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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO Deluxe backs Off On July 10, Deluxe Corporation terminated its agreement to sell its subsidiaries Paper Direct and Current Social Expressions to a private investor indicating that the potential buyer was unable to meet certain financing conditions. The deal could still go through, but Deluxe will entertain other options in the meantime. The two divisions had sales of $230 million last year. Shootout at the Macintosh Corral? Wells Fargo & Co. felt the wrath of the MacManiacs last week. The bank (which according to wags in the Upper Midwest will now be called NorWells after its pending merger with Norwest Bancorp) had decided to cut off its 7,000 Apple Macintosh customers who use Intuit's Quicken personal finance software to access their Wells accounts. The bank said the cost was too high, but after 700 customers howled, the bank reversed its decision on July 9th. Other folks (or at lest this writer) have been sniping at Apple for the decision to release the iMac consumer computer without a floppy disk drive. The iMac does have one very intriguing facet that explains the decision -- each machine comes with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) Interface. On July 8th, Iomega announced that its new translucent ice-blue USB Zip drive will have the USB interface built into the drive, thus eliminating the need for the Scuzzy port as was discussed in last week's issue of Tuesday Morning News. USB is newer technology that should be available on 90% of the computers shipped this year. Of course not everyone's computer is brand new. Moreover, the iMac costs more than the sub $1,000 PC's now hitting the market, with a suggested retail price of $1,299. And the cost of a snazzy ice-blue USB Zip drive for the iMac will add another $149 to the tab for those of us who want the flexibility of transferring files. "Mac users are out there on the cutting edge....I'm pleased that we are the preferred source to help the Mac community continue saving, transporting and sharing large graphics files." said Edward Bruce, president of the Iomega personal storage division. Other peripheral vendors have announced USB disk drives (including Imation and Syquest) as well as USB based printers, scanners and digital cameras. Of course no discussion of the iMac would be complete without a few comments from the ol' gunslinger Steve Jobs. In his surprise appearance to deliver the keynote speech at MacWorld last week he said (regarding the processing speed): "Let's not wimp out here," "Let's put a killer engine in this machine." "The fastest Pentium machine money can buy is slower than our consumer machine. This thing screams." Jobs also announced that iMac will be shipping with a 56K modem instead of the previously announced 33.6K modem. He further claimed that the USB technology is "30 times faster than the old Apple serial ports." Sooo right, Queeck Draw! Kodak Targets PC's for APS Eastman Kodak said last week that it's in talks with all the major PC makers urging them to install a film drive in personal computers. If a PC has a film drive, it could accept an APS cartridge the same way people insert disks into a PC. Once the film is inserted, people can e-mail, manipulate or print photographs. APS is the acronym for Advanced Photo System. Kodak is not the only vendor of APS, but its sales of the Advantix brand APS cameras, introduced in 1996, have been slow. If PC makers install the film drive it would add around $200 to the cost of the PC. Imation Station (ary)? Imation Corporation, the 3M spinoff is still searching for a niche, and its struggles in the imaging arena show how difficult the transition from analog to digital may be for the entire graphic arts industry. The combined sales for DryView, Superdisk (the Imation competitor to Iomega's Zip) and the Rainbow color proofing systems accounted for less than 20 % of Imation's first quarter revenues of $519 million. In presentations to stockholders last month, Imation Chairman Bill Monahan said the firm should move from being "focused on materials based manufacturing" and sales of commodity items to being a partner offering "global solutions in data storage, image management and color management." Monahan also said he thinks the firm has a "strong opportunity" to offer these consulting services in areas like the graphic arts, even when Imation products are not involved. And again we remember the prophetic words of Charles A. Pesko: Printing is transitioning from being a craft based manufacturing industry to an information based service industry. Ikon Swallows Hard We've been noting the difficulties of Danka and Ikon in recent issues of Tuesday Morning News. Both firms have found challenges in absorbing acquisitions. Ikon has a new chief, James Forese, who commented about the struggles to integrate the purchase of 89 companies last year: "Our efforts to acquire numerous local businesses and create a cohesive global network...have taken longer and caused more disruption than anticipated." Big bucks! From the June 1998 issue of Franchise One on One published by AT & T Capital Corporation: "It's not called quick printing for nothing. Business professionals who patronize AlphaGraphics franchises throughout the United States are in a hurry. They don't have the time, the inclination, or the desire to work with a large commercial printer. But they demand the same high end service." We suspect there are a few sales people for large commercial printers who would care to differ! The newsletter is quoted however, for a different purpose. We have written in past issues of Tuesday Morning News that a gentleman we met from AT & T Capital tells us his firm 'loves' to finance printers. The article put a face on that attitude. Writing about an AlphaGraphics franchisee named Jim Smith who opened his new franchise in Fort Worth, Texas less than a year ago, the article reports that of his $650,000 investment for a 3,200 square foot store in the Fossil Creek area of North Fort Worth, AT & T Capital financed $370,000. Wow, the debt service requirements of quick print shops sure have changed! Chaos Theory and E-Commerce Tom Peters followed up his In Search of Excellence books with one about thriving in chaos. One of our Craftsmen members commented last week that seemingly every business article now refers to the coming importance of e- commerce. The Cambridge Newsletter for today's date, reports that: "The powerful software agents which look set to dominate online shopping will bring with them savage price wars and chaotic economic swings according to IBM researchers. The importance of agents in E-commerce will inevitably increase in a free-market information economy where billions of agents operate, all searching for the best price. The normal constraints of transaction costs and distance will not apply and therein lies the problem, say the researchers." This research is in a recently published paper from IBM's Watson Research Center. MIT's researchers have arrived at similar conclusions and compare agent economics to trying to control a car that was travelling at 500 miles an hour.
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