The Beginnings
Distribution-Online was founded to provide alternative cost effective printing solutions by selling ecologically friendly refill kits to customers in the US, Canada and abroad primarily through eBay.
Our Company
Leading The Way In Business For More than 20 Years
Since 2001 we have serviced the printing industry with quality alternative products designed to reduce the cost and waste associated with printing. We have also developed a variety of specialty inks for Art, Photography, Screen printing, Sublimation, and more to come. All of our inks are designed and manufactured in the USA, Europe and Canada for the highest standards in quality control and consistency.
We offer after market products for the home Office/Small Office as well as for Professional applications with the same level of quality and consistency. We offer all the popular Laser and Inkjet compatible cartridges, refill kits and bulk inks in small and large formats. We manufacture most of the wide format professional cartridges inhouse with the highest quality inks.
We offer our cartridges and other products to resellers and distributors. Since we manufacture our own products, our clients benefit from custom labeling and private branding opportunities.
We sell predominantly in the US and Canada but through our ecommerce platforms we are able to service countries globally.
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2001
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2004
Continued Growth
We began assembling our own kits under the InkOwl brand and sourcing our inks from the most reputable US based suppliers. We also expanded into Laser Toner Refills.
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2005
Our First Award
We received recognition for our growth and innovative approach to marketing and customer service by receiving 2nd Place as eBay Entrepreneur of the Year.
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2006
Private Label
We began manufacturing our products for resellers and started our first private label project.
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2008
Industry Experience Expands
We expanded our online and local presence through the acquisition of a similar business, LENCRIER. As a result we had our first ecommerce website serving the French Canadian market with lencrier.ca and English Canada with inkpot.ca.
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2010
Serve the US Market
We successfully launched our US based website, inkowl.com. This site was custom designed and optimized specifically for the sale of after market ink and toner products. With this site we could now serve our American customers with a high quality service unmatched in our industry.
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2011
Extension to Large Format printers
With all the knowledge gained from the desktop market, we expanded into the professional, wide format, market. Using the same innovative approach perfected over the years, we brought similar quality innovative aftermarket solutions to professional printing. Our product offering performed very well because our solutions stood up to the scrutiny of professional printers while still offering our customers tremendous savings.
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2013
Manufacturing Our Own Cartridges
We began manufacturing our own cartridges in house with our curated ink formulations. We worked at improving our R&D process for testing and evaluating inks as well as customizing formulations for the best performance and quality.
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2016
Developed Sublimation Ink Products
By working very closely with our top ink suppliers, we were able to develop an innovative line of sublimation inks and products that are recognized in the industry as high performance and high quality. This together with our industry leading technical support has made our sublimation inks very popular with many sublimation printing shops making everything from cups to t-shirts.
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2017
Launched Our Eco-Solvent Line
With experience and knowledge acquired from years of manufacturing aqueous based wide format cartridges, we were able to adapt our semi-automated techniques to the production of eco-solvent cartridges. Our eco-solvent cartridges are gaining a lot of popularity with customers due to their high quality and cost effective performance.
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2019
Launched Sublimation Paper
After many years of sourcing and testing, we teamed up with a consistent high quality paper manufacturer and developed our own brand of sublimation paper. This paper performs very well both on both soft and hard surfaces and has been adopted by many of our loyal sublimation ink clients.
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2024
A Look Into Our Future
Our commitment to continuous improvement and innovation has not diminished since May 2001 when we sold our first ink kit on eBay. We are currently working on improving our customer’s experience on our websites, introducing new products as new printers emerge, increasing our network of resellers and distributors and developing our own line of new ink technologies such as DTF (Direct to Film) for the t-shirt printing market.