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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO (Because of the US Memorial Day holiday on Monday, and the wonderful crunch of Gallery entries, this week's edition is Thursday Morning News! Another factor was the unfortunate death of Mark Loven's father in a flying accident. Mark has been helping us out on an occasional basis, and we extend to him our deepest sympathy.) Consolidation Reality "There are still 7,000 banks and 1,000 thrifts in the country (U.S.) today. Consolidation will go on until my grandkids are bringing up their grandkids." David Ellison. Portfolio Manager, The FBR Small Cap Financial Fund. We've written often in this space about the surge in consolidation activity in the graphic arts. The quote above reminds us to keep things in perspective. While no one is absolutely sure how many printers may operate in North America, many estimates peg the number of commercial plants around 40,000 with a like number of quick print shops, not counting in-plants, speciality shops and garage based shops. In other words, we remain a very fragmented industry and the day when all printing is done by a handful of plants is still quite a ways down the road. Fiery Wind Folks with a historical bent know that the Japanese word Kamikaze means Divine Wind. On May 14th Fuji Xerox announced a new product which is the fruit of its partnership with Electronics for Imaging, the FX Color Laser Wind 3320PS. "This addition to the Fuji Xerox color lineup is intended to supplement the recently announced Color Laser Wind 3310, an entry level personal office offering, by broadening the markets to include work groups and small offices. The new Color Laser Wind 3320PS brings high quality digital color capability to the desktop with four page per minute color at 600 dots per inch." Several years ago, a friend of ours who operates a very successful service printing business suggested that color copying would not be a viable profit center for his business until there were more devices producing color originals which might need multiple color copies. Obviously, that day has arrived, in living color. Another notable new product is TotalScan, a full color flat bed scanner from Storm Technology with 1200 by 600 dpi resolution and a street price of $250 or less. For more info go to www.stormtech.com WAM!NET gets FreeMail On May 19th WAM!NET announced its acquisition of FreeMail, the Missoula, Montana based creator of one of the pioneer digital delivery systems for the quick print industry, which was introduced in 1994. Kinko's has a license for the FreeMail software, which it calls Kinkonet. FreeMail also created the distribute and print software FreePrint which was licensed by the AlphaGraphics franchisor as AlphaLink Direct. DGR Approves LAUNCH! Demand Graphics Research, the research arm of the ICED family of franchises, including Kwik-Kopy, The Ink Well, Franklin's and American Wholesale Thermographers endorsed the digital job transfer software known as LAUNCH! from PagePath Technologies. Meanwhile PagePath issued a flurry of other announcements including the availability of LAUNCH! in French, German, Portugese and Spanish; as well as introducing LAUNCH! Dispatch software which enables digitally received files to be automatically output through the Oce 3165 and the Oce ReproCenter. Steve Ciesmier, Vice-president at PagePath made the following trenchant observations: "The benefits of digital printing and Print on Demand are already being felt throughout the industry. So are the problems. A larger number of smaller orders is great for total sales volume only if the overhead for each job is controlled. Workflow automation will continue to be the key factor in profitability moving forward." For more info go to www.pagepath.com Add Virtual Prepress too From the May 1998 issue of Quick Printing magazine, in Frank Felker's column: "And you can add Virtual Prepress from Digital-Net to your web site for another $300. Virtual Prepress will allow your customers to send in forms, stationery and business card orders through a WYSIWYG Web interface -- on your website! This technology has got to be seen to be believed. You may have heard about an online print service called iPrint that offers a similar capability. In my opinion. Virtual Prepress easily surpasses the iPrint interface and is available to any printer with the vision to sign up." Steve Jecha is president of Digital Net and is a Craftsmen member, for more info contact him at info@digital-net.com New Printware Platesetter Printware will be displaying its new PlateStream MicroPlate platesetter at the Dallas Show later this week. The new machine, as its name suggests, is able to make plates of less than 60 square inches. The machine is targeted at social printing and similar applications which use smaller printing plates. The minimum plate size on the MicroPlate is 8.5 inches long by 7 inches wide. The company expects that a printer specializing in social printing applications could reduce plate waste by 30%. List price is $74,900 including an integrated punch, RIP hardware and the customer's choice of a Harlequin or Adobe RIP. In search of missing floppy drives In the last issue of Tuesday Morning News we wondered why Apple Computer was bringing the iMac consumer computer to market without a floppy drive. The May 25th issue of Business Week provides the answer: "People aren't thinking clearly. Nobody's going to back up a 4-gigabyte drive onto 1-megabyte floppies. They'll use a Zip drive--but they're too expensive to build into a consumer product. Besides, hardly anybody backs up anyway, so why build cost into every system." Steve Jobs, the once and future Apple CEO. Legitimizing LINUX Computer devotees know that Linux is the name of the computer operating system created by the iconoclastic Finnish programer Linus Torvalds, as a variation on the UNIX source code. Unlike the fine folks at Micro Soft or Apple Computer who tend to zealously protect their operating systems and source code, young Linus promotes a vision of Open Source Code. Since 1991, Linux has become of cult status with programmers and hackers the world over. Now comes news that Corel Corporation has put its support behind Linux. WordPerfect 8 will be released this summer in a version for Linux and Corel already ports CorelDraw for Linux. Our thanks to Lesley Addy of Ottawa for this tidbit. On Better Business Earlier this month a member of the Board of the North Jersey Club sent us a troubling fax about the business practices of an individual from Wallington, New Jersey. Allegedly, the individual has attempted to evade payment for $30,000 in separations and printing obtained from a North Jersey member. While it is most likely inappropriate for us to name the firm and the culprit in a public vehicle like the Internet (the law of libel in a global forum like the web is still being refined) the problem is worth reflection. Some years ago, our good friend Sid Freedman who owned a few small print shops in Chicago, had a restaurant client attempt to evade payment. After exhausting the usual methods of debt collection, Sid tried the direct marketing approach. He showed up outside the restaurant with a sheaf of flyers which he handed out to passersby. The flyer read "Please eat at Joe's. He can't afford to pay his printing bills and he really needs your business." The miscreant in New Jersey offers a chance to remind ourselves of the obvious and chew on the ways in which digital technologies may change the business playing field. The usual advice still applies. One should always insists on credit references and applications for new clients. One should insist on full payment up front on items like business cards, new business brochures, because it remains a sorry fact that most start-up businesses fail. The same applies to wedding or social event printed matter -- these items have no value once the date has passed and become very difficult to collect upon. Similarly, no self respecting printer will offer anything but cash in advance terms for political printing. Beyond these areas however lurk new problems caused by the rapid advances in technology. A printer who stored hard copy customer original files could formerly purchase a Valuable Papers coverage binder under the basic property and casualty insurance coverage. But now that so many originals are digital files, archived or not, the issues change. Similarly, some printers will purchase Errors and Omissions insurance. While often an expensive coverage, there are new issues being incubated every day; e.g., when a client in Tashkent sends a job via digital job transfer protocols to a printer in Tuscaloosa, and the file is corrupted somewhere along the way, who is liable? One simple protection of which surprisingly few printers take advantage, is to incorporate the Revised Trade Customs of the Graphic Arts into their published terms and conditions. If anyone reading this newsletter would like a copy of the Revised Trade Customs please let us know.
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