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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO From the Oracles "At the end of the day, what it's all about is content." Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at the Streaming Media West '99 conference in San Jose, California on December 7. "Mark Twain, because he would like to come back to Earth and see what we're doing here and what has happened in the printing business since 1910." Garrison Keillor, on December 5, when asked to dream up a guest list for a mythical millennium dinner party. "The Internet is the first new medium to move backward, for it is essentially written. When someone tells you that they have been on line, what he has probably been doing is reading words that other people have written, and then writing some words of his own." Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker magazine, December 6, 1999. "Experts say the market for printed materials will split into three different segments: high quality products produced by classical commercial printers, fast turnover products created using inkjet or laser printers, and -- forming the link between these two worlds -- products produced on fast, easy-to-use, high performance digital presses, which will dominate the market for large press run jobs with short lead times." Wolfgang Pfizenmaier, head of Heidelberg Digital in PrintProcess magazine No 6/99. Our trenchant (or topsy-turvy) synthesis of the Oracles pronouncements? The written word is still going to become the printed word. Content matters more than ever before, because she who controls the content controls the process of deciding into which of the three segments to flow the content; and while the industry has surely changed in mega-fashion since the salad days of Mark Twain, we ain't seen nothing yet baby! Subverted By Stealth? The inevitability of the changing graphic arts feels like water torture. Any given event, or any given day is not that much different than the last, but when taken in sum total, it is massive and maddening. It was not too many TMN issues ago, that we first wrote about the seemingly impossible notion of printing books-on-demand. On December 9th, Barnes & Noble said it would begin offering print-on-demand books at both its brick and mortar stores and also via the click and mortar online world. B & N will use IBM software and hardware (unlike other booksellers and publishers including Bertelsmann AG, which have aligned themselves with a Xerox solution). In particular B & N says it thinks that specialty titles will benefit because they often go out of print as their niche audience was small, and the press run even smaller. "It's going to open up the market to an enormous amount of content that hasn't been able to reach the marketplace, " said Barnes & Noble Vice Chairman Stephen Riggio. {There's that content word again.} But the savvy reader opines -- they are talking about a quantity of one for books that not too many people care about, things like "The Illustrated History of Truly Gory Knee Surgery Techniques." It won't affect traditional book printing or other kinds of printing. Golly-Gosh, were only that true. Point One -- the printer used to control the content to some large degree; today that is simply not the case. The creator of the content now controls it. Point Two -- the Internet allows the content creator to make all kinds of interesting choices. New mediums, new forms of re-purposing content emerge daily via the Internet and some of them render the traditional printer superfluous. Take a minute to read again the three market segments identified by Wolfgang Pfizenmeier, and if you are in the traditional printing business, ask which segment fits your business plan or vice versa? Meanwhile we might all pay attention to what the big dogs are up to. Some issues back we reported to you that Consolidated Graphics had inked a deal with Noosh.com to market the Noosh service to 12,000 Consolidated Graphics clients. On December 13, Quebecor Printing announced it had obtained a non-exclusive license which allows Quebecor to offer the proprietary GetSmart e-commerce system of iGetSmart.com to Quebecor's worldwide customer base. GetSmart is software that provides online inventory management functions, including electronic order entry, warehousing, distribution, billing and financial data export. The intent is to offer Quebecor's customers with a virtual platform for ordering and managing their printed materials. Now some folks have figured out that printing is one of many parts of the greater communications revolution of which the Internet is the centerpiece. Thus it is fun to remember that Quebecor is a VIO customer -- using the VIO Worldwide service created by Scitex and British Telecom to move bandwidth intensive graphics files anywhere in the world. And British Telecom is obviously a communications company. Other firms may choose the WAM!NET service, and of course WAM!NET has ties to MCI Worldcom. Therefore, the news on December 6th from Heidelberg Germany that Heidelberger Drucksmaschinen AG had entered into a global agreement with WAM!NET for co-marketing and co-sales and technical exchange is also worth noting. Let us simply quote from the press release and let you the reader muse as you will: "On a regional basis, Heidelberg's sales team will offer integrated solutions of data delivery and network management with Heidelberg printing presses. Over the next 12 months, WAM!NET will integrate Heidelberg color management tools with a number of its services to provide optional color management workflow for current and future customers." Edward Driscoll, CEO of WAM!NET said " ...there is the ability to automate the archival of digital plates in WAM!NET's centralized storage facility which will open up the reality of the digital printing revolution." Note also that the Quebecor and GetSmart alliance is aimed at THE CUSTOMER ordering and managing printed materials. The good folks at TrendWatch offered a really disturbing tidbit on December 3 in its "Printers and the Internet" special report. Altho 63 per cent of the printers surveyed say they are currently receiving jobs via e-mail, only 5 per cent envision allowing customers to track their job's progress online. Helloooo???? The new software solutions from Noosh and Collabria et al include powerful functionality to allow print buyers to follow the bouncing ball of their job going through the print process. If the printer won't let the customer track the job, the customer who controls the content may find another printer. To underscore this point, consider the news from PagePath Technologies on December 1. PagePath announced its new e-commerce solution called MyOrderDesk which is a FREE e-commerce solution for graphic arts firms wishing to provide Order Entry, File Transfer, Job Confirmation and Job Reports. Letting a client track their own job is a fait accompli, the question is, as Venture Capitalist Guru Ann Winblad of Winblad Partners said the other day -- are you going to be just another deer in the digital headlights? Remember the lessons of Harvard Business School professor and author Clayton Christensen, ("The Innovators Dilemma") new technologies can subvert customer loyalty; and your predictable source of ongoing business can be abruptly lost, almost by stealth. Or as Forbes magazine said in an article about Christensen and his book in the magazine's January 25, 1999 issue: "The Internet is the Godzilla of stealth attacks." Industry Tidbits From I.D. Graphics in Norway comes word that Color Bible color scales are available for sale, with nearly 200,000 tones on 441 pages, printed as standard under the ISO 14000 norms. For more info, e-mail: mail@colorbible.com or go to www.colorbible.com Amcor, Australia's largest paper and packaging maker said in Melbourne on December 1 that it would be raising prices by 4% for copy paper effective January 1, 2000. Pulp prices fell some 20 per cent in 1998 as part of the Asian Flu, but have come roaring back approximately 30 per cent this year. MAN Roland announced this week that it plans to unveil new digital presses at Drupa 2000 in May and will pre-release some specifications as early as February. Xeikon, the Belgian maker of digital printer engines and digital color presses got a less than stirring endorsement in the December 6 Barron's magazine. Reportedly, some of Xeikon's resellers had been offering free trials, however Xeikon Chairman Alfons Buts denied any knowledge of such concessions. Xeikon's share price has suffered in 1999, dropping from over $32 in late February to about $17 today. In Brussels on December 7, Agfa Gavaert NV made some interesting observations about its past and future. "The public still perceives us as a photo company ..." said, Klaus Seeger CEO. Starting January 1, Agfa will unveil an advertising campaign to introduce you and me to the new Agfa. Brand name film makes up only 5 per cent of total sales. Half its sales come from the sale of prepress systems, indeed the company says it is the largest seller of prepress systems in the world. It is Europe's largest purveyor of x-ray systems, (second largest in the US) and about 80 per cent of the world's airliner fleet is inspected by Agfa equipment. Mail-Well, Inc returned to the acquisition trail when it announced on December 1 it plans to acquire Phototype Color Graphics in Pennsauken, New Jersey; Strathmore Press in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and Braceland Brothers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The three Philadelphia area firms have combined sales of $63 million and Mail-Well hopes to wrap up the deals by the end of 1999. IPrint.com the virtual print shop begun by former Deluxe Check employees, has decided to go public. As reported to you in TMN earlier this year, IPrint's CEO Royal Farros had intimated in an interview on CNBC, that this would be happening. The December 1 news release about the IPO, said IPrint had lost $6.7 million for the first 9 months of 1999 on sales of 1.8 million. But in the world of dot.com mania, who cares? Master Graphics promoted Robert Diehl to President and CEO and Don Goldman to COO as part of the firms strategy to get its financial sea legs. Master Graphics has cherry picked some excellent commercial printers around North America as part of its consolidation scheme. It will be an interesting story to follow, especially since the firm believes in an Internet based philosophy of delivering to its clients. In the November 2 issue of TMN we reported that Xerox had received a patent for applying scents to paper. On December 3, Eastman Kodak announced it had been awarded a patent for a process that allows developers to create scented photographs. Of course we still wait breathlessly for the day our computer screens begin emitting olfactory delights.
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