"Web-to-Label" : Web-to-Print dedicated to the label industry
The In Label Veritas option for the XMPie StoreFlow Web-to-Label platform
When you are a software Editor that markets eCommerce platforms for the graphic arts industry, it's tempting to adapt the generic term "Web-to-Print" to the various sectors in which your clients operate. For example, in the packaging industry, you might say "Web-to-Pack". But beyond the simple term, there are essential features needed for the market to adopt the solution. This is what our provider XMPie has perfectly implemented with its StoreFlow platform (also known as uStore), thanks in part to its 3D preview – which works wonders even with customizable products. And thanks to its FreeFlow Core prepress automation module, production equipment is fed with print files with minimal intervention and downtime, and maximum security.
3D view of a custom flexible packaging in XMPie StoreFlow
Therefore, this Web-to-Print platform could also be nicknamed "Web-to-Decorative" or "Web-to-Garment", in the case where the user industries produce decorative objects or clothing, as we met at our stand at the C!Print 2026 trade show earlier this month.
3D view of a customized garment and object in XMPie StoreFlow
The label: an industry that deserves specific features
There's an activity which is often targeted by Web-to-Print solutions: labels. And here, simply saying "Web-to-Label" isn't enough to make it work: you need to offer features specific to this industry. We recently encountered a client's request, so legitimate and so commonplace in this field, that we were surprised by the lack of native implementation from our supplier. But the surprise didn't last: StoreFlow is a scalable and open platform – we wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call it open source, but it offers a large number of integration points and a programming interface which, taken together, allow us to meet or even exceed our customers' expectations.
In the case of industrial label production, XMPie customers have two composition engines at their disposal: Adobe InDesign Server or XLIM. As its name suggests, InDesign Server is the big brother of InDesign – the famous document layout solution – but more robust, faster, and more automated. Ideal for generating personalized documents from an InDesign template and variable data, at high speed. With it, 100% of InDesign's graphic features are usable, even if it must be admitted that the label industry isn't necessarily the one that pushes graphic boundaries the furthest.
Different types of personalized labels
But for labeling, "high speed" is not always sufficient, given the large volumes, short deadlines and hungry production equipments. As a result, many of our clients are turning to XLIM, XMPie's proprietary composition engine: document templates are still created in Adobe InDesign on a Windows or Mac workstation, but the composition of print files on the server is handled by XLIM, a high-performance software that incorporates most of InDesign's graphic features and allows for lightning-fast label generation.
However, in the label industry, one of the compromises XMPie makes in XLIM to achieve this exceptional performance can be quite problematic: the document format, which cannot vary within a given InDesign document. If you define a template as – let's say – 3"x.5", all printouts generated from it will be 3"x.5" – whereas InDesign Server offers several options for more flexible formats, starting from the same document template.
StoreFlow: an open platform, ideal for adaption to the needs of each industry
Such a limitation can be very frustrating in Web-to-Label: indeed, if the end user (the internet user) arrives in the application with their data file (for example: Excel) where one of the columns indicates the label name or its format, it would be unacceptable to force them to open their Excel file, identify the different formats, then manually "choose" from the various products offered by the platform, be careful not to make a mistake, submit the variable data each time, and start all over again, sometimes dozens of times each day...
Automated generation of label items via the In Label Veritas option in the XMPie StoreFlow Web-to-Label platform
To avoid such dissatisfaction, we leveraged a feature offered by the StoreFlow application and developed an extension called "In Label Veritas", which allows users to automatically generate items in their shopping cart with a single click, without having to open their file or manually select items: everything is automatic, the items created in the cart remain StoreFlow compliant, and can offer online proofing, online quoting, and 3D previews.
© west-digital.fr 24/02/2026