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 By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO A Passing Fad? “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” Said the chief editor of business books for Prentice Hall in 1957. Top Printing Markets Since we often quote TrendWatch Reports, we thought you might find these statistics interesting, the top US printing markets are: 1) Chicago (4.7% or $2.85 billion) 2) Los Angeles/Long Beach (3.5% or $2.162 billion) 3) New York City (3.2% or $1.931 billion) 4) Philadelphia (2.5% 1.546 billion) 5) Dallas (1.9% or $1.135 billion) 6) Boston (1.8% or $1.122 billion) Consolidation by the Numbers It was our honor to speak to over 1,300 graphic arts professionals celebrating the 1998 observance of International Printing Week, in six cities. At each stop we mentioned the increasing importance of consolidation, as more and more small (and not so small) shops and plants are bought out. At the Portland Club banquet we mentioned Mail-Well, Inc., as being one of the powerhouse consolidators. Ironically, the very next week, the Daily Oregonian reported that Mail-Well had acquired all the assets of Rono Graphic Communications Co. and Hicks Chatten Engraving Co. The two firms happen to employ several Craftsmen Club members including Tim Trachtenberg president of the Portland Club. Tim's dad John is President of Rono, Inc. A Blooming Industry? The January/February 1998 issue of the magazine Bloomberg Personal provided a list of the 100 hot stocks of 1997. Four printing related firms made the Bloomberg 100, at # 38 was Mail-Well, # 51 was Applied Graphic Technologies; # 94 was Splash Technology Holdings and #100 was another consolidator we've been writing about (see January issues of TMN,) Consolidated Graphics of Houston. But perhaps you'd rather think about a potentially hot performer for 1998. Mutual fund and financial advice maven James O'Shaughnessy, crunched 40 years of numbers and decided that an indicator that a stock is poised to perform well is the ratio of its price to its sales per share. Dow Theory Forecasts took his advice and looked for cheap stocks (less than $25 per share) that met O'Shaughnessy's model. Of the five firms which met the criteria, one is in the printing business, American Business Products in Atlanta.Heidelberg a hot ticket Heidelberger Druckmaschien AG became a publicly traded company as 1997 concluded. Heidelberg issued 8.2 million shares on the Frankfurt Exchange (the DAX) and the issue was oversubscribed by nine times! At the same time, Heidelberg's acquisition of Linotype Hell was completed in symbolic fashion, as the Heidelberg logo went up on the new Prepress Business Unit headquarters in Kiel, Germany. The Kiel facility also saw the first Creo Trendsetter CTP platesetters roll off the assembly line, marking the Creo-Heidelberg alliance; and Kiel is also the home of a R & D collaboration between Eastman Kodak and Heidelberg to develop a new digital printing press. Indigo and PagePath Combo The news about Indigo's DENIA software which incorporates PagePath's Launch! file transfer software intrigued us. First off, we had a conversation with Jim Hopkins, founder of JF Hopkins & Associates, Commercial Printers in Columbus, Ohio after the banquet to kick off the Columbus Club's 13th Annual Print Expo. Jim is a thoughtful fellow who suspects that the long term winner in digital color printing will be ink based rather than toner based. Indigo users would plan to place kiosk's containing the interactive DENIA software in retail sites such as quick print shops, office superstores and hotel business centers where the customer could create personalized business cards, stationery, name badges etc., and then have the file and order info transmitted via Launch! to an Indigo E-Print 1000 press site for order completion. It is interesting therefore, that Moore Corporation tried the kiosk idea for remote business forms orders quite a few years ago without success, as did NEBS in partnership with Kinko's (the Order Desk experiment).Finally, we are intrigued by the standards battle. There are competing technologies in high capacity digital disks; in the proper protocols for 56K modems; and just last week the US Congress mandated that all analog television transmission must end and become digital by the year 2006. PagePath's Launch! product is a fully featured and very utilitarian digital file transfer software product, but there are competing technologies. Ink or Toner, Digital or Analog, this way or that way. High stakes to be sure.And just in case you want to play ostrich and hope the digital world will go away, we direct your attention to the Microsoft web site where you can read Microsoft's 'Internet Strategy White Paper.'Contained therein is this nugget: "...many businesses - small, medium and large - will soon send and receive the majority of their purchase orders and invoices over the internet."Dadblamed Attorney's One of our members-at-large gave a certain attorney we know a copy of a Class Action Suit Notification. Allow us to quote: "This lawsuit arose from two rebate programs, the Hold Everything Rebate Program ... and the Triple Your Stuff Rebate Program ... which were offered to certain purchasers of Iomega Zip drives and/or Iomega Zip disks. The plaintiff's brought this lawsuit on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, claiming that some purchasers of Iomega Zip drives and Zip disks had not received rebates within the time periods specified in the Rebate Programs. The plaintiffs allege that Iomega's failure to send rebates within the time periods specified gave rise to claims for breach of contract, violation of Delaware's Consumer Fraud Act and injunctive relief." Give us a break! Come to think of it, didn't we send in a rebate coupon on a recent cornflakes promotion? Sounds like class action material to us!The best part is what the members of the class will receive if the settlement of the lawsuit is approved (a $3.00 Rebate Gift Certificate). Meanwhile, the attorneys will request the court for $213,000 in attorney's fees. Honest, we aren't making this up!Unbelievable.Inky not Dinky Did you know that more than 2 billion pounds of ink are used by the North American printing industry each year? But only 9% of the oil based inks we use are soy-based? Or that the label soy-ink doesn't mean any more than that the ink includes some percentage of soybean oil? In fact, the current maximum soybean oil content in sheetfed inks is 30% and in heat set inks it's less than 30%. Nonetheless, for reasons of color intensity, de-inking capability and ultimately the higher biodegradability and thus environmental friendliness, better soy inks are on the way. The Agricultural Research Center a division of the US Department of Agriculture is working on a patent for an all-soy ink for sheetfed and heatset printing. Information provided by The Institute for Local Self-Reliance. www.ilsr.org TAGA 50th Anniversary Conference The Technical Association of the Graphic Arts will hold their 50th Annual Technical Conference April 26-29, 1998 at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort near Chicago. TAGA is the industry association focused on the science, engineering and practical applications of research and development in the graphic arts industry. TAGA has been a marketing partner of the International Gallery of Superb Printing, the IAPHC program which celebrates excellence in the arts and sciences of printing. For more info call 716-475-7470. PrimeSource Web Work Noted in the February issue of DealerCommunicator magazine: "PrimeSource's home page is one of the best - informative and clean, with a helpful site map/search engine. PrimeSource uses their web page to serve a variety of audiences. To provide product information for customers, they have news releases for the media and stock quotes for investors, a good example of the multiple uses for web sites." www.primesource.com
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