Reporting live from a pre-IPEX media briefing in Brussesls.

In this morning’s lead-off presentation, Oliver C. Mehler, CEO, Atlantic Zeiser, announced that what he called “Industrial Digital Printing 2.0 is here”—and that with the help of his company’s technology, printers actually will make money doing it.

Atlantic Zeiser specializes in high-resolution digital printing and coding on industrial products. Its customers produce materials that frequently need content changes. “We don’t care about the substrate,” said Mehler, as the printable surface could be anything: paper, carton stock, non-porous materials such as plastic or glass, or three-dimensional structures. The conditions in which the printing is done vary greatly as well.

Mehler said that IDP 2.0 isn’t out to replace offset and flexo. These methods will still be used for static content; Atlantic Zeiser supplies the technology for the addition of variable print at the late stage of manufacturing: inline marking, coding, serialization, and decoration. Variable data must be verified for accuracy on the production line, as the printing is being applied to the product.

Atlantic Zeiser offers a choice of 18 different digital printing engines, including the ultra-high-speed and -resolution Delta family. Its Omega family consists of UV-capable spot color engines. The Gamma line includes single-pass CMYK engines with resolutions up to 1060 dpi.

The newest addition is the AZ Delta family of single-pass spot color engines operating at speeds up to 300 fpm in print widths up to 205 mm at a native resolution of 600 dpi. Also announced was the AZ line of high-resolution digital inks, including UV inks curable by LED arrays. To complement these inks, Atlantic Zeiser offers the Smartcure UV LED curing module. The advantages of UV curing include “cold light” exposure that protects sensitive materials; and ozone-free operation.

Among the applications for Atlantic Zeiser’s inline printing systems are packaging and direct product imprinting. ROI should take place between two and 18 months, says the company, thanks to economies achieved by integrating the systems with existing production lines. Packagers and product manufacturers now can do their own variable imprinting without having to rely on outside services.

Mehler also talked about VDP enhancement for PDF workflows. At IPEX, the company will announce a solution that makes it possible to print with small, flexible, and secure data streams.

For customers preferring offline solutions, Atlantic Zeiser offers the DigiLine family of web-to-web and sheetfed digital printing units for coding and imprinting. There are two models for web printing, and four or sheetfed. Three models of the DigiLine single-product imprinting system are available. Mehler spoke of imprinting costs of “several cents per thousand” with these solutions.

“We can prove that this increases the operating profits of any industrial product manufacturer,” Mehler said.

Please excuse my ‘pig Latin.’ As any wine-lover knows ‘In vino veritas’ is a well known excuse for ‘okay, just one more.’ In wine – the truth.

With our morphing industry, could it be argued that digital processes are the ‘wine of truth’ that expose long-believed shibboleths in the print media business?

Digital by nature is trackable, measurable and therefore monetizable once a metric is applied to the time and space. Most offset printers I know have spent fortunes on costing and estimating programs and personnel, and still ‘hidden costs’ rear their weasel-like heads, compromising profit and souring client relationships if they are asked to pay a bit more ‘for the file fixes’ e.g.

Of course for savvy printers, the reverse has been a lucrative area for years. Build enough ‘padding’ into the job, get the costs down and you can experience what London Cockney hucksters call ‘a good little earner.’ Extra profit because you over-quoted. However, in today’s world, it’s usually profit erosion that hits the poor printer.

What digital does is lock down your costs to a known quantum. Equipment lease + rent + labor + click + utilities + consumable equals TCO – total cost of operation. This is often calculated by the equipment vendor from word go, so long as he knows your applications and volumes. In the offset world, you buy a press and some CTP and work it out yourself. Many printers must be getting it wrong judging by the number of business failures.

It affects digital printers too, but it shouldn’t. Here in Australia, one of our premier digital houses with two i-Gens, Nuveras and Docutechs fell into administration 2 weeks ago. It was a great business run by a great guy – an American in fact. But it is believed he was using offset profit margin thinking on digital. It’s a tragedy but at least this business was quickly snapped up by a newly-energised 107-year-old offset house that happened to be looking into buying digital presses and now have both the presses and a business. They probably got a bargain.

They say that in a bear market, or recession, “money returns to its rightful owners.” Any business needs to harvest a ‘bit of surplus for the winter.’ If this is there, instead of increased borrowings at punitive interest, hard times can be ridden out.

Digital, correctly applied, sorts it all out. Every nook and cranny of cost can be discovered and charged for. It enables free-market competition to flourish from a known baseline, unlike many offset shops who take on work ‘to keep the presses rolling.’

Some say that offset equipment vendors have assisted the overcapacity and hyper-competition that has driven profit away from print businesses. Let’s hope the same won’t apply to digital as it juggernauts its way further into our sector.

In digio veritas – you know where you stand; don’t blow it. Time for a cool Zinfandel. Cheers!

By Brenda Kai, Executive Director, EDSF

EDSF, the international non-profit organization dedicated to the document management and graphic communications industries, could not be effective without the outstanding leadership of its Board of Directors—all volunteers who support EDSF in its mission. EDSF grants scholarships to students in support of their academic careers, provides research grants to colleges and universities, builds awareness about industry careers, and recognizes innovative educators and educational programs.

To bring more insight into EDSF’s efforts, Franchise Services President and COO, Richard Lowe, the new EDSF chairman, shares his thoughts on EDSF happenings as they relate to helping students.

As an industry leader, Lowe joined the Franchise Services in 1989, and today the company’s print management group operates the brands of Sir Speedy, PIP, Signal Graphics and MultiCopy—all well-known and highly successful brands in the quick printing industry.

DN: Congratulations on your new position as Chairman of the Board of EDSF. How long has Franchise Services been involved with EDSF?

RL:We are proud to say that Franchise Services has been a supporter since EDSF was founded in 1996. Their primary focus has been, and continues to be making positive changes in the lives of students, and we share that dedication. I personally joined the Board in 2008 and served on the Development Committee prior to becoming Chairman.

DN: What benefits does EDSF provide to the industry?

RL:It’s hard to imagine a more challenging business environment than we have experienced this past year. Despite all the turmoil, there remains within the increasingly complex world of document management, graphic communications and printing a critical need to attract and foster the development of the next generation of business professionals.

However, also during this same time, financial assistance programs for students have been drastically reduced while the costs of an education have continued to rise. EDSF programs help fill these needs by providing  scholarships to students attending two-year and four-year college/university and postgraduate programs worldwide. To date 306 scholarships have been awarded in ten countries.

DN: What is the biggest challenge EDSF is facing?

RL:Fundraising remains a critical issue and it is no surprise that the Wall Street Journal reported that contributions to non-profit organizations focusing on education were down 24 percent in 2009 due to the economy. To overcome this shortfall requires a different approach to fundraising and a willingness to investigate new initiatives. This year, we developed several campaigns and programs designed to attract a higher number of individual contributions in addition to our corporate sponsorships.

One of my personal favorite’s, is the Adopt-a-Scholar program designed for donors interested in a more personal approach to providing educational support. Participation in this program provides each donor with a thank you letter from the student receiving support along with their photo and a short profile.  Other new programs also include:

• eBay Giving Works
• Continuing education partnership with AIIM Certificate Program

In addition, there are many different ways to establish or contribute to an existing scholarship award.

Information about all donation opportunities is available on the Web site at: www.edsf.org.

DN: What other thoughts would you like to share with our readers?

RL: I would like to thank everyone who supported EDSF’s “The Future is Bright” campaign in December, and ask for your continued support.

With the recent disaster in Haiti, we’ve seen the difference the “Power of Many” can make. Everything we give today, no matter the size, has more meaning, more power, more importance and for our students, more hope.  Every dollar donated has a greater impact than it did just a year ago. We ask for your help in working to make a difference for a student pursuing their dream of continued education.

In closing, I want to share a quote from one scholarship recipient from 2009:

“Knowing the industry is behind me and willing to support me financially means so much. This generous scholarship encourages me in preparing for a bright future and allows me to put a stronger focus on my education rather than how to pay for it.”

- Jason Landrum

How many digital printers think about marketing digital printing as green printing? Not just from a technology standpoint but also from an applications standpoint?

When you switch to database marketing — reducing your mailing by 90% by culling out only the top 10% of your database to personalize and mail to — you are also GREENING your print marketing at the same time! When you personalize a booklet, reducing a static 72-page booklet to a 16-page personalized one, you are greening your projects at the same time. Think about how much you help your clients lower their environmental footprints in terms of paper, ink, energy use, transportation . . . and the list goes on.

I just released a report titled “Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide” that has an entire section devoted to how digital print applications “green” print marketing. We’re used to looking at the case studies in terms of how they affect the bottom line (and rightly so), but many of those same applications have a green angle. Every time you cut costs through efficiency, targeting, and personalization, you save your carbon footprint, too.

I’m also fascinated by just how poor a carbon footprint e-media has. The more I learn about it, the greener print looks.

The digital printing industry really has an environmental story to tell. I wonder how well we’re telling it?

There seems to be an ongoing discussion about names and descriptions of things in our industry, particularly when it comes to the seemingly hotly-debated phrases “print service provider” and “marketing service provider”, as well as their acronym counterparts, “PSP” and “MSP”. Cary Sherburne sparked some debate last year with her post on Print CEO about “PSP”. There have been more recent points of discussion, as well. WhatTheyThink’s Peer Groups blog has discussed what encompasses a company that bills itself as a “marketing service provider”. On Printing Impressions’ blog a few days ago, Margie Dana expressed her distaste for printing companies that bill themselves as marketing service providers. Dr. Joe also weighed in, providing his thoughts on how printers should approach marketing services.

All of the aforementioned posts make a number of great points, some call for new or different terminology to be used, and others call out vendors and industry analysts/consultants (like myself) for causing confusion by instituting these terms in the first place. Vendors often use these terms to describe their clients, and I certainly have used them in many of my writings for InfoTrends, although I try to mix it up a little for variety’s sake. To be frank, I see the discussion about the use of these specific terms as a bit silly at face value. That’s not to say that terminology is not important, but I think this specific discussion really leads to larger issues that are happening within the industry, mostly dealing with structural change and transitioning that many print businesses have been going through. (more…)

Editor’s Note.  Andrew Leung a 4th year Graphic Communication student at Ryerson University recently wrote this essay on JDF. The use of JDF-enabled system are becoming widely adopted within the industry. This essay provides a concise review of the technology.

By Andrew Leung

To those who use it, JDF is considered one of the most innovative technologies in the printing industry. It allows workflow to become much more automated and help streamline some of the more cumbersome and repetitive tasks that often can cost printers a substantial amount of money; it was built to help eliminate waste. It costs nothing for printers to use the specifications for JDF, but the systems that incorporates its ability is where the cost lies. JDF is still relatively new, and while there are those in the printing and graphics art industry that have adopted its potential and capabilities, others are still skeptical about it, in the long run, JDF is here to stay.

(more…)

Last month Canon’s bid for Océ was said to be in jeopardy after Hermes Focus Asset Management Ltd, which controls 3.3 percent shares of Océ, publicly stated it was “concerned that the offer terms do not represent a fair sharing of value between the shareholders of Canon and those of Océ” and they wouldn’t tender their shares.

Last week the business press reported that Canon is sticking with their offer of 8.60 euros ($11.83) per share. Masaki Nakaoka, chief executive of Canon’s office- imaging products operations was quoted saying the offer “is reasonable.”

Océ continues to work through corporate details announcing shareholders have adopted proposed resolutions in connection with the offer.

Konica Minolta and Océ have announced that they will terminate their strategic agreement which included imaging R&D and sales and marketing:

Konica Minolta and Oce will terminate the joint development and commercialization activities of cut-sheet type monochrome and colour output systems for the production printing market undertaken by both companies under the joint development agreement.

For the time being, Konica Minolta will continue to supply its office printing systems to Oce on an OEM basis from its entire production line, and both Konica Minolta and Oce will continue to supply production printing systems to each other on an OEM basis, under the OEM sales agreement. Also, both companies will continue to supply consumables and parts and offer after-sales service for products already in the market.

Jim Hamilton of InfoTrends writes at InfoBlog, “The development relationship is over, and once the acquisition closes we can expect to see Canon products replacing the Konica Minolta offerings in the Océ product line.”

“Despite this slow take-off I do expect that this year we will see the sales of these presses accelerate into graphic arts and publishing applications” says Andrew Tribute. A recent article by Andrew looks at some of the key items that need to be considered by potential buyers of these presses. This includes substrates, ink types ink and the life of the print heads.

Following up on the technical overview provided by Andrew, Clint Bolte advises that every buyer regardless of size should have a third party lease expert review the proposed manufacturer’s or financial institution’s contract.

If you had to answer the question, “What are the best practices in 1:1 printing?” what would you say? I have to answer this question every three or four months when I update “1:1 (Personalized) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance,” a primer and educational tool for printers and their sales teams.

This time around (December 2009 update), I made some significant additions and expansions.

QR codes: I added QR codes into the list of channels and media strategies that should be incorporated into 1:1 campaigns. Not that every campaign should have one, of course. It depends on the target audience. Especially for clients targeting 15- to 35-year-olds and the mobile professional culture, QR codes should absolutely be in the mix.

Expanded focus on multiple media: Increasingly, successful 1:1 campaigns do not work alone. They are working in tight integration with other media, using the same branding, messaging, and business rules. A campaign might use email to promote an upcoming print offer, for example. Then it might use email or SMS text messaging to nudge non-responders or confirm registrations, orders, or other actions the respondent might have taken.

Use of multiple response mechanisms: Too often, marketers provide only a single response mechanism for their offers. Yet, case studies increasingly prove out that having a mix of response mechanisms (print, general URL, phone, personalized URL) can increase response. You have to allow people to respond using the media with which they are the most comfortable.

If you look carefully at the recent case studies, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s neat when you see this stuff actually being implemented — and it works!

By Brenda Kai, executive director, EDSF

“I want to thank and pay tribute to all of our volunteers – those dedicated people who believe in all work and no pay”.
–Robert Orben, humorist, writer and editor

Without our volunteers, who give selflessly of their time and expertise, EDSF — the international non-profit organization dedicated to the document management and graphic communications industries — would not be able to accomplish all that it does. Our volunteers tell us repeatedly that they choose to get involved because they consider it a pleasure to improve the lives of others and give back to the industry.

Last week, during EDSF’s “The Future is Bright” Awareness Campaign — a chance for you to get to know more about EDSF — we introduced our Scholarship Selection Committee. This week, we would like to recognize the volunteers that make the EDSF REPORT possible. The EDSF REPORT provides input on current trends and serves to promote research, and thanks to our volunteers, we’re able to deliver this valuable industry resource. Our hats are off to:

Editor-in-chief: The one and only, Frank Romano, EDP, professor emeritus, RIT

Editors: Toby Cobrin, EDP, INTERQUEST, Roberta McKee-Jackson, EDP, RSM Consulting, UK, and Sidney F. Huttner, University of Iowa Libraries

Printing: Sir Speedy and PIP Printing

Printing Coordinator: Lisa Wallingford, Franchise Services

Finish and Mail: Anthony Sarno, InfoPrint Solutions

The EDSF REPORT is published six times a year and is funded by individual and corporate contributions. To download copies of all EDSF REPORTS or to make a donation, please visit the Web site at www.edsf.org.

EDSF Scholar of the Day

Chiara Bertato, Scuola Superiore, Internazionale di Scienze dalla Formazione, Italy
EDSF’s OutputLinks Sponsors Scholarship 2009

“I have learned that if you have a big passion inside of you, only your mind and your willpower can help you achieve dreams you thought were too big even to be dreamt. So I would like to use this scholarship to cherish my passion for the graphic and communication field, led by my curiosity to know and learn more and more about the world around me.”