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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO Cyber greetings on Cinco de Mayo! We were the grateful recipient of a lift from the Rohnert Park, California site of the 11th District Conference down to San Francisco International Airport on Sunday courtesy of Dave Halpin, Vice President of the San Francisco Club. We learned that Dave is a peerless raconteur. He told the story of his first job in the printing biz, working for a man of Yiddish extraction. The owner had a printers devil, a high school kid, working for him in the afternoon. The young man was emphatically Irish in looks and lineage and thus the owner had taken to calling this young Mr. Gleason his "schleprechaun." Letter to Editore "Dear Kevin, I just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know how much I appreciate the Tuesday Morning News. Your little snippets of information are right on target and very thought provoking. In fact, for the last three weeks, I have copied parts of TMN and distributed them at our weekly management meetings....Thanks again for a great vehicle to disseminate information among our industry and fellow craftsmen." Rex Abrahams, Vice President, ETS Graphics, Wichita Club. We thank Russ for his kind comments and also thank good friend Bob Hall for ruminating about an item in last week's Tuesday Morning News in his always interesting Monday Morning Fax newsletter of May 4, 1998. (Info 304-744-7022) The Paper Trail "Revenues grew through a combination of pricing, volume and contributions from acquired companies. Expenses excluding acquisitions remain stable, but declining gross trading margins continue to impact earnings." Ray Mundt, chairman of Unisource Worldwide, Inc., in commenting on a drop in operating income for Unisource which triggered the planned revamping of the company. Interestingly, the firm is maintaining its dividend, which at .80 cents per share for a company with a share price in the $12 to $13 range is really quite handsome. More from VUE/POINT Last week we cited responses to a couple of survey questions posed to attendees at last month's VUE/POINT conference. One other query caught our eye: Our firm has purchased or plans to purchase digital color printing equipment such as Indigo, Xeikon or Chromapress in the next 18 months. 10% Strongly Agree 9% Agree 30% Disagree 30% Strongly Disagree 21% N/A Obviously people are taking more of a wait and see approach after the initial tumult over short run digital color printing. Perhaps that explains the whipsawing of Xeikon's share price lately, up $4.00 Thursday, and then down almost $2.00 Friday. The Dealer Dilemma in the Digital Age Our thanks to Fifth District Governor Ray Rafalowski for sending along a copy of Connexions newsletter (Info at 704-334-2047.) In the current issue, Robert Fitzpatrick offers these insights: "For many dealers, the global millennium is coinciding with their late middle age. Dawn is colliding with sunset. Values are shifting from acquisition and investment to estate preservation and risk assessment. Many are questioning whether they are financially and psychologically prepared to compete in a new marketplace where customers treat conventional products like commodities while expecting high tech support and precision logistics in the newer products." Draw your own Conclusions? From the Cambridge Newsletter (Info: cambridge@flinet.com): "A study of 300 marketing professionals determined that 65% preferred receiving information in printed form compared to 51% who preferred the Internet. Surprisingly, older respondents were more likely to select the Internet. Fifty percent of those aged 18 to 34 chose the Internet compared to 53% of those aged 35 to 54." Indigo Plastic Card Press On 28 April Indigo N.V. announced that it had begun shipping its Omnius CardPress, a digital press for color printing on plastic cards. The initial placements went in at Gemplus, one of the largest global producers of plastic card and smart-card applications, as well as Novo, a leading German plastic card vendor. Reportedly the new press can produce individually personalized cards from electronic databases at speeds up to 21,000 card faces per hour. Digital Asset Management Seminar A free seminar series sponsored by Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Computer, Microsoft and PrimeSource Corporation is coming up. The seminar is a half day program presenting a business case study of how and why media producing firms deploy media asset management solutions. For more info contact Gistics, at 800-895-4853. (Careful readers of Tuesday Morning News may recall a reference to Gistics in the 14 April 1998 issue.) The schedule for this free seminar is: May 12 in Chicago May 14 in Toronto May 18 in Seattle May 19 in San Francisco May 20 in Los Angeles May 21 in Dallas May 28 in Atlanta May 29 in Ft. Lauderdale June 1 in Washington DC June 2 in Philadelphia June 3 in New York City Gutenberg Festival Reminder Santa Monica Bay Club president Mark Barbour has asked us for a selection of handouts which he can use in the 12th District booth at the Gutenberg Festival. His request causes us to remind you that the show dates are May 13-16 at the Long Beach (CA) Convention Center. Mark is also the well known curator of the International Printing Museum and is presently engaged in a fund raising campaign to build a permanent home for the marvelous collections he oversees. For more info about the Museum contact Mark at 714-523-2070. More Mail-Well On April 28 came the announcement that Mail-Well, Inc., the rapidly expanding firm we've written often about in past issues of Tuesday Morning News has acquired yet another company. This time its well known commercial printer Anderson Lithograph in Los Angeles, a firm with 1997 sales of $135 million. Blazing Fast Fiery Today, at the ON DEMAND Show in New York City, Electronics for Imaging, Inc. announced its new Fiery ZX-70 which was developed to optimize the capabilities of the Xerox DocuColor 70. "Together, Xerox and EFI provide a solution tailored to the commercial printing market," said Dan Avida, president and CEO of EFI. "The Fiery ZX-70 and DocuColor 70 enable commercial printers to attack new short run market opportunities while optimizing the full potential of advanced capabilities such as variable data printing." We think it notable that Mr. Avida's comments are directed to commercial printers as opposed quick printers.
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