Western Hemisphere—but there are still other models being sold across the world. Baron said The Wall Printer distinguishes itself through its cost effectiveness and high-quality printing capabilities.
“We feel that ours is the most cost effective, the most affordable, and it produces the higher quality, highest resolution that any printer on the market does,” Baron said.
Selling a business opportunity
The Wall Printer has a versatile customer base. It can be used to efficiently print images onto the walls of office buildings, schools, event spaces and more. Amazon even bought six machines to print images in some of its warehouses. When marketing The Wall Printer, however, the company’s team primarily presents it as a business opportunity rather than a tool.
Small businesses and organizations such as local restaurants or primary schools may not want to invest in the five-figure machine to print images on a few walls, but they could rent the machine from someone else, which Baron said is where the business opportunity presents itself.
Baron said that when people purchase The Wall Printer to rent it out to others, they have very high margins on their printing expenses. Ink for the machine costs less than 50 cents per square foot, and businesses typically charge a minimum of $20 per square foot. This means that with The Wall Printer printing at a speed of 20 square feet per hour, the machine could generate $400 in revenue per hour while only using $10 worth of ink.
The Wall Printer does not operate as a franchise business, but rather allows people to build their own businesses by acquiring and using a Wall Printer device. The success of these businesses, and word of their success, ultimately results in more sales for The Wall Printer itself.
Continuing exponential growth
Since its founding in 2020, The Wall Printer has sold 300 machines and has continued to grow year over year. From 2023 to 2024, The Wall Printer doubled its revenue, and the company has grown 50% in the past year.
Baron said that there is potential for The Wall Printer to sell exponentially more printers based on the sheer number of plain walls there are that could have an image printed on them.
QUICK BITS
Startup: The Wall Printer
Founder: Paul Baron (CEO)
Founded: 2019
Team size: 15
Location: Wilmington
Website: www.thewallprinter.com
Funding: Self-Funded
The Wall Printer was named the 2023 Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year in recognition of its high potential for growth and financial success during the Coastal Entrepreneur Awards, a joint awards ceremony hosted by the Greater Wilmington Business Journal and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
As The Wall Printer continues to grow, its focused on continuing to improve its products and, in turn, make its customers more successful.
“We have no hesitation in our future growth opportunities where we can grow for ourselves and for our customers, because it’s still a wide open space,” Baron said.
Interested readers can see how The Wall Printer works below.
