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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO CEOSPEAK 1) In the June 2nd issue of TMN we quoted briefly from the speech of the CEO of RR Donnelley & Sons (after one year on the job) to the Web Offset Association in Toronto on May 4th. His observations have spurred a wealth of reactions from around the industry and thus we'd like to share another tidbit from his remarks: "When I look at what we do, I find us bringing in raw materials and converting them into finished products. I call that a manufacturing business. However, we have this legacy, even among ourselves, of being a graphic art. That can no longer be. We have to be a graphic science. We have to make our products using defined ... standardized ... repeatable...manufacturing processes. In this game, manufacturing discipline will win ... and the craftsman who must leave his thumbprint on every page will lose." On of the wiser men we know in the printing business used to say that the reason he chose printing over, for example, a franchised pizzeria, is that he could count on predictable repeat printing business from his customers. That and no retail hours! And by the by, we have been marketing the International Gallery of Superb Printing as a competition rewarding excellence in the arts and sciences of printing for the past 6 years. 2) Xerox president and COO Richard Thorman on May 21st at the Xerox Corporation's annual meeting: "Our industry is in the throes of a critical and massive transformation including analog to digital; black and white to color; stand-alone to networked; and 'box-only' to solutions." Xerox Chairman Paul Allaire noted that 40% of Xerox revenues now come from digital products and that these revenues grew by 35% in the first quarter. Sales of the new family of digital black and white copiers have exceeded the company's expectations. And digital publishing is now a $2 billion dollar a year business for Xerox, while color products -- also digital -- produce $1.5 billion a year. Document outsourcing reached $2 billion in 1997. Y2K We are starting to see graphic arts vendors address the coming millennial bug fever. On 10 June PagePath Technologies announced the release of LAUNCH! version 1.73 to address Year 2000 concerns of its customers well in advance of the turn of the century. LAUNCH! is a job transfer software product suite, or perhaps more accurately, digital delivery software. Contact: info@pagepath.com And on 2 June, Scitex launched the Scitex Year 2000 Site and the Scitex Year 2000 Help Desk. From the news release: "Scitex has taken the lead in the Graphic Arts industry by providing public information about some of the basic issues involving the transition to the new millennium. The new website also presents a detailed, continuously updated summary of the Scitex Year 2000 Readiness position, including a listing of Scitex products and their associated Year 2000 status. For more info see: www.scitex.com Meanwhile Bob Mills points out that if we were to use the Jewish calendar dating, we would be in the year 5758 and thus have 242 remaining years to deal with the Year 6000 problem! Prepress Ain't Dead baby! From Richard Burnham, president of Graphic Imaging, Inc., and member of the Baltimore Club: "As everyone knows, 'Prepress is Dead' (or so people tell me, about what they read). For the past 1 and 1/2 years we have experienced a 75% increase in business. On Friday May 29, we settled on our loan to purchase our own building, which will be twice our current size. Along with a Heidelberg Signasetter Pro 32 x 44 Imagesetting System with Delta Server/work station and Delta trapping work station/with in line processor and a Hewlett Packard Digital printer for Proofing." We congratulate Dick on his growth in the rapidly evolving prepress world and note how much of his business is now digital. We also commend Dick for his ongoing work with and ceaseless dedication towards the Graphic Arts Literacy Alliance and remind all readers that the International Gallery Awards Show at the IAPHC's 79th Annual Convention to be held in Rochester, New York in August of this year will also feature an auction for the benefit of G.A.L.A., with the esteemed auctioneer, Jay Mandarino of the Toronto Club at the controls. Remember that any individual or club can donate items for the G.A.L.A. Auction. Please contact IAPHC headquarters if you'd like to make a donation. Other Industry Tidbits - On 8 June Eastman Kodak announced that it was selling its line of document management solutions software with service revenues of approximately $4.5 million, to a new subsidiary of Tyler Corporation of Dallas. Under the agreement, Tyler will acquire Kodak Business Imaging System's document management software products and service used for image storage and retrieval in a wide range of document intensive applications. - On 3 June Indigo N.V. announced that ChromaCopy International Ltd. has purchased its seventh Indigo E-print 1000 press and acquired its 8th press through a licensing agreement. We found this quote worth sharing from the president and co-founder of ChromaCopy, David Manning: "When ChromaCopy started out 17 years ago, acceptable quality meant offering a very limited range of photographic processing solutions. In recent years, acceptable quality has become more and more dependent on utilizing Indigo presses for a wide range of jobs such as newsletters, brochures, sell sheets, invitation and media kits." - On June 2, Mail-Well, Inc. announced that it had finalized the purchase of Anderson Lithograph in Los Angeles as well as 7 other acquisitions. Among the notable firms swallowed up by the Mail-Well juggernaut were Industrial Printing in Toledo, Ohio plus the well managed firm of French-Bray in Baltimore which has been a long time Baltimore club supporter. - Not to be outdone, Consolidated Graphics of Houston acquired its 38th firm, Wetzel Brothers of Milwaukee according to a 3 June 1998 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article faxed us by Frieda Sarubbi. - If any reader is a fan of the so-called 'signals' imparted by insider trading, then the fact that a director of Iomega Corporation (manufacturer of the Zip and Jaz brand drives) purchased 187,500 shares of Iomega between May 6th and 15th, 1998, is undoubtedly of some arcane interest.
If you're having difficulty finding a solution or have an example of how the Craftsmen Network has recently benefited you, we'd like to hear about it. Please send an e-mail to Kevin Keane at ceo@iaphc.org.
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