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By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO The Days of Ink and Iron Well gentle reader, if you can conjure up the swelling strings of Henry Mancini's theme music for "The Days of Wine and Roses" in your musical minds ear, you can hum along as we mull the continued passing of the golden days of graphic yesteryear, the days of Ink and Iron. In this continuation of last week's special DRUPA 2000 news report, we begin with news not from Dusseldorf, but from Chicago, where the world's second largest printer R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co announced on 23 May that it was no longer to be known as just a printer of phone books, magazines and catalogs. The firm launched its wholly owned Internet company called Red Rover Digital (redroverdigital.com). CEO William Davis said: "Customer demand to move magazines and catalog content to the Internet is exploding, and our Internet revenues are growing exponentially, we will aggressively expand our Internet business through Red Rover -- advancing our strategy to expand logically into complementary businesses and re-positioning R.R. Donnelley as a provider of integrated communications solutions." Those last few words parallel the statements made in the pre-Drupa marketing materials released more than three years ago which forecast (with eerie accuracy as it turned out) that printers would become "media service providers." Jumping now back across to Dusseldorf, yesterday saw two interesting pronouncements. First, Hewlett-Packard Company and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG signed an agreement to cooperate in printing and publishing (TMN has been urging our readers for the last several years to pay attention to Hewlett-Packard, as the firm is undeniably one of the leaders in digital printing, and perhaps even more importantly, in network printing solutions.) The two giants also announced availability of joint products for proofing. "These solutions are only the genesis of our new alliance," said Bernhard Schreier, Heidelberg's Chairman, "Digitalization of workflows is changing business and professional printing. Our customers need reliable proofing solutions. Heidelberg and HP together have the expertise to offer a workflow-printer combination, which is again the next step to the future of print." A careful reader might note the absence of the word "press" in that observation from Herr Schreier. The second pronouncement came yesterday during Anne Mulcahy's first European visit as the new president and COO of Xerox Corporation. Xerox announced it will return to Drupa in 2004. Xerox named its current 66,000 square foot demonstration Hall, "The New Business of Printing." Ms. Mulcahy said Xerox has deployed more than 1,400 dedicated graphic arts salespeople across North America and Europe. With graphic arts revenues of $3 billion in 1999, the firm is now the second largest provider of services to the graphic industry. Xerox said it plans to help the graphic arts industry transition from its "iron and ink heritage" into the high tech future of digital printing, custom publishing and e-commerce. The biggest suppliers and the biggest printers seem convinced that change is necessary. We must all embrace that philosophy, and the sooner the better. As the beloved comic strip character Pogo was wont to say: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" E-Commerce; Enfant Emergent Printing giant Mail-Well Incorporated was very much in the e-commerce spotlight this past week. On 19 May, Sprockets announced an alliance with Mail-Well under which Mail-Well has committed to a staged investment of at least $4 million in Sprockets. In turn, Mail-Well will market Sprockets to its huge customer base through the 140 Mail-Well facilities sprinkled across North America and the United Kingdom. "As a young company in the emerging application service provider (ASP) space, Sprockets sees incredible value in building distribution channels for our services with market leading firms such as Mail-Well," said Patrick White CEO of Sprockets. The ASP reference is important. We have commented on the emergence of the ASP model in previous issues of TMN and you will continue to hear more about it. At Drupa, one quiet announcement may carry heavy significance. Agfa is working to develop a job tracking tool intended for use by account executives. The Delano product has been developed in joint cooperation with QuebecorWorld and Image Building, an Antwerp based design firm. Delano won't be available until autumn. It is thought that larger printers would buy a turnkey version, while smaller shops would go for an Application Service Provider model with Afga hosting the software. Agfa's global director of image processing, John Harrison, views the new product as a crucial tool for customer service representative because it is the first automation tool to fill the gap between e-commerce and production tools. It seems to us, that one of the challenges of all the start-up firms involved in print e-commerce is to differentiate themselves from one another. In other words, are you a pipeline for digital files, does your service add value in some manner, are you going to turn me into an ASP, what exactly do you do for the smaller printers, who still comprise 80 percent of the market? Sprockets defines themselves as follows, and one could also check their website (www.sprockets.com): "Sprockets offers a secure, scalable, Web based collaboration platform to help visual media professionals harness the potential of the network to coordinate internal and external resources over the entire project life cycle." One might have assumed then from the May 19th announcement that Mail-Well was going to partner with Sprockets for its e-commerce needs, much as Consolidated Graphics, Inc., did with Noosh. Not so fast. Sprockets is focused on the collaboration end of things, where printer and client and CSR collaborate together on a job in the pipeline. On May 23 Mail-Well announced in London that it had signed a multi-year subscription agreement with printCafe, a leading provider of business-to-business e-commerce and supply chain solutions for the printing and publishing industries. Under the deal, printCafe will provide custom-branded Mail-Well websites and business and production management systems for Mail-Well's 140 printing facilities. Also on 23 May, Noosh announced it was withdrawing its proposed Initial Public Offering. Noosh, according to the now withdrawn filings, hopes to facilitate the use of the Internet to allow buyers and sellers of printing to 'communicate and collaborate' efficiently. Given the volatile state of the markets right now, one would expect that Noosh will not be alone in halting a planned IPO. Other Prepress Tidbits Bowne & Company announced at its annual shareholder meeting this morning that it was renaming Bowne Internet Solutions. The new name is Immersant (www.immersant.com) and is meant to suggest that Bowne's wholly owned subsidiary will immerse itself in a clients embrace of e-commerce to make it work for both parties. Printware, Inc said on 23 May that it had sold four PlateStream computer-to-plate systems to Wisconsin based Liturgical Publications. LPi designs and prints weekly bulletins for thousands of churches across the United States. (www.litpub.com) Tim Murphy, VP of Marketing and Sales for Printware, said from Drupa that the PlateStream is ideal for the publication market as it facilitates the mass customization of documents such as church bulletins. On 23 May, Eastman Kodak Company announced that it had licensed Apple's QuickTime for use with future iterations of Kodak digital cameras currently in development phase. The license will allow Kodak to make and market digital cameras that let users easily create video clips in the cross computing platform QuickTime software which has more than 50 million copies in use according to Apple Computer. On 24 May Adobe Systems said that Adobe's PDF format is being ever more widely used for eBooks. Popular suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark is releasing her new title "Before I say Good-Bye" as a PDF eBook, as well as her entire backlist of previously published titles. "We are delighted to be able to offer our eBooks in PDF format," said Kate Tentler, VP and Publisher at Simon & Schuster Online, "This is the largest collection of works from a major bestselling author that will be available as eBooks. Adobe is helping to ensure that millions of fans will be able to take advantage of this unique offering." PressRoom News from Drupa On 19 May Indigo N.V. announced that Franchise Services Inc will offer Indigo digital color offset presses to the 1200 franchisees who make up the global network of Franchise Services operating under the banners of Sir Speedy, PIP Printing, and MultiCopy. On 22 May Indigo announced that its IndiChrome range of special colors are now Pantone licensed, which will allow Indigo operators to reproduce specified Pantone Colors more accurately. Indigo says it is the only digital press manufacturer to offer a broad range of colors beyond the CMYK process colors to simulate spot, corporate and brand name colors as a firm might use in its so-called "trade-dress." TMN readers who are designers can certainly testify about the difficulty of accurate color specification in an ever more global market. The addition of the digital wild card made their job even harder. This is a good move therefore by Indigo. Presstek, Inc., has been very active at this Drupa fair. On 19 May Ryobi Limited of Japan unveiled in conjunction with Presstek, the Ryobi 3404DI, a new jointly developed two page, four color offset press. The press uses Presstek's new ProFire imaging system. Ryobi said it expects the primary markets for the 3404DI will be commercial printers, repro shops and in-plants. The same day, Didde Web Press of Overland Park, Kansas, which has sold more than 7,500 web offset presses in a variety of configurations in more than 60 countries, said it had entered into a non-binding memorandum with Presstek to pursue the further development of a strategic alliance. Presstek, has done a pretty good job in developing new alliances with press manufacturers and thereby increasing the potential sales of Presstek consumables like its PEARLdry plates. Xeikon has not been silent during Drupa either. One of the things Xeikon is intent upon doing is to educate the general public as to the ways in which digital printing can assist e-business growth. In remarks by CEO Alfons Buts the following example was offered: A digital color document customized by an online user is a powerful marketing tool that can both sell a product and increase customer loyalty. Edmunds.com, an online automotive information resource, provides a case study. By producing glossy full color customized automobile workbooks digitally on a Xeikon digital color press, Edmunds.com is dramatically enhancing its Customer Relationship Management. Moore Interactive Marketing Solutions actually produces Edmund's New-Car Buyer's Workbooks directly from online files on a Xeikon DCP/32D. The workbooks are customized according to information requested by online users creating a highly valued product that increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. By addressing the e-customer's need for both online and offline information, Edmunds expects it will be able to fulfill 100,000 orders a month by the end of this year. The days of Ink and Iron are indeed changing, to days filled with bytes and bandwidth. Paper Prices to Move Up? On 17 May, the Wall Street Transcript examined the Paper and Forest Products industry. Mark Weintraub of Goldman Sachs & Co said: "The fundamentals are in as good shape as they have been for many, many years. Particularly in pulp and paper, product prices are rising, supply/demand is in reasonably good shape, and there's very little new capacity coming on. So the outlook for the next couple of years looks rosy from a product pricing perspective."
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