anum media

The largest offering of paper bags in Estonia, 3000 clients in the Nordic Countries, more than 20 years experience in logo print bags – the Estonian company Dispak is expanding into new areas of activity like environmentally friendly packaging solutions or printing of textiles.

Partners from the first grade in school

The founders and owners of Dispak, Andres Männisalu and Anti Sarap, have been partners since the first grade in school which means that they have 43 years of history together. Their joint company started from the production of paper bags in 1997.

“For the first ten years we produced the bags ourselves, they were exclusively hand made and we had clients in 11 countries,” Männisalu recalls.

Consequently it was decided to expand the portfolio by selecting partners offering the best quality. For example, the manufacturer of paper bags was found in Italy, the printing is performed in Estonia, but the cloth bags added to the selection five years ago also come from elsewhere.

“We mainly have corporate clients but we haven’t focused on a particular business segment,” Männisalu says. “Orders come from both small companies but also large organisations like the Estonian Parliament or big international corporations.”

Lesson from the previous crisis: focus on the exports

During the financial crisis of ten years ago, Dispak undertook radical changes by analyzing its financial results and finding that only 2% of orders were exports. Today, the share of exports is 55% and the main countries are Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

Dispak has created websites for all export markets and has also invested heavily in marketing in the target country in order to win market share. They have 24 different websites in four foreign countries today.

Finland is the number one export market for Dispak. “The Finns are used to ordering goods from Estonia and the fact that we are able to offer service in the Finnish language is also helping.”

Clients plant trees buying custom logo printed tote bags

In recent years, Dispak has focused on an environmentally friendly direction – for example, cloth bags that can be used for a long time, as well as the use of environmentally friendly materials for both paper and cloth bags. The company provides bags made of organic cotton, recycled cotton, eco-friendly paper, etc.

Here you can find information about Dispak’s various eco-friendly bags: http://www.ekokassit.com

Dispak recently signed an agreement with the Koosloodus Foundation (Koosloodus means “together with nature” in Estonian) to acquire the service of planting 500 trees. Namely, to every buyer of 50 printed (the company logo, for example) tote bags, Dispak donates the planting of 1 tree. The larger the order, the more trees will consequently be planted in Estonian forests. On top of this, the client receives the GPS coordinates of all the planted trees and with the help of the Koosloodus Foundation the growth can later be tracked.

Read more about the service here: https://www.totebagsprint.com/Plant_a_tree_for_carbon_neutrality_912

Flexible payment schedule, free prepress design – plenty of incentives to order

Dispak offers all corporate customers a payment schedule of at least 7 days – even in the emergency situation, the customer can be sure that they have enough time to receive and check their goods before paying the invoice.

Dispak is accommodating the customer in many other ways: if the client accepts the offer, prepress design is free of charge, as well as delivery (for orders starting from €100). Dispak’s transportation partner is the international courier company DPD, the movement of all deliveries can be tracked using a code.

You can find more information about the order process here: https://www.dispak.ee/Why_to_order_from_us_502

The company plans for the future despite the crisis

Since consumption has fallen drastically in all countries due to the emergency situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Dispak has also been affected. However, the company has not made any changes to the terms offered to the customer.

Some of Dispak’s export countries are opening their economies cautiously in the second half of April, and some orders are also related to businesses’ attempts to maintain turnover during the crisis. For example, Männisalu cites orders for take-away bags or a campaign in Finland, which called for the preference of local Finnish producers, and the packaging of which was made by Dispak.

Despite the difficult situation, Dispak, in cooperation with a printing company, is preparing a new field of activity, which is the printing of t-shirts and other textiles. Dispak will start with the Estonian market, but the Finnish direction is also being prepared. “I predict a great future for this and we expect significant additional turnover from this activity,” says Männisalu.

Cyber security: C-YBER detects vulnerabilities and helps to remove them

An entirely new area for Dispak added in 2019 is cyber security and the scanning of computer systems. This is handled through the company C-YBER, and the cyber security team also includes top specialists in the field from Sri Lanka.

Männisalu considers cyber security to be a very promising area, which still needs to be developed. “I would compare internet security to the first security guards who appeared in stores in the 1990s – at that time it seemed an unfamiliar and to some even expensive and unnecessary service,” Männisalu explains. “But now we are used to the security service and would not imagine a different life.”

It is estimated that 90% of Estonian websites are unsafe, ie contain outdated software or other vulnerabilities that can be maliciously exploited. Businesses could anticipate the problem all the more so as a large part of commerce has now moved from physical offices and stores to the Internet.

Simply put, C-YBER identifies vulnerabilities in a company’s computer systems, web applications, and network infrastructure. A report is presented to the customer, which ranks the errors according to their importance and also offers ways to solve the problems.

For security testing, C-YBER uses the recognized Internet vulnerability scanning tool Acunetix, used by the US military, among others.

“The more important electronic channels become for a business, the more one can be sure that the malicious attackers will not sleep either,” Männisalu encourages companies to take preventive action.

Read more about cyber security and systems scanning on the C-YBER website: https://www.c-yber.ee/