Jun 10, 2008
Playing Center Field
Contrasting Approaches to Trade Shows and the Print Market Can Work
My father, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan through the Forties and Fifties, was perfectly positioned to explain to me the main difference between the pre-eminent centerfielders of his day: the NY Giants’ Willie Mays would hustle after fly balls in any and all directions, cap flying, arms pumping, getting his glove out just in time to make spectacular dives for the ball, often ending up horizontally sliding over the outfield grass in the Polo Grounds. The NY Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio, by contrast, would glide effortlessly after the ball, perfectly anticipating where it would land and easing over to it with gazelle-like grace to make the catch, his hat perfectly in place, as elegant as the scudding clipper ships that gave him his nickname.
Both approaches worked. To perfection.
I’m going to employ the metaphor to help explain a couple of things—first, to explain Megaspirea’s approach to our last two trade shows—Graph Expo ’07 and the current drupa show in Germany. And second, to discuss how various leading print vendors are approaching the market.
For the Chicago show I hustled, busted my rump, rode my team hard and finished spent but exhilarated, garnering “Must See” accolades and positive coverage by some of the finest columnists and journalists in our business to go with four hundred customer leads.
By contrast, our European-based Megaspirea crew glided effortlessly through drupa, attracting unbelievable attention from a seemingly never-ending crowd of attendees, journalists, consultants and power-brokers. I’m not going to compare the leads because one trade show was three days and the other three weeks. But let it be stated in no uncertain terms: as we did at Graph last September, Megaspirea is having a great drupa 08.
Charles Deck, Megaspirea, demonstrates the Mailliner 100 in the Xerox stand (Hall 8B)
One reason for this, of course, is Xerox. At drupa we are in the Xerox Hall 8B, following an announced agreement that Xerox will service and sell the Mailliner 100 in Europe as part of a complete print/mail solution that will combine various Xerox continuous form printers with the Mailliner 100. The combination will make for a very elegant solution to the print/mail problem, with an easy workflow and unprecedented efficiency for creating Transpromo pieces from a single white roll of paper. Messaging both inside and outside of the envelope will help pieces gain considerable uplift in terms of customer response.
The combined solution is by all reports a major hit at the show. Due to the placement of the Mailliner in Hall 8b, stand A78, the crowd can’t help but see the system working away and creating finished mail pieces from a roll without reliance on feeders or pre-made envelopes. If you are at drupa and you want to see a True Vision Realized, do drop in and talk to Hubert Freyburger or Charles Deck.
In addition to the roll-fed Mailliner 100, Megaspirea continues to develop our cut sheet solution to work perfectly with the new iGens and some of the other print systems by leading vendors.
But that’s not what I want to write about today. One thing that I suspected, and that this drupa confirmed, is that there is going to be a lot of competition in the digital print business in the next few years. Some are inkjet and some are toner: both approaches work. Xerox, Kodak, HP, Infoprint, Oce, Xeikon and Screen (among others) are all showing off new print systems and new concepts (Frank Romano points out in one of his blogs that this is about two years too early for some of the inkjet vendors)…the field is crowded with talent. And how will they approach the market? Let’s just say that there are different approaches: some of them will hustle and rush; others will move gracefully to where they want to be.
I don’t really believe that a single “winner” will emerge. Customer requirements are so varied and complex that no single vendor could ever fulfill them all. Further, the print industry is huge and the market appears to be very healthy, which means that many players can be supported, all other factors being even. Drupa is enormous, still going on as this column goes to post, and yet there is already talk about IPEX and Print 09. The industry is also on the verge of a major change from mostly offset and some digital to the complete opposite. But it will be interesting to see if market leaders and laggards emerge. Being ready to meet market demands will be a serious success factor.
Let’s just stay with transactional print which, if the experts are correct, will get continued focus for its Transpromo potential over the next two or three years. If one were to take a snapshot of the moment, Kodak probably has the lead in market share right now with the Versamark. The output from just a single one of their clients is estimated at 3 billion pieces per year and most of the statements you get from banks, credit cards and other bills were probably printed on a Kodak print machine. In the transactional world, when it comes to digital color, this is a Kodak moment.
The twin questions would seem to be:
-
how does Kodak gain even more market share; and,
-
how do they protect their current accounts.
They have to convince their clients that their current technology will naturally yield to the next generation of print systems while attracting new clients to the emerging technology.
Kodak took the lead by offering high speed printing, which is essential for transactional print/mailers to meet Service Level Agreements. At drupa they introduced Stream, their Drop on Demand (DOD) inkjet printer technology. Most of the Stream technology on display was concept, not product, but in the interim, they launched the Versamark VL2000 Printing System, which is a 600 dpi x 600 dpi roll to roll printer with a maximum speed of 250 feet per minute. I’ve seen some samples and the print quality is very impressive.
By contrast, Punch Graphix/Xeikon, which was known more for toner-based print quality than speed, is now pushing speed. The Xeikon 8000 prints full color multi-page documents with 1200 dpi resolution at a top speed of 230 pages per minute. Thus these two companies, polar opposites in terms of print quality and speed, are seeking to meet in the middle. Just a note--while the inkjet systems are Coming Soon, the toner-based suppliers are Here Now.
Which brings up an interesting question: if speed and print quality are the Major Factors, but all vendors are beginning to offer both, what are the Other Factors that will help a particular vendor gain market share?
You can kind of get an idea where vendors are placing their bets from doing some simple content analysis on their press releases: Kodak, while introducing the Stream concept, is also focused on color management, integration with their Creo products and workflow, and other ancillary tools that they can offer—in other words, the environment. They also make these tools available through their OEM partners, which gives Kodak access to new channels. Every time they deepen their customers’ involvement with Kodak products they add stickiness to their offering. And Kodak is hustling to show off their full line.
Having ancillary offerings that are up- and down-stream from print –either in-house or through partnerships—is also a strategic point of emphasis. HP made this abundantly clear when they purchased Exstream Software earlier in the year. One could read that acquisition as part of their move toward transpromo and more into the space currently occupied by Oce, Kodak and IBM.
Well, as it turns out, at drupa, HP introduced a new continuous feed color digital Inkjet Web Press with 600 x 600 dpi capable of a speed of 400 ft/min, making it the fastest new press on the market. HP is marketing it at a lower price point than competitors and says that it reduces the cost of a color page to about a penny. HP expects to have this printer on the market in late 2009 or in 2010, which means that both Kodak Stream and HP Inkjet will hit the market at around the same time. Following my current theme of up-and downstream partners, HP hosted a number of finishing companies in their stand in order to strengthen their position, although my invite must have gotten lost in the mail. HP made big news at drupa by announcing a major deal with Consolidated Graphics for 36 print systems, including several of the new Indigo presses.
Which brings me back to Xerox, which also made big news by selling four (toner-based) Xerox 490 color continuous feed printing systems to Stralfors, a large and very innovative European-based print service provider. Stralfors will use the systems to produce full-color, high-volume personalized transactional mail pieces. The Xerox 490/980 prints at 600 dpi resolution and maintains a top speed of 226 feet per minute when printing full color.
Speed and color and partners up and down the print/mail continuum: those are the basic tools that the printers have in common. Their approach to the game-- hustle or glide – is what will separate them from one another. And in baseball as in life: different approaches can have the same result.
My apologies to the great Brooklyn Dodger center fielder, Duke Snider, and to my friends at Oce and Infoprint, for basically leaving them out of this round-up. You can only stretch a metaphor so far.