Wide-Format & Signage January 2020

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020

40 The Great Wide-Format Migration is over - but many opportunities remain 42 A New Year Resolution for RESOLUTION 50 Springs Creative Leverages 133 Years of Textile History for Today’s Digital Printing

Photo courtesy of EFI Reggiani

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EDITOR Jessica Taylor jessica@whattheythink.com MANAGING EDITOR Richard Romano richard@whattheythink.com SENIOR EDITOR Cary Sherburne cary@whattheythink.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Paul Zimmerman paul@whattheythink.com 973-727-1376 PRESIDENT Eric Vessels eric@whattheythink.com 740-417-3333 COO Adam Dewitz adam@whattheythink.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Tom Crouser Jennifer Matt Christine Erna Mary Schilling Dave Fellman Heidi Tolliver-Walker John Giles Deb Thompson Elizabeth Gooding David Zwang CREATIVE SERVICES Bobbi Burow, CreativityTank LLC bobbi.burow@gmail.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For change of address or subscription information email: help@whattheythink.com Published by WTT Media, Inc. 2038 Ford Parkway #218, Saint Paul, MN 55116 ARTICLE REPRINTS Please contact your account executive PrintingNews.com PrintingNews.com—the web portal representing content from Printing News, Wide-Format & Signage—is devoted to delivering you timely news and multimedia content on a daily basis.

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EFI Connect 2020 Demonstrates the Value of Users Groups

W

ith the proliferation of trade shows – not only in the printing industry, but across the many different segments printing and display graphics companies are now entering, including textiles, 3D printing and more – many suppliers to the industry are investing, or continuing to invest, in users groups that include an annual inperson conference. Of course, they still participate in trade shows and likely will continue to do so. But they can’t afford to attend them all. With a users conference, they have the opportunity to get a large number of customers and prospects into a single venue to hear about the latest developments in their product portfolio, learn about their partners, and gain quality customer feedback on issues and opportunities.

EFI Connect is one such event. 2020 marks the 21st year this conference has been held. I’ve attended 20 of them, and I consistently hear from customers that the event is extremely valuable. They have multiple educational break-out sessions that allow users to pick and choose the content that is important or interesting for them (120 this year). But even more importantly, it’s an opportunity to meet and network with peers, sharing stories, best practices and more. Users have access to EFI executives and engineers so they can better understand the company strategy going forward, the product roadmap, and dig into the details of particular solutions they have or are thinking about acquiring. One attendee this year told me that he makes a point of seeking out executives, shaking their hand and having at least a brief conversation. Why? Here’s what he said: “This helps keep me top of mind with executives. They take note of who comes to the event and who doesn’t. And if I do have an issue, I know I can call them or

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request a meeting, and they will make time for me and help me sort things out.”

Networking with peers is also extremely valuable. The printing, sign & display businesses can be complicated, they are highly competitive with accelerating change. What I have seen at Connect and other users groups I have attended is a remarkable openness to sharing among attendees. They help each other think through issues, and they learn from each other – about how to solve mutual problems, new businesses they could enter, and even finding partners that will help them move their business forward.

And it is at these types of events where you are able to hear those stories and find those types of relationships.

All it takes is one “Aha” moment you can take back to your business to make attendance worthwhile!

There is another extremely important value proposition to these events, especially for a company like EFI that has been through so many changes in the last couple years – changes with the CEO, acquisition by a PE firm and movement from a public to private company, all within the last two years. If you own mission-critical products from a vendor partner like EFI, you really need to stay current with their strategies and plans.

These events offer a great opportunity to do that.

As a business leader, attending these events, and making them available to key employees – and even as a recognition reward for employees that don’t get to travel that much – has a high ROI. Plan them in! Find article here PrintingNews. com/21112261 ■

Cary Sherburne Senior Editor

cary@whattheythink.com

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For more information, visit Printingnews.com/10013323

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CONTENTS

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020

PRINTING NEWS COVER STORY

8 The Print Distributor Market Changes with the Times Richard Romano 10 Most Adults Don’t Learn Until They Have To Jennifer Matt

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12 Future-Proofing Your Workflow Pat McGrew 16 Meritocracy-Based Business Decisions Jennifer Matt 18 Industrial Inkjet Gets RIPPED Elizabeth Gooding 22 Technology + Direct Mail + Consumer Behavior = A Future to Bet On… Christine Erna 26 Winning the Marketing Automation War Joanne Gore

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29 Personalizing Your Service John Giles 30 Use Win Themes to Increase Prospect Receptivity Lisa Magnuson 32 Book Man: King of a Changing Bookmaking Paradigm Frank Romano 38 Cracking the QR Code Richard Romano WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE

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40 The Great Wide-Format Migration Is Over—But Many Opportunities Remain Richard Romano 42 A New Year Resolution for “Resolution” Richard Romano 46 Go With the Flow Kristen Dettoni

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46 Beyond Graphic Design Shoshana Burgett 49 Hiring in the Digital Age Debra Thompson

50 Springs Creative Leverages 133 Years of Textile History for Today’s Digital Printing Cary Sherburne 54 3 Things to Stop Doing in 2020 Pat McGrew 56 Digital Pigment Gains Ground on Analog Production Debbie McKeegan 58 Getting to Know AATCC Kerry King 61 There’s Gold in Those Hills Dave Fellman 66 Catch up on the latest trends at the ISA International Sign Expo 2020 Lori Anderson

Departments 4

Editorial

34

Watch List: Video

36

Printing News Product News

36

Wide-Format & Signage Product News

64

Classifieds/Supplier Directory

In the Know- Events FESPA NPOA Print Owners

Mar 24-27 Mar 12-14

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TRADE SERVICES

The Print Distributor Market Changes with the Times We spoke with Matt Bruno and Nathan Goldberg of the PSDA to get a bead on how the non-asset-based print sales market has evolved.

Article by Richard Romano

T

he print distributor market has evolved quite dramatically in only the past two decades, and nowhere is that more evident than in what exactly we call these businesses. Traditionally called “trade brokers,” that term has become passé, and “distributor” has become the preferred term for referring to what can be described as “non-asset-based sellers of print.”

“One thing that differentiates our manufacturers from other print manufacturers is that most, if not all, of them work as trade-only manufacturers,” said Matt Bruno, executive vice president of the Print Services & Distribution Association (PSDA). “So they don’t sell directto-end users for the most part.

And I think that the term ‘broker’ sort of diminishes what they do. It commoditizes their business. On the manufacturing side, they don’t like to look at their partners as brokers. They like to look at their partners as strategic partners to get their product to the end users. From just the outside looking in at the distributors, the term ‘broker’ I think also trivializes what they do.”

Semantics aside, the print distributor industry is a just-over-$5 billion industry, with the largest companies—which include Inner Workings, Williams Lea, HH Global and Proforma—account for about $2.5 to $2.7 billion of that.

“The remaining balance is shared by a strong, diverse group of smaller

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Nathan Goldberg

Matt Bruno

organizations,” Bruno said. “We range in membership size from $500,000 in annual revenue to $300 million in annual revenue and really everything in between.”

Like the printing industry in general, the majority of the distributors are small businesses.

It has become more difficult to accurately size the distributor industry because, as we have been seeing in commercial printing in general, the lines are blurring as “print” comes to include more and different applications, especially where wide-format, textile and industrial printing are concerned.

In the distributor industry, the line between print distributors and promotional product distributors is starting to blur.

“A lot of our promo product distributors do a little bit of print,” Bruno said. “What do you call a calendar? Is that a promotional

product or is that just print?”

And then there are printed 3D objects like pens, golf balls and smartphone cases—print or promotional products?

The evolution of the print distributor industry parallels the evolution of its trade association, the PSDA. Originally founded in 1946 as the National Business Forms Association, it became the Document Management Industries Association as its members increasingly handled more than forms. In the 2000s, it became the Print Services and Distribution Association as, again, what distributors were actually handling changed.

“You have really had to try to change with the dynamic in the print industry,” Bruno said. “What we were doing 10 years ago in the print industry is not what’s going on today, and the distributors are also a part of that. The flexibility and capability to

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TRADE SERVICES procure print became easier and more accessible, so they had to find a way to differentiate their business models by offering more than just print.”

Distributors today are handling everything from the original forms that PSDA founding members were distributing, to promotional products, window and floor graphics, trade show graphics and what we often call “tchotchkes.” They are also involved in services like event management.

At the end of the day, though, distribution is really about facilitating print procurement for their own customers and end users.

“They’ve really embraced this idea of technology and how they can use it to make buying and assisting their clients easier, and do it in a way that not only allows them to make it easier to buy for their clients, but then also make it easier for their suppliers to work with them,” Bruno said. “They’re creating these technologies that are connecting the entire supply chain from order entry all the way to order fulfillment.”

It was a tough journey, though. As companies like the Vistaprints and Shutterflys of the industry leveraged technology, it changed how print procurement had to work.

“I think that a lot of our distributors weren’t ready for that initially,” Bruno said. “Once they understood that this is how we have to do business going forward, they’re embracing it so well now that it’s been amazing to see how much they’ve been able to accomplish and how far they’ve come.”

However, that said, the technology available—especially to smaller businesses—isn’t always able to handle issues unique to print procurement. The affordable options for small businesses, such as those for the promotional products industry, are product or SKU-based.

That gives a distributor or printer a pool of specific products that they can offer to their customers.

“Well, print doesn’t work that way,” Bruno said. “When you’re trying to provide print to your customers, you’ve got everything from the stock that it’s being printed on to the colors, cover stock versus the inside stock— there are just a lot more product specifications that are required.”

“The technology that we’re working with is pretty limited in scope, function and process automation,” said PSDA President Nathan Goldberg. “So when we are trying to compete with larger companies that have their own platform or other industries where they have invested a lot more money in new technology and new processes, it’s very difficult.”

Technology has been one challenge, but distributors also face a human resources challenge.

“One of the other pervasive issues that we face is a lack of interest by younger generations, and the challenge of attracting top talent to our industry,” Goldberg said.

So the challenge is to craft a narrative that will convey the sense that, yes, print is cool, but there is more to this industry than just print.

“Part of what we’ve been able to do is create that narrative that’s not like, ‘Hey, we’re not selling print,’” Goldberg said. “We’re helping business owners grow their businesses from a marketing and branding and operational standpoint. Print is just one of the products that we happen to produce or sell, but it’s really about creating solutions.”

As e-commerce and web-to-print become more prevalent, as printing equipment, particularly digital printing equipment, becomes less expensive and easier to use, is there any advantage to working through—or even being—a distributor, rather than

working directly with a printer? And what about end users buying their own printing equipment themselves and starting up an inplant?

“There’s a lot of pressure from the equipment manufacturers to sell equipment, and they’re selling it to our end users,” Goldberg said. “We try to get to those customers ahead of time and say, ‘Listen, are you in—say—the construction business or are you in the printing business? If you’re in the printing business then you should definitely buy that flatbed printer. But if you’re in the construction business, then you should probably focus on running your construction organization and not necessarily running a printing business.’”

For end users, working through a distributor has a number of benefits.

“There is not a manufacturer that I’m aware of that owns all the equipment that your customer would need to produce everything they need, Goldberg said.

“If you need something produced and there are eight guys in the country that could produce it, I can find one of those eight guys, and I can find the best price based on the geography and the specs of the job.”

As with a lot of print these days, distributing is not just about selling products at the best price. It’s about cultivating a relationship with a customer beyond simply taking orders.

“I really like the opportunity to meet with business owners,” Goldberg said, “and talk to them about their organization, the challenges they’re having, the outcomes that they’re trying to produce, and see if there’s a place for me to provide value. It’s really the consultative side of the industry, which is really what I think most of us are after and really enjoy.”

Find article here PrintingNews. com/21109948 ■

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW

Most Adults Don’t Learn Until They Have To

Article by Jennifer Matt

D

o you know when most adults learn new things?

Not until they absolutely

have to.

Do you have a bunch of adults working for you in your print business?

Do you know what this means Jennifer Matt Jennifer Matt writes, speaks, and consults with printers worldwide who realize their ability to leverage software is critical to their success in the Information Age.

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for implementing any kind of new process, program, workflow, or software? It means that if you as the leader want learning to happen, you must inject the “have to” part of the equation.

Who in your company has the authority to enforce “have to”?

We all have hierarchies in our businesses, but there is also a lot of informal authority as well. There are also a lot of people at the top of hierarchies who have lost their ability to enforce “have to.” Many print businesses are run with labor that carries so much of the intellectual property in their heads—the business

owners/leaders believe they cannot operate without them. If you have employees like this, you may have lost your ability to enforce “have to.”

What happens in this scenario when new systems are brought in and there is nobody to enforce the “have to” part of learning? If you’ve been in this business for more than a few years, you can immediately think of many examples of this.

I have seen prepress automation systems operate as “black boxes” that nobody in the print business understands for years. There was never a “have to” learn this new system required so the system was

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW spend your valuable investment dollars on a promising new print software solution. Everything up until that point is considered strategic leadership. Then the rubber hits the road (as they like to say), because this solution needs to be operated, driven, and configured to work inside your company by your employees. This is actually the most strategic part of the equation. It is what actually delivers the ROI. The sales process delivers ROI to the vendor. The learning process (your team adopting the new system as their own, learning it, tweaking it to optimize your business) is when the system returns ROI to you.

It is tedious refinement of your data, your processes, your workflows.”

implemented and is a mystery to the entire organization. When asked about how files end up in certain places, the responses can include: “I have no idea, that’s just how it works.”

“Tom set this up five years ago and he left the company two years ago.

Nobody knows how it works.”

“We call the vendor when things go wrong; we don’t know what they do to fix it.”

“It doesn’t really work, but I’ve been working around it for years.”

The learning never happened. You can do lots of research, spend lots of time in the sales process, then

It is not fun. It does not involve people taking you out for nice dinners and buying expensive bottles of wine. It is tedious refinement of your data, your processes, your workflows. It takes your team’s persistence to keep chipping away at how to best utilize the system in your business. You don’t have to do any of this and a lot of printers don’t.

When print businesses don’t learn software systems, their people can muck their way through but nobody feels comfortable or confident in how it all works or what it could possibly do for you.

As the owner, you are ballistically frustrated because this system was

supposed to deliver efficiencies. It feels like it made the whole problem you were trying to solve worse. You want to kick someone—or maybe some inanimate object. Your people are complaining and blaming the vendor. The vendor is trying to explain what needs to be done to get closer to the ROI you were expecting.

This feels paralyzing.

Remember: most adults don’t learn until they have to—and if they never have to, they don’t.

You can’t attain the ROI on your investment until real learning happens by your adult employees.

Don’t confuse learning with training.

When adults ask for more training, be skeptical because this can be a method of resistance to actual learning. Adults learn by doing.

Adults learn when they have to. Don’t buy any more training until all the adults are perfectly clear that they are in the “have to” learn phase (like their job depends upon it).

How to assure learning is happening? I think the best thing to do is to require adult learners to demonstrate how they do their job to leadership and explain what they have learned and what they are still working on. Do not allow them to fill the time complaining. Their “have to” is to become an expert at the solution and then to constantly be refining that expertise to optimize the solution within your business.

Adults learn when they have to. Leadership has to deliver the “have to” and has to hold the adults accountable to keep learning. The rate of change driven by technology is only increasing. This requires everyone in your organization to be in the “have to” learn phase just about all the time. This can be a real bummer, especially for adults who hate change. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21109953 ■

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW

Future-Proofing Your Workflow

2019 ushered in new levels of interest in improving and automating workflows, but the level of actual implementation was not as high as we would have hoped to see by now.

Article by Pat McGrew

A

nother year is about to come to an end, and December is a great time for us to look back at what is happening in the world of production

Pat McGrew Pat McGrew has more than three decades as an evangelist for technology in communication. She is an author and regular writer in the industry trade press.

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workflow. Although a number of new software innovations come to light each year, there is always additional work that can be done. 2019 ushered in new levels of interest in improving and automating workflows, but the level of actual implementation was not as high as we would have hoped to see by now.

■ New hardware investments are certainly important, but they won’t realize their potential without an equally upgraded workflow.

■ Job onboarding can be a lengthy process that involves taking the customer’s intent, job

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FTWA W F W that many of these same environments have increased capacity, improved print quality, expanded their product offerings, and grown their businesses by investing in new printing and finishing hardware solutions. As exciting as these new hardware investments are, though, they won’t realize their potential without an equally upgraded workflow.

According to Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends’ research, the most significant bottlenecks between the sale of a print job and the act of printing of that job exist within the job onboarding and pre-production processes.

Some of these steps include dealing with the high number of small jobs that come in and finding ways to increase throughput.

Top Workflow ottlenecks Job onboarding can be a lengthy process that involves taking the customer’s intent, job specifications, substrate requirements, finishing requirements, approval requirements, and delivery requirements

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specifications, substrate requirements, finishing requirements, approval requirements, and delivery requirements through codification to ensure that the job can be executed.

■ As we move forward into 2020, your print business planning should include an in-depth review of every touchpoint from the point of sale to the point of delivery.

What is indering Workflow Automation Many of us already understand the reasons that the implementation of workflow automation typically falls short of expectations. Some businesses report that the investments in current software solutions aren’t producing the anticipated results. Some cite the costs associated with upgrading their production workflows, often specifying the expense of professional services required to make it work rather than the cost of the software. Others say they are battling more pressing issues in other areas of their businesses, and all of these complaints are valid and understandable. It can be difficult to find the right path when working toward increased workflow automation. We also know

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW Planning for the Future

N = 101 Total Respondents Source: NA Software Investment Survey; Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends 2018

through codification to ensure that the job can be executed as that customer envisions. This means that the specified substrate must be appropriate for the print device, in stock, and available in the quantities required. To accommodate any customer’s requests, the print service provider must dive into the print and finishing specifications to verify that they can be accomplished with the equipment available. The printer must also schedule the job so that it meets the delivery requirements specified on the job order.

Completing the job onboarding process is a tall order, and it often involves multiple people sending many emails and making numerous phone calls while also checking on stocked supplies and chasing jobs that are already in process. This isn’t an effective path to the future. No matter how fast your printing and finishing equipment is, it will never realize its true ROI unless the front end processes have been automated as much as possible.

As we move forward into 2020, your print business planning should include an in-depth review of every touchpoint from the point of sale to the point of delivery. How many people touch each job? Is your quoting and estimating solution automated? Is it connected to the supply chain to accurately reflect the price of stock at the time of the quote? These are just some of the data points—there are dozens more. If you don’t set aside time to review your workflow now, you might find future growth to be out of reach. An inefficient workflow can lead to extended print shifts and delays in delivery, even when faster equipment has been installed.

As you review where you are right now, think about your internal production workflow as well as the connectivity to your business workflow. Future-proofing your business also involves ensuring that all work is charged accurately, evaluating change requests against billing options, and controlling discounts so that the quote used by management to control business costs is an accurate reflection of what is billed for the job.

As you review where you are right now, think about your internal production workflow as well as the connectivity to your business workflow.

The Bottom Line For some companies, simply conducting a selfassessment of workflow automation can be enough to get the process going and drive a business transformation.

For many others, however, a neutral third party may be required to accomplish an assessment that uncovers bottlenecks and offers sensible recommendations.

Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends’ Production Workflow experts provide this service, leveraging industry surveys and on-site walk-throughs to provide high-quality feedback on the current state of workflow automation. If you’re unsure about your existing workflow and interested in future-proofing your business, contact ustoday! Find article here PrintingNews.com/21110114 ■

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For more information, visit Printingnews.com/10005229

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW

Meritocracy-Based Business Decisions A meritocracy will generate better ideas, help you make better decisions, and optimize the most expensive and precious resource you have—your people!

Article by Jennifer Matt

I

first heard the word “meritocracy” while reading Ray Dalio’s book Principles: Life and Work. Dalio speaks and writes extensively about what he calls “idea meritocracy.”

He runs the largest hedge fund and is one of the richest people in the world. My favorite quote from him is (after making a very large and painful mistake), “It changed my thinking from ‘I’m right,’ to ‘How do I know I’m right?’ It gave me the humility to balance my audacity.” In order to prevent that kind of mistake from happening again, he implemented an “idea meritocracy” in his business.

What does meritocracy have to do with running a successful print business or making good decisions about how you utilize print software?

Good question.

Technology is not typically a core strength of the current set of print business owners. In fact, it is quite rare. I don’t believe in surveys, but my guess would be that a large percentage of print business owners would cite technology decisions, strategy, and investments as one of their top concerns/frustrations for the future of their business.

We all know that the majority of the organizations in our industry are being run by people my age or older (I’m 52) who grew up before

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the Internet, digital printing, or cellphones. There was technology when we were growing up but not anything like there is today.

Decisions about areas of your business that lie outside of your core competency are the decisions that get most companies and leaders into trouble. Leaders think they should know everything, yet when they do an honest assessment, they know they are novices at best when it comes to certain areas like technology. This is humbling because we can all see how much technology is invading every corner of the print industry and your print business.

Leaders often share with me in private that they are scared to let anyone know how vulnerable they feel about technology’s growing role in their business.

I find the idea of meritocracy very appealing to this challenge. How do you make good business decisions when you are not the subject matter expert? Whom do you listen to? How do you know they are qualified? We all want the “best ideas” to come forward in our business as it pertains to investing in technology and we want to make the “best decisions” based on those ideas as it pertains to the implementation and rollout of these technologies.

A meritocracy is a system where

power/influence is awarded based on talent, performance, and effort (rather than a pure hierarchy of decision making which usually defaults to HIPPOs making most of the decisions): HIPPO = highest-paid person’s opinion I believe my consulting business operates on a meritocracy. I am the president and leader of the organization, so I am the HIPPO. Yet, so many decisions are not for me to make. How does this work in reality?

First and foremost, the leader has to be humbled into this role. The key humbling event for me was a tensionfilled conflict with my lead project manager. Many years ago, we were at odds for months. Looking back, I can now see that it was a testing period where I was not properly valuing his strengths and he didn’t understand or value mine. You cannot have a meritocracy without understanding and respecting the expertise of everyone on your team. So in our operating meritocracy today, everyone on the team is free to weigh in on any issue pertaining to a project they are working on. How do they get the chance to weigh in? All our project communication is through a single Slack Channel that we all have access to (including our customers). So you

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW might be thinking: that sounds terribly inefficient. I don’t want everyone weighing in on everything—how do you get anything done? Good question.

Everyone doesn’t weigh in on everything. You see all the communication, but you don’t weigh in on everything because everything isn’t your expertise. You weigh in when you have an idea. You weigh in when you feel you can add value. When I weigh in on a subject, chances are I’m not the most qualified (e.g. software development, user interface design, project management). I have experts in those areas on every project. I get to have an opinion; sometimes my opinion is taken up, other times the expert disagrees and their opinion has more weight because of that expertise.

A meritocracy means the hierarchy doesn’t define the decision power— merit does.

Why should you care about a meritocratic organization? Because is makes better decisions, empowers people throughout the hierarchy, and in the end will deliver better business results.

What does it take to move your organization to be more meritocratic?

It all starts with the leader. You as the leader need to believe in the fact that making decisions has to be a team sport where the most qualified team member carries more weight no matter where they appear in the organizational chart!

Hierarchy is a sub-optimal way to decide who has the best idea. This is a radical approach to working that goes against a lot of what we’ve been taught. Things like bosses are supposed to know everything, all decisions are made up the food chain, folks lower on the food chain are on a need-to-know basis. Those last three statements need to be retired from every organization.

A meritocracy will generate better ideas, help you make better decisions, and optimize the most expensive and precious resource you have—your people! Ray Dalio’s

book is really good; if you don’t have time for it (it’s rather lengthy), check out his website for smaller portions of his wisdom. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21110113 ■

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DIGITAL & INKJET

ColorGate Solutions provides print diversity for wide range of surface printing

Industrial Inkjet Gets RIPPED Get to know what’s under the industrial inkjet hood.

Article by Elizabeth Gooding

I

ndustrial inkjet is a bit of a nebulous term with various OEMs and analyst organizations throwing a mish-mash of potentially “industrial” applications and devices into the bucket. For our purposes, we consider an inkjet device to be in the industrial category if it supports any of the following: ■ Jets onto 3D objects ■ Jets onto materials that are not sold as “print” such as wood, fabric and other textiles ■ Creates component parts of a larger manufacturing process Through this categorization we Elizabeth Gooding Elizabeth Gooding helps companies to streamline their business process, improve customer retention, and maximize new opportunities for document design, print and Internet technology.

Contact her at Elizabeth@inkjetinsight.com .

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can include inkjet printing on rigid materials for application segments such as décor and laminates, ceramics, automotive and transport, architectural materials and glass decoration, and direct-to-object printing into our industrial bucket.

As the number of surfaces or substrates that inkjet can either jet ink onto or create through jetting materials expands – so does the size of the bucket.

Sizing the Industrial Bucket To give a sense of how diverse the definitions may be, and how quickly they are expanding, just look at some analyst estimates. I.T. Strategies estimates the industrial/ digital specialty print for pay (PFP) market at around $16.4 billion worldwide, while Smithers Pira sizes the industrial market at around $75 billion.

I.T. Strategies notes that analyzing digital print markets based on value can be deceptive. They place

the value of the total digital PFP market worldwide at up to $58B representing around 30% of the total value of commercial analog PFP worldwide. However, that total value is based on less than 10% of the total analog volume – so 30% of the value for 10% of the volume.

While value per volume is generally higher for digital than for analog production, this is particularly true in the industrial space where short run, customized projects can be run efficiently at a high profit margin in an inkjet environment that is tailored to the needs of the application.

How Industrial Inkjet is i erent Ink and print heads must be specialized to be compatible with various surfaces and processes. This poses new challenges for color and ink management for these devices that are being met by advanced software in the form of inkjet Raster Image Processors or RIPs solutions.

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DIGITAL & INKJET A RIP is a specific set of software for image rendering. A RIP transforms a page description language file like a PDF into bite sized pieces that the printing device can understand. At the most fundamental level, it converts vector image instructions to raster image instructions (usually a .TIFF or .BMP). It also manages color and screening by providing instructions to the Digital Front End (DFE). A RIP may be included as part of a DFE or can be independent. In either case, the RIP plays a critical part in coordinating the printing process. A RIP should be

In this article, we review the most common independent inkjet RIP providers that do not build the printer, but support custom inkjet development in industrial manufacturing integration. compatible with the printhead interface and drive electronics to direct finer ink, drop and color channel control.

As inkjet has become specialized for different application segments, RIPs have also specialized to meet specialized needs. Industrial inkjet applications share several special features that RIPs need to account for such as:

■ Large print area – wide print bars – single-pass print arrays ■ Large image sizes - large data files post raster – data/file size handling is key component ■ Substrate compatibility – require specialized solutions - primer, corona, plasma or flame pretreatment ■ Ink formulations to withstand abrasion, weathering, temperature, adherence to substrate ■ Image quality sensitivity - nongrainy appearance for detailed or items viewed close up ■ Specialized fluid requirements (flood coating, spot/clear coating, white underlayment, texture) ■ Seamless print repeat - flat, textured, curved and round surfaces ■ Integrate with existing manufacturing processes - environment, speed, manufacturing post handling

Top Independent Industrial RIPs Industrial Inkjet OEMs may provide their own RIP software or use an independent RIP software provider.

Some OEMs offer more than one option. Industrial inkjet requires RIPs which provide specialized ink control for non-optimized substrates in aggressive production environments, as well as print engine compatibility.

RIPs in the industrial category have been beefed up to meet these needs including: ■ Multi-level screening with specialized algorithms for image improvement to remove graininess, banding/artifacts/ streaking ■ Color management (expanded gamut) to control ink usage, spot, single or 4+ color image processing, spot color library conversion, multiple profile use,

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color calibration, accurate color space rendering, out of gamut viewing, WYSIWYG screen accuracy Calibration interaction with the print engine Large file management to enable high speed data processing for variable data, bitmaps, fonts, graphics, barcodes Print engine compatibility enhancements including improved naming conventions, resolution, bit depth, gray levels, rendering, algorithm and screening options Print efficiency options such as cropping, nesting, ganging and die-cutting Management of modified spread and choke features or ink and surface tension differences Up-to-date print head and engine compatibility

In this article, we review the most common independent inkjet RIP providers that do not build the printer, but support custom inkjet development in industrial manufacturing integration: ColorGate, GIobal Graphics and Global Inkjet Solutions. These RIP vendors offer the robust RIP features required above, but each focuses on different characteristics of custom industrial print system requirements.

While RIP solutions from these suppliers can also be used in wide format, offset and flexography environments, their focus on industrial inkjet compatibility and the various production needs of customized industrial systems is where these suppliers add the most muscle.

IPs Fle Muscles in i erent Ways An industrial RIP must be designed for compatibility with highly customized print configurations

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DIGITAL & INKJET and demanding print requirements.

ColorGate, GIobal Graphics and Global Inkjet Solutions focus on just that; customized inkjet solutions for worldwide markets which have specialized requirements. These RIPS are intended for integration within custom machine designs to complete end-to-end solutions. Each of the offers described below provides different options from a developer and end user perspective, and while there is significant overlap, each supplier emphasizes different strengths, for example: ■ ColorGATE Digital Output Solutions, GmbH, as the name implies, emphasizes color control.

■ Global Graphics excels at reducing banding and increasing speed performance.

■ Global Inkjet Systems (GIS) focuses on streamlining the inkjet integration process.

ColorGATE Digital Output Solutions, GmbH ColorGATE is active in both commercial and industrial printing. In industrial, their primary focus areas are décor printing for furniture and flooring, ceramics, textile printing and high-speed packaging using their modular software solution called Production Server. Designed for single pass or XY inkjet systems, ColorGate offers custom configurations through specialized modules. Modules allow the software to be customized to any workflow, machine design or print engine for standardized processing from the printer’s OEM or opened for custom print head testing and development for those in the R&D or assembly stages.

Strength in Color Control ColorGate manages color throughout the production process even in the most challenging conditions, such as when working

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with multi-channel printing systems with non-standard primary colors.

The production process includes protecting color within a run, on jobs across print devices and print sites and even when color matching to an archived print run.

ColorGate offers independent or direct RIP integration to the print process, as well as color and surface capture solutions; such as Rapid Spectro Cube and the Surface Director designed for hard-to-mimic products.

ColorGate can anticipate the look of finished products through process or spot color the profiling, simulation and proofing functions for nontraditional inkjet printed products such as ceramic, carpet and wood.

Global Graphics Global Graphics develops software components which integrate within an OEM’s DFE and are designed for the industrial, corrugated packaging, label and flexible print markets.

Their RIP components are primarily used to create digital front ends and workflows in new generation inkjet production presses. Components have been developed from the ground up to address the high-speed requirements of OEMs serving these markets. The Harlequin RIP, ScreenPro screening engine, and PrintFlat solutions from Global Graphics can be found within Indigo, Mark Andy and HP wide format and high-speed systems. In addition to their industrial focus, Global Graphics has attracted a large share of the photobook and newspaper markets.

Powerful Banding Reduction and Speed Improvements Speed matters when processing large files at high rates. For highspeed inkjet, any slow down or data clutching becomes time and money lost. Global Graphics delivers fast

(Top) Visual banding before PrintFlat (Next) Visual banding after PrintFlat

RIP speeds that result in savings in build costs in other areas such as computing power and hardware and energy consumption.

Global Graphics ScreenPro and PrintFlat components drive the press directly with screening on the fly through an OEM’s print engine. ScreenPro Direct improves image print quality for high-speed production inkjet printing. Even with additional print bars to support extended gamut colors, there is no loss of performance. PrintFlat also addresses inkjet banding caused by variations within and between printheads which can cause cross process print defects

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DIGITAL & INKJET

Global Inkjet Systems combines RIP into ink and print engine control

Global Inkjet Systems (GIS)

Get the Muscle You Need

GIS differentiates itself from other vendors by offering a full design and development approach to OEMs, machine builders and system integrators. The GIS RIP is part of a complete drive electronics and ink system solution for a wide range of industrial inkjet printheads.

GIS focuses on rugged industrial print environments operating 24/7, including graphical print applications such XY scanning, single pass and direct-to-shape printers, as well as fluid deposition applications such as 3D additive manufacturing, functional materials and coatings.

GIS is often called on to help improve print quality or to improve the system output. These conversations with developers can lead to breakthroughs in screeners, RIPs and other image processing software, as well as improving downstream management of print alignment with add-ons such as digital coatings.

Industrial inkjet can come in many shapes, sizes and configurations depending on the print requirement and whether the system is configured by an OEM or as a custom, integrated solution. The choice of RIP can impact color capabilities, ink savings, print quality and integration compatibility. For industrial inkjet, understanding RIP capabilities and the integration of the RIP with the overall print and manufacturing workflow should be a big part of the analysis. Here are some of the fundamental questions to ask: ■ What RIP is included?

■ Can I specify my own RIP solution?

■ What RIPs are compatible?

■ How can the RIP be integrated?

■ How will an in-line or off-line RIP impact production?

■ How will a RIP embedded with the DFE manage color?

■ What parts of production does the RIP control?

■ How are color management and ink savings controlled?

■ How is variable data incorporated into the workflow?

■ What print languages are compatible with variable data paths?

■ Where is image preparation integrated for die cutting, post coating and embellishment applications?

You will also want to test the RIP image processing and rendering accuracy by using a fingerprint

An Exercise in Integration GIS’s products are fully integrated from software through to electronics.

This approach offers end-to-end solutions and allows customers to customize software components and create their own unique systems and intellectual property.

GIS works as a development partner with their customers enabling rapid development of high-performance systems. The use of a single source of data path management reduces customers’ time to market.

file with various types of images, resolutions and rendering intents included. Also make sure to stress test the systems with large files.

Subjected to harsh manufacturing conditions, high surface variability and challenging data requirements, industrial strength RIPs are needed to avoid downtime, print defects and ease the path to customized development. The three competitors discussed here are helping to build a stronger industrial inkjet ecosystem by meeting the demand to handle large files and variable data path requirements while adding their own “special sauce” to serve customers.

■ Global Inkjet Systems is moving collaboration way upstream by working with printhead manufacturers to test wide ranges of printheads for workflow reliability and capability within ink development and the printhead drive electronics during initial development.

■ ColorGate offers in-line color correction increasing productivity with color quality control. Measurements can be taken with immediate correction during the printing process before the deviation can even be seen by the human eye.

■ Global Graphics focuses on print quality issues inherent to inkjet with the integration of PrintFlat to an OEM’s print solution. PrintFlat addresses wide print bar, cross process and variances which have challenged inkjet developers.

In an industrial inkjet environment, a lot of pieces go into creating a specialized solution, but it’s the RIP that does the heavy lifting. Make sure you know what’s under the hood. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21109987 ■

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FINISHING & MAILING

Technology + Direct Mail + Consumer Behavior =

A Future to Bet On… Increase engagement, generate new leads, track real-time results and stay top of mind with your customers and prospects.

Article by Christine Erna

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he marriage of traditional and modern media with a sprinkle of behavioral science and analytics is a recipe for the future of direct mail marketing.

As newer technologies like AI, VR, Christine Erna Christine Erna is President of Strategic Postal Advisors. She consults to improve address quality while reducing return mail expenses. She can be reached at: cje@strategicpostaladvisors.com .

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chatbots and voice recognition software increasingly enter our everyday connected marketing landscape, one important question begs to be asked: Is there still a place for direct mail?

Without question!

“The Mail Moment” is a real thing with real data and statistics that prove the value of mail. There is less competition in the mailbox than ever before, and savvy direct mail marketers are seizing this valuable “mailbox real estate” to get some amazing results with their campaigns.

Direct mail has come a long way

since the catalogs and postcards of yesteryear. Today’s direct mail, as produced by the thousands of users creating the billions of direct mail marketing pieces, can incorporate technology and video alongside print, and successfully engage its target audience.

The success and resurgence that marketers are experiencing with direct mail marketing is evidenced by the increased response rates and ROI figures their campaigns achieve.

Their formula for success includes thinking beyond tradition, integrating technology, making direct mail more

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FINISHING & MAILING

experiential and utilizing relevant messaging through variable content.

All have a role in contributing to the increased success metrics of the direct mail marketing pieces and campaigns that utilize these elements and tools.

There is a lot of marketing data available to support integration

of consumer behavior analytics in seamless combination with both physical and digital workflows. The true power of customer behavior analytics lies in being able to accurately anticipate buyer behavior so that you can make relevant offers at each stage of the customer lifecycle. What better way to do this

than a technology-enabled direct mail piece?

Digitally Enhanced Mail is all about adding digital technologies like AR, NFC, video-in-print, buy now, QR, etc., to create captivating experiences that launch people toward your digital properties.

Augmented reality is a hugely

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FINISHING & MAILING wave of QR codes presents a sleeker look and allows for more branding and messaging within its design.

Work a “dotless” QR code into your icon or logo or blend it into your graphics for a powerful physical-todigital experience.

Added Value

engaging medium. It creates a wide range of opportunities to make direct mail interactive.

Near Field Communication (NFC) uses microchip technology. NFC allows recipients to instantaneously engage with your digital content without having to download an app or open a web browser.

Video-In-Print makes your do a double take on an unexpected mail delivery. First impressions are everything, and having the ability to hit “play” on a page is something your consumers will not soon forget.

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Buy Now Technology allows consumers to simply scan digitallyenabled mail to drive them to your social media platforms, and thanks to Buy Now Technology, convert them into paying customers.

Redesigned QR Codes can transport your customers to your online store, a product video or a live stream of video content. The new

Research shows that printed collateral continues to be a compelling and successful way to capture the attention of your target audience. However, when coupled with video, it has the capability to not only gain consumers’ attention, but most importantly, hold it. According to Adweek, 76% of companies who have used videos in the past year report a direct business impact. And 90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions, according to HubSpot.

Let’s not forget the opportunities the US Postal Service offers with digital engagement: Informed Delivery, Informed Visibility and the 2020 promotional programs. The best news with these offers is there is no cost to participate. You combine your physical and digital communications

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FINISHING & MAILING

and by participating in the promotions, you earn free postage credits. Who doesn’t like free?

Knowing the precise moment when mail is delivered helps marketers coordinate other complementary media -- sending an email, social post or search ad to support and enhance the delivery of a physical mail piece.

■ 48% of marketers surveyed in a 2019 USPS Direct Mail Study say Informed Visibility has increased website traffic.

Consumer behavior analytics has begun to emerge—and we are still seeing a lot of growth in this space now.

Consumer behavior analytics captures full engagement session details – at a much more granular level than web analytics – and allows brands to get alerts when certain behaviors are exhibited, replay sessions and view heat-maps to gain insight about usability.

Many successful marketers are utilizing these tools and the data they generate and are seeing increased response rates and campaign results

by responding to these displayed behaviors. These enhance the marketer’s efforts to drive behavior, get people to notice and remember your brand/product, get them to behave/ respond to certain messages and finally to purchase/pay what we want.

Consumer behavior analytics has begun to emerge—and we are still seeing a lot of growth in this space now.

Testing is a key ingredient to using the data and metrics available from behavior analytics and analyzing the results generated along the spectrum from simple to sophisticated consumer behaviors based on changes to the

message, media or both.

As a result of these new and innovative tools, mail has joined the connected world and is vital for the continued success, resurgence and growth the direct mail industry has always delivered. Direct mail marketing campaigns have a new cornerstone: Engaging Technology.

This cornerstone allows forwardthinking direct mail marketers to elevate their results, responses and ROI exponentially.

Today there are so many more great industry outlets available to drive engagement. Inviting your clients to learn and explore more and new ways to use mail can only deepen your relationships and reinforce the value you provide.

Each of us has an opportunity to share the valuable information with our clients and support their participation. The goal of the USPS promotions is to promote the use of the mail to organically grow their volumes/business. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21109939 ■

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Winning the

Marketing

Automation War Fueled by mindset, society and technology, a new generation of business buyers is forcing companies to re-think how they approach every aspect of their business.

Article by Joanne Gore

T

here is no disputing, denying or ignoring the fact that understanding who wants to buy from you, and providing them with solutions that matter, is critical to business growth. Marketers across all industries are investing in solutions that help capture, distill and present customer data – and automating how leads are generated, scored, nurtured and converted – from suspect to prospect to customer.

Similar to Print MIS, which automates a print shop’s production workflow, marketing automation software automates your digital marketing ecosystem. Early Joanne Gore Joanne Gore is founder of Joanne Gore Communications. She has spent the last three decades helping companies maximize their marketing and communications efforts.

Contact Joanne at joanne@ joannegorecommunications.com .

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solutions provided companies with a simple, affordable means to send personalized emails and newsletters to prospects and customers. Today, these solutions are integral to delivering a comprehensive omnichannel experience that encompasses digital, social and even print touchpoints throughout the customer journey.

In the last five years, marketing automation has grown into a $1.65 billion industry which saw over $5.5 billion worth of acquisitions being made by the likes of Salesforce, IBM, Adobe and Microsoft – all vying to win the marketing automation war.

The Evolution of Marketing Automation The transition from analog to digital technology began in the mid1980s, affecting many industries and businesses – particularly print. With this transition, the dominance of data – and consequently the ethos of marketing – turned a corner.

It started with CRM (Customer Relations Management), which provided firms with a database of their current and prospective customers. Once marketers realized that CRMs were home to a treasure trove of data necessary for leadgenerating campaigns – the path toward marketing automation was formed. Having these insights to customer and prospect relationships aligned to sales funnels and pipelines enabled marketers to plan, execute and monitor their email marketing campaigns and get insights into the metrics that would help improve the performance of future campaigns.

The battle for CRM dominance was forged.

Constant Contact launched their email marketing software in 1995, followed in 1998 by Unica, that launched their own marketing campaign management tool called “Impact!”. In 1999, Eloqua emerged, and by 2003 their product had morphed into a marketing

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY automation software that targeted Business to Business (B2B) marketers and firms. That same year, Salesforce launched their browser-based CRM interface that would advance market acceptance (and ultimately demand) for cloud-based solutions.

Eloqua’s success in the marketing automation space spawned competitors, including Pardot, Marketo and Hubspot in the mid2000s. Around this time, internet speeds had drastically increased, fueling the shift to cloud-based marketing automation services.

Shortly thereafter was the birth of social media and stand-alone landing pages, which spurred marketing automation providers to begin cultivating more expansive marketing tools.

Simply having an email address was no longer enough to feed the multi-channel beast.

Social media and landing pages provided a goldmine of prospect data, resulting in opportunities to execute highly targeted, highly personalized and highly customized marketing campaigns. However, the repetitive, time-consuming tasks and manual data entry necessary to execute these campaigns plagued marketers. It was evident that those who were engaging in best marketing automation practices would prevail at attracting new customers.

Between 2010 and 2014 big players in marketing automation, CRM and data capture, began acquiring smaller firms as a means to become all-in-one marketing automation providers – and tap into a market largely ignored: small- and medium-sized businesses with lean marketing teams. For a while it was hard to remember who acquired whom. ExactTarget acquired Pardot, then ExactTarget was acquired by Salesforce. This acquisition period

turned the marketing automation industry into one dominated by a handful of giants, with new smaller players, like MailChimp, chipping away at industry-dominated market share. This was the beginning of the marketing automation wars.

Why Marketing Automation Matters for Print Providers The more time you spend touching something, whether it’s manual data entry, preparing estimates and proposals, reconciling accounts - or creating email campaigns - the more you eat away at your profits. For print providers to become more efficient, streamline their processes and stop costly mistakes in their tracks before they result in customer experience casualties, automating and optimizing workflows – both production and marketing – is required.

Industry 4.0 is the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. Key technologies include cyber-physical systems like adaptive robots, the internet of things (IoT), cloud

computing and AI. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Automation is crucial for print businesses to thrive in an Industry 4.0 world. By connecting machines, work pieces and systems, they can gain selfawareness and self-predictiveness. In the same way that your shop floor workflow connects equipment and processes, marketing automation software connects digital campaigns to digital platforms. This permits data to flow seamlessly in and out of any number of platform touchpoints - including website, CRM and social media platforms - allowing companies to conduct more precise, more targeted and personalized campaigns.

The Magic Bullet – Direct Mail Direct mail plays an important role in providing the omnichannel experience expected by today’s generation of print and business buyers. Direct mail’s response rate is on the rise – averaging a whopping 4.4% compared to

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY email’s rate of 0.12%. Nearly half of people retain direct mail for future reference. Canada Post proved how physical print-mail increased conversions when combined with email. Integrating direct mail with digital actually was better at driving consumer action than just using one or the other.

According to a Vision Critical study of customer-obsessed companies, 2020 is the year that customer experience surpasses price and quality as a key brand differentiator.

Customers will indeed pay more for a better customer experience and are four times more likely to jump to the competition when a problem is service-related instead of product or price-related, or if they feel they weren’t treated well.

A critical component included in the customer experience is the omnichannel expectation of today’s generation of print and business buyers. These buyers, heavily influenced by the consumer hats they wear, expect to interact and/ or purchase at anytime, from anywhere, using any device – even their watch. Providing a quality and uniform omnichannel experience that seamlessly blends the offline physical world with an online digital one increases brand awareness, loyalty and excellence. This points directly back to the data, and its role in keeping customers engaged with targeted information that matters to them across all digital, mobile and physical channels.

Marketing automation tools mine and house data – like images, videos, audio clips and more – allowing you to provide a highly-personalized and customized marketing campaign and increase the chances of conversion.

Print providers need to understand the crucial role of data, and how to capture, store, manage, output

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and present it. Managing not just their own data, but also customers’ data, has taken on an entirely new meaning for print professionals, whether you’re trying to attract new business – or grow customer walletshare. It’s no longer enough to offer print solutions with simple name and address personalization.

Brand Opportunities in an Omnichannel World The global marketing automation market size is expected to grow from an estimated value of $3.3 billion in 2019 to $6.4 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 13.9%. At the same time, the CMO Council forecasts direct mail volume will increase at an average of 4 or 5% annually. Print and marketing services providers who make use of all media for targeting prospects are benefiting from marketing automation to optimize their data and increase open rates, conversion rates – and success rates.

In today’s world, data is king and buyer expectations have shifted.

To reap maximum benefits from marketing campaigns, recognize how

vital data is to your print business’ growth and how important it is to mine and curate that data. Both for yourself, as well as for your customers. Integrated direct mail and digital campaigns boost attention spans – people spend 39% more time engaging in direct mail versus digital campaigns alone.

Providing a multi-touchpoint, engaging and relevant omni-channel experience becomes a brandshowcasing opportunity every step of the way – beyond your website – throughout the customer acquisition journey and beyond.

It includes all assets, from your website to your invoice – and from your digital campaign to your direct mail campaign. Salutations, naming conventions, logos and taglines all leave an impact on the customer experience – however subtle, positive or negative.

The industry is poised at a time where direct mail is considered a premium channel and an integral part of the customer acquisition process.

Highly personalized and customized direct mail engages today’s buyers with a memorable brand experience.

Adding textures and finishes like embossing, debossing, raised ink, foil or glitter teases people to do more than just see the print. It entices them to experience a truly unique sensory brand experience that screams out: “Touch me!”

Printers can help customers – and themselves – by looking at ways to adapt to shifting customer expectations to achieve maximum growth and remain as competitive as possible. With marketing and workflow automation solutions to help you squeeze the most from your bottom line, print providers can reap the spoils of the marketing automation wars. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21110120 ■

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Personalizing Your Service Printers have always been searching for that elusive product or service that will have new business breaking down their doors with orders.

Article by John Giles

“

Convergence” is the new buzz word in the printing industry as trade shows now place a variety of printing segments under one roof so printers can see new possibilities for additional revenue. Maybe selling a larger variety of print services will make a printer more profitable, but shouldn’t you start selling something that you already have?

Success for printers comes from getting in front of customers and explaining the benefits of the products and services the printer can offer. Customers won’t know how a printer can help them if they are never told. Before you write that check for that new gizmo, make sure your customers and prospects know what you can do for them.

Personalized Printing Variable data printing has long been touted as the next big thing, but few printers go beyond using it to address envelopes or add a name to the salutation. Most printers already own software and equipment that can personalize text and artwork in a dynamic, audience-of-one document.

Adding more personalization to a printed piece can dramatically increase response rates and make John Giles John Giles is a consultant for the printing industry who works with Tom Crouser and CPrint International to help printers prosper. Contact John at (954) 224-1942, john@cprint.com , or johng247@aol.com .

it more valuable to the customer.

It can allow the message to better resonate with customers, enhance the overall customer experience and improve the efficiency of customer communications.

Personalized printed messages can target information such as demographics, location and life events. It is a powerful tool, especially for anyone asking for money or selling a product or service.

Many businesses already maintain historical data records of customer interactions that can be exported to a printed piece. A customer data platform as simple as a Quickbooks database or a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be the springboard for powerful marketing information.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in personalization is that many smaller companies don’t know where to start. Customers don’t buy it because printers haven’t shown them what can be done or spent the time to train the customer to provide the right database information and files. Printers must take time to demonstrate and teach customers how to provide their data to increase the value to their marketing pieces including supplying printed examples of how the piece will look.

They provide a free assessment of the customer’s database, including correction and preparing data for print. They review the data for the customer, demonstrate how to properly construct and export the fil, and print a couple of samples using the customer’s data. They

eliminate the fear the customer has about submitting data and get the customer closer to saying “yes” to an order. Providing this simple service also allows them to demonstrate their expertise in variable data printing.

Printers can charge more for personalization in printing than a static print job because of the increased results most users have. It looks complicated and expensive to customers, so it automatically adds value in the customer’s mind. Taking the time to talk to the customer about the data they already collect, how to format it properly and then spending time to show them how easy it is to export will help differentiate a printer from their competitors.

Printers need to review their internal processes for accepting data files for variable data and personalization. Does the prepress staff have the tools to clean up and correct customers’ data files? Are the key digital operators trained to import the data files into the templates? Is the most efficient software being used? Are there instructions on how the customer should submit data files? Does the printer’s own marketing material use VDP and personalization? Does the salesperson have marketing collateral that can be used to demonstrate the advantages of personalization, and can they describe the benefits of personalization?

Don’t miss your chance to build your business with tools you already have. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21103981 ■

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SALES CLINIC

Use Win Themes to

Increase Prospect Receptivity Turn your prospects into customers.

Article by Lisa Magnuson

T

here’s a secret in sales that you need to know - a secret so straightforward, yet so potent and up until now surprisingly little understood. Chances are your competitors don’t know it. I’m talking about “Win Themes.” Don’t be embarrassed if you’ve never heard the term; only those “in the know” (which includes all my clients) really understand the concept and how to use it for remarkable results.

What are Win Themes?

Win Themes are the intersection of your prospect’s priorities and your strengths. For example: ■ your prospect specific differentiators ■ the messages that will be reinforced throughout your proposal, presentation or demo ■ the top three to four areas of overlap that create a sweet spot which translates into immediate prospect receptivity ■ a competitive advantage Note: The opposite of a Win Theme approach is simply sharing everything your company can offer and hoping that your prospect can Lisa Magnuson Lisa Magnuson founded Top Line Sales in 2005. It has a proven track record of helping companies overcome the barriers to winning TOP Line Accounts. Learn more at www.toplinesales.com .

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pull out what’s important to them.

Win Themes can only be built on a solid understanding of your prospect’s vision, mission, goals, priorities, initiatives and problems.

For example, if your prospect desperately needs to finish a project but lacks resources, and your organization has expert resources with a track record of getting projects done, then you have a Win Theme (and most likely a sale).

Steps to Develop your Win Themes

1. Gather the account team to nail down your prospect’s top three to four priorities.

2. Think through why each priority is important to them.

3. Align your company’s strength with each priority.

4. Develop your evidence for each Win Theme.

5. Use during sales conversations, presentations, proposals and demos.

Sample Prospect Questions to Uncover Win Themes ■ What are your biggest priorities (objectives, goals, initiatives, projects) for this year? Next two to three years?

■ What are the top priorities of your company’s senior leadership team?

■ How do your short-term goals compare to your long-term goals?

■ Where are most of your resources (people, time, financial, tools) focused this year?

■ Has your team placed any weight on your priorities or challenges?

■ What underlying drivers are

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SALES CLINIC ■

■

■

■

most affecting your priorities or challenges?

How are current challenges affecting your business? What will happen if challenges aren’t addressed?

What would be the biggest benefits to your business if you addressed this problem (or opportunity) area?

Several of our other clients in your industry are focused on X, is this a priority for you as well?

Would a good summary of your most important focus areas be X?

offered to support each Win Theme.

Evidence might be a case study, customer testimonial or reference or a story that underscores your point.

To test for strength and validity, have a neutral trusted adviser read through your proposal or listen to your presentation and tell you the top three things that stood out.

The TOP Line Account Sales Success Model ■ Common close ratio: 25% ■ Add consistent pre-call planning: +20% ■ Add account strategy work, including Win Themes: +20% ■ NEW CLOSE RATIO: 65% +

Free Pre-Call Planning Tool Available for Download

Why So Powerful?

To help you jump-start your precall planning efforts, including Win Themes to ensure a higher degree of success, I’m offering an easy to use Pre-Call Planning Tool. Simply visit www.toplinesales.com to download this invaluable tool today.

Once Win Themes are identified, tested and expanded, they can be incorporated into proposals, presentations and other prospect interactions. Analyze your Win Themes in order of impact.

Determine what evidence can be

Win Themes can only be built on a solid understanding of your prospect’s vision, mission, goals, priorities, initiatives and problems.

Win Themes. My client re-purposed each answer, including the executive summary, finding creative ways to highlight and reinforce the Win Themes throughout their response.

The result: a big sale and a new customer for them!

Get the Winning Plays of TOP Sales Leaders

Strong Win Themes will effectively lock out the competition.

A Sales Success Story One of my clients was recently responding to a sizable RFP (request for proposal) doing a great job of answering each question. However, after reading through the entire response, there weren’t any stand out’ points that the prospect could hold on to. Utilizing the Win Theme approach, we zeroed in on several prospect goals that were areas of strengths for my client’s company and bingo, we had our

Discover how identify, develop and repeatedly close 5X deals – five times your average contract size – with this essential Playbook for TOP sales leaders. My new book, The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly is now available on Amazon. Check it out at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0998224715.

Learn How to Gain an Executive Sponsor Get the book, The TOP Seller Advantage: Powerful Strategies to Build Long-Term Executive Relationships. It includes proven strategies to ensure sellers develop long lasting executive access. Check it out at http://amzn.to/2hdas8J. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21110109 ■

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Book Man:

King of a Changing Bookmaking Paradigm King Printing Company takes on-demand to the next level.

Article by Frank Romano

E

-book volumes are static.

There is a surge in demand for printed books. Readers have discovered that you can give books as gifts, lend books to friends, sell them to others, or actually read a printed book years after acquisition without any device or software. And books always look good on a shelf.

The growth of printed books is based on two trends. The first is self-publishing. I went to an authors’ event recently and walked the aisles filled with tables of self-published books in all shapes and sizes. Selfpublishing has been engendered by the second trend: on-demand printing (ODP). The concept of ODP has been around since the 1980s when Kodak and Xerox had toner-based printers that could print and bind in the same machine.

When I wrote my first book in 1971, I asked the printer for 500 copies. The printer said that their Frank Romano Frank Romano has spent over 50 years in the printing and publishing industries. He is the author of 40 books, the Editor of the International Paper Pocket Pal, a contributor and author of numerous articles.

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minimum run was 5,000. “You can throw away 4,500 of them,” he said. In 1988, I consulted for the University of Vermont to set up an on-demand book facility. They linked to the Copyright Clearance Center so that content could be selected and then used in course materials sold in the campus bookstore. By 1992, the concept was catching on and by 1993, Indigo and Xeikon printed in full color.

It took a while for on-demand printing to gain traction. There were quality and workflow issues that had to evolve. Those issues did evolve and improved and today printing on demand, which is a euphemism for digital printing, is growing in use by publishers worldwide.

I contend that of the 700 million books produced in the U.S. last year, about half were printed on demand using digital technology. No one really tracks this area very well.

There are still very long print runs of “best sellers” that require big web offset presses, but the changes in the book world are being wrought by digital technologies for shorter and even medium runs.

This brings me to King Printing Company of Lowell, Mass. Founded in 1978 as a copy shop by Sid Chinai and his wife Amita, it ran

with Sid selling by day and running the press and finishing systems by night working alongside his wife.

Today, both of them still work in the organization that has been run by their son Adi Chinai since 2003.

Adi graduated from Bentley College with a degree in finance and never intended to run the printing business.

But sometimes an individual with a different point of view brings a new perspective to a business.

I would often run into Sid and Adi at trade shows around the world.

They are always looking for the next “gizmo” that will give King a production advantage.

During the 1980s, King looked for a better way of handling short-run printing, and in 1988 they installed their first digital press, a glorified copier. They soon had multiple printing systems in operation. These were the days before the Xerox Docutech. The short-run printing business took off and King Printing concentrated on it, eventually transitioning into one of the first installations of a series of Docutech presses. They switched to Heidelberg (later Kodak) Digimaster sheetfed monochrome digital presses. These were the black and white days and high-tech manuals were the big ondemand printed product.

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

In 1994 the company moved into CTP to feed its offset presses by installing a Creo platesetter that imaged Kodak thermal plates. King still uses offset and CTP, but volume is diminishing.

King installed the Screen Truepress Jet 1990. This was one of the first rollfed color inkjet printing systems.

An inline Hunkeler finishing system was also linked into the press via a turner system. The workload on this press rapidly built up with both monochrome and color work. Today, the output of the plant is mostly color and overwhelmingly digital with several different digital systems that are all linked in a cohesive workflow.

The move to inkjet was important.

King was able to establish a niche as a cost-effective short run book printer. Today, digital printing is on a par with offset, and most full-color books are digitally printed.

More high-speed digital inkjet presses were moved into the King facility. King’s production plant looks like a mini trade exhibition, with many different printing systems and loads of specialty binding equipment.

To list all of the equipment would

take up most of this article. This mix of systems allows them to produce almost any book in any format. But the key is automation. It is said that “Printing Industry 4.0” is all about automation. For King, automation is a mantra.

Their workflow is proprietary and goes beyond JDF. They have their own proprietary approach. It is for this reason that a crew of just over 100 can produce millions (I said “millions”) of books a year.

When Howie Fenton and I wrote the first book on on-demand publishing, it was printed on a Docutech. At one point, customers were told that the book was out of stock. This was weird because the book was produced on-demand.

GATF had run out of the Channel Bind covers, which were produced by an outside supplier. If you are going to make a book, the finishing is as important as the book block.

That is what King gets right. They can give you any kind of binding you specify: hard and softcover, saddlestitch, spiral wire and plastic binding. And every one of these methods is growing. In addition, they produce beautifully-printed book

jackets. The King sample room has examples of the many books that they have printed. It looks like the award winners at a book show.

But King hasn’t just made printing and binding more efficient. They have changed they way publishers operate. At one time, it was all about inventory. Print and bind the books and ship them to a warehouse; then ship them to a booksellers’ warehouse or even multiple warehouses. Today, it is all about Virtual Inventory Management. We live in a “Just In Time” world and that is where King excels.

Publishers print what they need when they need it. As a result, King’s market has expanded from the New England region to the rest of the U.S. as well as Europe and Asia. King has kept a reasonable mix of big and small customers and has brought them into the new age of publishing.

Tom Campbell is the company’s Vice President of Publishing Sales.

He has been with King for more than 20 years. As he travels to customer and potential customer sites, he has become an apostle of the new paradigm for book publishing. He loves to talk about the life cycle of the printed book and how King can help publishers implement new supply chain models.

I love to visit innovative printers who not only think out of the box, they invent the box. King Printing has succeeded by integrating industry available technology with proprietary workflow. They have built a great service business that has gone on to change the publishing business. .

Frank Romano has published 62 books. He is RIT Professor Emeritus and President of the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Mass. His library has 7,000 books in it. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21110101 ■

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WATCH LIST

CapStone’s AutoViri Automates Mailing Troy Power, cofounder of CapStone Technologies, talks about the company’s Red Hot Technology.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21104654

Overview of Gerber Technology’s Role and Strategy in the Textiles and Apparel Market Scott Schinlever, discussed the company’s strategy and how its acquisition of MCT. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21104660

American Color Imaging Adds Dye-Sub Products Mark Lane, President & CEO, describes the company’s journey from a portrait photo studio and wet photo lab to a digital operation.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21107026

People Love Embellishments—But Often Fear Them Trish Witkowski, Chief Fold Fanatic for Fold Factory, talks to David Zwang about “embellishments” Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21107269

drupa Preview: Front-End Trends Wim Fransen, General Manager of Enfocus, talks to David Zwang about some of the major trends he has been seeing as we head toward drupa.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21109466

JThe Typewriter Revolution Frank visits with Tom Furrier of Cambridge Typewriter in Arlington ass one of the last typewriter repair services in New England.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21109675

Heidelberg Gears Up for drupa Sonja Mechling talks about Heidelberg’s plans for drupa 2020 which include artificial intelligence AI applications to help improve productivity.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21110127

Warren Werbitt Says “I Just Don’t Understand It” WhatTheyThink’s print evangelist Warren Werbitt talks about the only thing there is to talk about: the proposed HP-Xerox merger.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21110427

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ourcing Top Talent in Tight a or Markets PrintLink’s Arnie Kahn and Dino Scalia discuss today’s tight labor market, the printing industry’s hiring challenges.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21105842

Mike Scrutton Provides Updates Mike Scrutton, Adobe’s Director of Print Technology and Strategy, brings our viewers up to date on the latest developments with Adobe Textile Designer.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21106809

ColorKarma: Making it Easier for Designers and Producers to Communicate Shoshana Burgett discusses why she founded ColorKarma: to help improve communications Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21108830

- ne a els Packaging Working to elp the Fle i le Packaging Industry Ralph Giammarco discusses the similarities of the analog-to-digital transformation in flexi le packaging Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21108836

ollem - hel dge a els AutoCollator and Conveyor Rollem demonstrating shelf edge labels with autocollator and conveyor capability Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21109684

ColorZone’s Joshua Feller Is a Technology Early Adopter Feller began to acquire wide-format equipment to reduce the amount of work he had to outsource.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21110124

a id Gross plains ow asy and A orda le It Is to Enter the Product Decoration Market.

Explains how his passion for heat transfer dye sublimation has grown into a highly diverse business.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21110858

Print is Alive and Well People have long predicted the death of print, but industry data shows this just isn’t the case. There are still plenty of opportunities for growth.

Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21111099 January/February 2020 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

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PRODUCT NEWS Graphics One Announces GO Fuze Liquid

▲ Adobe Announces Availability of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service Adobe unveiled Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, part of Adobe Experience Cloud. The industry’s most advanced cloud-native solution for digital experience management brings together rich out-of-box capabilities and content customization options that marketers and developers demand, combined with SaaS-like agility.

Moving to the cloud-native service provides marketing and IT multiple benefits including: ■ Faster time to value: Achieve a boost to content development as brands no longer have to develop bespoke customization for site experiences.

■ Cloud agility: With a current, scalable and accessible application, CIOs don’t have to worry about building in downtime to accommodate version upgrades.

www.printingnews.com/21110160

Graphics One is announcing the release of its GO Fuze Dye-Sub to Cotton liquid solution for use with virtually all brands of dye-sub inks.

Graphics One is announcing the release of its GO Fuze Dye-Sub to Cotton liquid solution for use with virtually all brands of dye-sub inks. This new capability uses new patent-pending polymer chemistry, which allows standard dye-sub ink to fuze to cotton fabric. Any dye-sub printer will be capable of imaging transfers for use with both polyester and cotton using the GO Fuze liquid.

GO Fuze liquid works through an easy pre-treat process using either a hand spray method or GO Fuze PreTreater machine. Once the garment or fabric is sprayed and dried, dye-sub inks can then be transferred in a normal dye-sub workflow utilizing standard dye-sub paper with a heat press. In addition to transfers, users can also print directly to the fabric.

GO Fuze liquid will be available in the Spring of 2020 through the extensive Graphics One distribution network.

www.printingnews.com/21109296 Epson Debuts First Industrial Direct-to-Garment Printer Bringing New Levels of Customization to Growing Digital Textile Market New Epson SureColor F3070 Provides Low TCO and High-Production Reliability Allowing Print Shops to Produce Hundreds of Custom Shirts Per Day Epson announced its first industrial direct-to-garment printer – the SureColor F3070. Designed to provide low total cost of ownership (TCO) and reliability for exceptional performance and savings in high-production print shop environments, the SureColor F3070 is Epson’s first direct-to-garment printer to leverage dual printhead technology and a bulk ink pack system, providing low ink cost and minimized waste compared to Epson cartridge systems.

It touts all new automatic garment height adjustment and easy user maintenance features to increase production and reduce downtime for garment print shops creating custom apparel. Ideal for digitally printing custom garments on variety of fabric types including cotton, linen, and rayon, the SureColor F3070 is designed to meet the increasing market demand for unique clothing driven by the millennial population in the U.S.1

www.printingnews.com/21111165

Nekoosa Cut Vinyl Portfolio Merges Popular Products Nekoosa refines Cut Vinyl Portfolio, combines VinylEfx and GMI All of the Nekoosa cut vinyl products are now combined into one convenient portfolio. GMI (Graphic Materials International) is now combined with RTape’s VinylEfx Metalized Vinyl line to make the Nekoosa Cut Vinyl Portfolio. The revamped portfolio includes 26 colors and textures of VinylEfx and 38 colors of GMI – nine of those being reflective vinyls.

VinylEfx is an eye-catching, reflective and glittering metalized vinyl used for cutlettering applications and printed graphics.

Available in both an indoor and outdoor series with a permanent adhesive, VinylEfx can be printed on with UV and EcoSolvent wide format inks to create P.O.P. graphics.

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asy Cut tudio eleases ersion with More Cutter upport and - it Compati ility The most up to date and easiest to use sign making, vinyl cutting software for your cutting plotter.

EasyCut has introduced Easy Cut Studio version 5, a compatibility update to the company’s sign-making solution with more enhanced functions, Support for more vinyl cutters, 64-bit compatibility and much more. Version 5 of Easy Cut Studio has been optimized to be fully compliant with Apple’s latest operating system – macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Easy Cut Studio Version 5 is the culmination of 2 years engineering work and carefully considered feedback from dozens of cutting plotter manufacturers and hundreds of customers worldwide. Easy Cut Studio 5 is the new version of the sign industry’s leading vinyl cutting software, It offers a variety of powerful tools and features to create from scratch, edit and enhance vector graphics.

www.printingnews.com/21108429

Xaar’s 5-Step Service Enables ecti e Inkjet Fluid aluation or Ad anced Manu acturing Applications Xaar has launched its 5-step service for the evaluation of fluids for use in new product development and advanced manufacturing applications.

The service aims to help companies establish the suitability of inkjet technology and fluids in new applications without incurring large upfront costs. To support the new service, Xaar has invested in a dedicated laboratory. This is equipped with a number of custom test rigs for sample production and fluid testing including a Notion Systems n.jet 3D printer.

Each new project starts with the initial fluid evaluation where guidance is provided on issues such as ink development and material compatibility as well as options for complex rheology testing and fluid physicals measurement.

www.printingnews.com/21110164 aldwin s ew P PAC Ad anced Technologies ecrease Waste up to Percent Cut Cleaning Cycles in Half

Fisher Te tiles pands Apparel Fa ric ine with Fi e ew tyles

igital

Innovative cleaning cloth material and solvent formulas reduce environmental impact for offset printers Baldwin Technology Company Inc. has announced innovations within its PREPAC Advanced product line of original cleaning consumables. Designed for newspaper, commercial web and sheetfed presses, the new technologies optimize production time by shortening the cleaning cycle and minimizing waste.

All Baldwin original PREPAC consumables offer pre-impregnated wet cloth rolls with high ink and lint absorption capacity, so printers can achieve cleaning results that are 100 percent accurate with every run. The next generation of PREPAC Advanced consumables features unique and regionalized solvent formulas, as well as a new sophisticated cloth material. Compared to other products on the market, Baldwin’s solutions decrease waste up to 50 percent and can cut cleaning cycles in half, enabling up to 100 extra production hours annually. Baldwin is the world’s leading innovator of preimpregnated wet cloth consumables and the inventor of PREPAC, an award-winning, best-selling technology for 25 years. Thousands of customers use this highly efficient and eco-friendly product, and Baldwin continuously delivers new innovations tailored for blanket and impression cylinder cleaning.

Fisher Textiles has added five new apparel fabrics to its Digital Apparel lineup for dye sublimation printing. All styles are made in the USA and include a printable t-shirt, golf polo, light hoodie, fleece and a black poly/spandex blend for yoga pants and swimwear.

1500 T-shirt, as its name suggests is a lightweight breathable jersey knit for t-shirts and tank tops. It is made with 100% Spun Polyester, weighs 7.25 oz/lin yd and is stocked at 61” wide.

ET1950 Pique Polo for golf polos and athletic shirts is made with 100% REPREVE Recycled Polyester and is inherently treated with Sorbtek, Unifi ’s moisture management chemical to keep clothes cool, dry and comfortable.

ET2700 Brushed Jersey for lightweight hoodies and gaiters is made with 92% REPREVE Recycled Polyester, 8% Spandex and is inherently treated with Sorbtek.

www.printingnews.com/21110443

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Cracking the

QR Code Xanté goes beyond print with InfoMark.

Article by Richard Romano

I

f you dislike QR codes, you are not alone. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but few who behold QR codes find beauty there.

Not only are they unsightly, but they can be difficult to design around, and take up often valuable layout real estate. Still, the idea of making print interactive is a good one.

For marketers, getting users from a printed piece to an online site can provide helpful analytics that quantify the effectiveness of a print campaign, and for content providers, linking to ancillary material—such as a website, a video, etc.—can provide supplementary material and additional reading without having to use footnotes or end notes.

Technologies that often (although not entirely correctly) are grouped into the category of “augmented reality”— like Ricoh’s Clickable Paper or HP’s Link—are well-positioned to add this interactivity to print.

Xanté recently introduced a unique take on the idea of adding an interactive element to print. Called

InfoMark, it replaces the familiar QR code matrix with a four-digit numerical code. Indeed, InfoMark was specifically developed by Xanté as a QR code alternative.

“It started really about four or five years ago when I went to a QR code conference,” Xanté President Robert Ross said. “We were discussing the benefits of QR codes, and certainly a lot of the limitations. I don’t think the QR code has ever been deemed a success and probably won’t be.”

That led Ross to head back to

Richard Romano Richard Romano has been writing about the graphic communications industry for 20 years. He is an industry analyst and author or co-author of more than half a dozen books.

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When you launch the InfoMark mobile app, you can create a random Mark, or can request a custom Mark, like *WTT01.

Mobile, Ala., and put some heads together to ponder the question of QR codes.

“We started kind of doing a skunkworks project around here to determine what would be an alternative,” he said, “and I came up with this four-digit code. With four digits, we can do about 9 million InfoMarks. If we have to add a fifth digit, it’s like 600 billion. So there are plenty of InfoMarks available.”

Here’s how it works. You download the InfoMark app or go to Infomark. com. You log in using your Google account (you need to have a Google account). You answer some questions about what you will allow InfoMark to have access to (any Google Drive[s] you create using InfoMark and your YouTube subscription), and then you create a Mark, and the app will generate a random code that will serve as your Mark. If you don’t like what it generated—*0666, for example—you can hit Refresh Mark and it will pick another one. It’ll let you keep refreshing Marks until you see one that you like.

“We are going to have custom Marks where people can request a certain Mark,” Ross said. “Printing News could be *PN01 through *PN99.

You could also reserve Marks; some companies would have five or six digits in their Marks.”

Once you have created your Mark, you then have a sort of a dashboard

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY where you can upload a wide variety of file types, such as PDFs, Word docs and PowerPoint files.

You can add pictures from your camera roll or A/V files from your iTunes library. You can add links to YouTube videos, or links to URLs. It even has a microphone so you can record your own custom audio. You can have up to six items associated with a single Mark (photos are compiled into a Photo Gallery, which is considered one item, so you can technically have unlimited photos. If you need more than six items, you can make one of those six items an additional InfoMark, which gives you another six items.

And so on.

Then, you just share your Mark— the InfoMark associated with this story is *WTT01—and if you want to see the associated files, just go to infomark.com or open the app and enter the code. It’s pretty easy to use.

The content associated with an InfoMark can be added, deleted and edited as needed, even after a story is published.

Xanté is initially targeting journalists as a market for InfoMark.

“One of the scenarios is a newspaper reporter,” Ross said. “A reporter goes out to a scene, and can either be assigned a Mark—a Mark that the company is already using for something else or a new Mark—and can take some video, take 25 photos and write the article. The article is a PDF in the Mark, and they also can do audio if they want it right on their phone and then attach that MP3 file to the Mark.”

Speaking of audio, as it were, one of Ross’s “killer apps” for InfoMark is being able to add an audio version of an article or other content to the Mark, an idea that stemmed from Ross’ dyslexia.

When say readers of a story search for a specific Mark at www.infomark.com or in the InfoMark app, they get a list of the items associated with that Mark.

“Being dyslexic means reading is very difficult for me,” he said. “If I listen to a book on tape, that is fantastic, but sitting there reading it, I just get a headache because the letters kind of jump around. Even when I get Printing News, I thumb through it but it’s very difficult for me to actually read an entire article.

I’d love to have an audio version.”

(There is an audio version, read by the author, attached to this article’s Mark.)

Xanté is adding new things to InfoMark on a regular basis as they experiment and tweak it, and as people start using it in the wild. One recent new bit of functionality is the ability to follow individual “Markers.”

“We are about to release a new version of the app that allows you follow certain Mark creators, like writers,” Ross said. “You click on their name and it shows you their most recent Marks no matter which Gmail account owns the Mark. If you write for multiple publications, users can easily track you if they enjoy your work.”

The applications for InfoMark go

beyond writing and journalism.

“We have a hospital that wants to make Marks to give to patients with their personal information—records, scans, instructions, etc.—so we have implemented the ability for a Mark to be password-protected for that type purpose,” he said.

What about cost? InfoMark is free for the first year and then, if the owner of a Mark wants to keep using a Mark, it will cost $10 a year.

(Check out Xanté’s “trailer” for InfoMark on YouTube at https://youtu. be/n-42DQqm1Fo—and the YouTube link is attached to the InfoMark for this story.)

Whether the InfoMark replaces the QR code or AR-based print interactivity remains to be seen—it actually adds a different kind of interactive value to print—but it’s a unique and easy approach.

“The consumers will drag us in a direction,” Ross said. “There’s a lot of opportunity in education where a teacher can have an InfoMark for a particular day in class and they can have a lecture, homework, supporting information, supporting videos, anything like that.”

It will be interesting to see how it develops. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21109964 ■

In the InfoMark app and at www.infomark.com, you can upload a variety of asset types, including YouTube URLs, images audio files document files PDFs RLs and you can even record your own audio right in the app.

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE

Great WideFormat Migration Is Over— The

But Many Opportunities Remain How to capitalize on the booming wide-format market.

Article by Richard Romano

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hey say a picture is worth a thousand words, but that rarely holds water when it comes to magazine story assignments. So it’s tempting to present this chart...

...and leave it at that. But perhaps a bit of elaboration is required.

Last November, we conducted our annual “Print Business Outlook Survey” in which we ask a set of boilerplate questions about current and expected business conditions, business challenges, opportunities and planned investments, as well as questions about the extent to which print businesses are, or have been, adding new capabilities.

As you can see in the chart above, when it comes to wide-format printing capabilities, nearly one-half (45%) of our survey respondents say they have already added them—28% more than two years ago and a further 17% in the past 18 to 24 months. Only 8% say they plan to add wide-format printing in the next year or two, and a full 30% have no plans to add wide-format capabilities at all.

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Thirteen percent plan to outsource it, if they don’t already.

This suggests that anyone who planned to move into wideformat printing has already done so. There may be a few stragglers, and that 30% doesn’t comprise hardcore, stalwart holdouts, but the big shift to wide-format is generally over.

So what does this mean for wide-format printing as an opportunity for print businesses? Is it a moribund print area? Are shops better advised to look to other areas— textiles, packaging, etc.—to boost business?

Not at all.

While this data may seem to indicate that competition in wide-format printing services has become tougher and that wide-format printing has become commoditized, that should not be discouraging. If anything, it should be encouraging. Why? It indicates that there is a growing demand for wide-format print applications. The number of establishments in a market—in any market—is a function of the level of demand for what those establishments produce.

And, yes, while there are certain wide-format applications that are more commoditized than others— banners, for example—many remain fairly high-margin.

And I have spoken to several wide-format shops that still make a killing doing banners; there’s a lot of demand for them, and their production can be highly automated.

Here are a few general market drivers: ■ The key to success with any print product is the overall demand for it. No one is making money printing, say, directories because there’s little or no demand for directories. But people are making money printing signs and display graphics because these are in-demand products.

■ Demand for sign and display graphics has been on the upswing because they are highly visible and conspicuous applications. One business sees their competition’s signage and feels the need to follow.

■ Businesses in many verticals have a much more accelerated rebrand cycle than they used to, and that means they need replacement signage, vehicle

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE having a search engine optimization (SEO) expert on staff or on retainer is vital.

Know What Things Are Called Part of successful SEO implementation is ensuring that you account for the fact that it’s not uncommon for some print applications to be called different things, especially in different parts of the country. Make sure you account for all of them. Sometimes just scoping out the competition’s website can help determine how to refer to something. And be sure to use Google Analytics to identify what search words or phrases your customers use to get to your website. There is a lot of experimentation involved, and a good SEO pro can help attract more business than 10 sales people.

Know What Applications Are Growing—and What Aren’t

graphics and other collateral materials, big and small.

■ Automation and ease of use have made wide-format printing highly efficient. Sure, this has helped facilitate commoditization and competition, but it has also made wide-format printing more profitable, as turn times have been accelerated and errors minimized.

Don’t Call it “Wide Format” First of all, no one outside of industry pundits and analysts knows what “wide format” is. In sales, marketing and promotional activities, always cite specific products: posters, banners, retractable banner stands, wall décor, wallpaper and vehicle graphics.

Get a Good Internet Marketing Guru How do general product buyers shop these days? They Google what they’re looking for. It’s been said that the loneliest place on Earth is page two and beyond of Google search results. So one important key to success—not just with wide-format but with any printing—is to ensure that you come up on the first page of hits when a potential customer does a Google search for a specific product. So if someone types “retractable banner stand” into Google, and you specialize in retractable banner stands, you’d better make sure that you’re among the top hits. This is where

Different print products have different dynamics.

Things come into fashion and things go out of fashion.

At the moment, vehicle graphics are hot—not just for consumer vehicles, but especially on the commercial level.

Small businesses are increasingly using their vehicles as promotional...um, vehicles, and larger businesses spend an awful lot on fleet graphics.

Wayfinding is an important subset of signage. Elsewhere, environmental graphics—wall and other interior décor for businesses and organizations—is also a hot application area. Learn the best practices for producing these kinds of applications and especially for selling them.

In both these cases—wayfinding and environmental graphics—the growth in demand for graphics is related to a growing real estate market. New construction means more demand for graphics—be they interior, exterior, wayfinding or otherwise. If you have been to any major city recently (or even some not-so-major cities), you know that construction is booming. (It has been said that New York is going to be a great city when they finally finish building it.) This opens up opportunities for sign and display graphics.

When the real estate market crashed in the late 2000s, the market for these kinds of graphics also crashed. Often trends in other markets can impact the demand for certain kinds of print.

Explore New Sales Channels Sometimes sales and marketing efforts have to vary from what have been the traditional print sales channels.

For example, print providers who have been successful with environmental graphics have found that approaching Continue on page 62

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE

A New Year Resolution for

Ghent Workgroup launches new specifications for sign and display.

Article by Richard Romano

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henever I am in Chicago, I always make it a point to head over to the Art Institute. One of the museum’s most famous works is Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884,” the archetypal example of pointillism, a style of painting that creates an image using tiny dots of color. The canvas is 81¾ by 121¼ inches, what we might call “grand format.” In fact, it is a perfect analog of the problem we often have with digital printing, especially wide-format printing. If you look at the painting up close, you can easily see all the dots, and that Seurat must have a lot of time on his hands. But as you move further away, the dots become less visible until, by the time you’re across the room, the painting looks for all intents and purposes like a continuous-tone image. I don’t know that anyone has calculated the resolution of Seurat’s painting, but as you can tell, the perceived quality of an image is subject to a number of variables.

This is an issue referred to as “apparent resolution,” which can be quite different from a print’s actual resolution. An image designed to be viewed up close, like a photograph in a magazine, catalog or direct mail

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piece, will have a different apparent resolution—and thus resolution requirement—than one designed to be viewed from a long ways away. Taking apparent resolution into account was the raison d’être of a new specification for sign and display graphics just released by the Ghent Workgroup.

Founded in 2002, the Ghent Workgroup (GWG) is an international organization of graphic arts users, associations and developers tasked with creating best practices for printing, publishing and packaging workflows. The recommendations

and specifications the organization develops are designed to make it easy for graphic arts professionals to create, process and exchange consistent and high-quality print files for a wide variety of applications. The group first tackled publishing, then moved into commercial print, and then packaging and digital printing.

Late last year, GWG introduced a new specification for sign and display graphics. The specification is based on two key variables: the average viewing distance (that is, how far away is the viewer will be from the

Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884

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For more information, visit PrintingNews.com/12303268

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE Requirement ISO Compllancy (4.1) Scaling factor & Viewlng distance (4.2) Page Seating (4.3)

Value

Error

PDF/X-4:2010

—

—

Warning

Crop Box (4.4)

Error

Empty Pages (4.6)

Warning

Overprint White Text (4.9)

Error

Overprint White Paths (4.10)

Warning

Overprint 100% Black Text (4.11)

Warning

Small Text (4.17)

Warning

A=5.0 B=5.0

1

Warning

A=0.15 B=0.15

Use of Spot Colors (4.19)

Warning

E ective Line Width

Color Managed Delivery Method (4.26)

Error

Transparency Blend Color Space (4.27)

Error

Image Resolution for Grayscale and Color Images 2

Error Warning

239 ppi 299 ppi

Image Resolution for 1-blt Images (4.29)

Error Warning

549 ppi 799 ppi

Output Intent Color Space (4.31)

Error

Hidden Optional Content (4.33)

Warning

graphic) and, if needed, the scaling factor (how many times the job needs to be enlarged before being printed).

There are also other “legacy” factors built into the specification that are common to other kinds of print applications, like color.

“A lot of the work that we are doing really feeds off earlier work that we’ve done,” said David Zwang, chair of the Ghent Workgroup’s Executive Committee. “So it’s not like we’re starting from scratch.”

At the same time, shops need some kind of common ground as they take on an increasing variety of print applications, from commercial print, to packaging, to wide format.

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Severity

When we say it’s a “specification,” what exactly does that mean?

Essentially, the GWG Sign and Display Preflight Profile is, as the name indicates, a set of PDF profiles, or rules a PDF file has to abide by in order to be in compliance with the specification. It is closely tied to the preflighting process. When you preflight a PDF file in a program such as Enfocus PitStop or callas pdftoolbox, it will flag you if the file violates any of the rules that are spelled out in the profile. If you’re playing along at home, it’s based on the PDF/X-4 ISO Standard, which is in turn based on PDF 1.6. When preflighting a file, the GWG Preflight

Profiles use ISO PDF Standards as a base, and then add additional checks based on the specific industry segment the profiles were designed for—in this case, sign and display. The specific checks for sign and display include a minimum image resolution that is based on viewing distance.

A year and a half ago or so, the GWG felt the time was right for a sign and display spec.

“The growth of sign and display was significant enough that we needed to take that on,” Zwang said.

When thinking about output parameters, the GWG began with an enumeration of the issues specific to sign and display.

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE “Color, obviously,” Zwang said, “all the things around metadata, layering, different kinds of versioning requirements, language requirements and so on.”

All of these issues are already part of previous GWG specifications, so could easily be imported into a sign and display spec.

“Resolution is always a big issue,” Zwang said. “Resolution, type size, minimum font sizes, etc.”

As any printer knows, image resolution is an issue in any size printing, but wide-format printing adds a unique wrinkle—apparent resolution.

“It starts to get really interesting because if it’s a point-of-purchase display, and it’s right on the counter in front of you, the resolution has

to be high enough, and the type has to be big enough, for you to read it,” Zwang said. “But what if it’s a billboard on a highway? A minimum of six-point type ain’t gonna cut it.”

So the specification includes an algorithm that changes the preflight and design requirements based on intended viewing distance.

GWG began working on the specification about a year and a half ago, and has been doing extensive testing.

“Once we’ve developed it, we need to throw it out into the wild and do some testing with it and see if it’s going to work,” Zwang said. “We tested it and everybody said, ‘Yeah, this is great.’ We tweaked it here and there, but it was a winner and we released it.”

The testers included printing associations that are members of the Ghent Workgroup, especially hardware and software manufacturers, and “all of the companies that have a stake in it, that all have a dog in the fight,” Zwang said. “We wanted to make sure that it was going to work for them because ultimately it’s their equipment or their software that’s going to be used, and their customers are the ones who are going to use it.”

You can download the GWG Sign and Display Preflight Profile for free at https://www.gwg.org/sign_display/.

The GWG is likely going to take on textile printing next, Zwang said.

Find article here PrintingNews. com/21110095 ■

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GRAPHIC DESIGN

Go With the Flow Digital Printing is changing the textile supply chain.

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s early as the 1960s up until recently, commercial textile interiors had a very distinct workflow from concept to product.

Every company along that workflow had a specific part to play, and the distance between the initial concepts to the end product was four significant steps apart. Essentially, designers were trying to predict what the end customer, someone they may never have any contact with, would buy.

The traditional workflow starts

with designers at the mill. They create designs based on their research and past experiences with a jobber and/or OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer). The mill’s purpose is to satisfy the needs of the jobbers and OEMs working toward getting a product placement. In turn, the jobbers or OEMs select materials based on their particular research and feedback from customers, architects and interior designers (A&D). Finally, the A&D select materials based on their client’s needs for the end-user:

Beyond Graphic Design Successful printers market to all designers, reaching far beyond paper.

With all the changes the industry has gone through over the last three decades - especially with digital and industrial printing, one thing still amazes me. I am fla ergasted that most printers still perceive designers as “graphic designers.” Today’s products rely on design as never before, so why do many printers think they don’t print for creatives?

Last year marked the first PRINTIN United, an event meant to showcase the broad range of printing technologies. It was a convergence of Specialty raphic Imaging Association S IA and North American Pu lishing Company NAPC The event was revitalizing for an industry that has been battered and reshaped by economics and new print applications. The “print y the pound world of Yellow Pages is now gone replaced with a broad spectrum of newer technologies.

Desktop publishing was in its infancy in the ‘90s with printing companies purchasing enny Landa s E-Print E-Print 1000 one of many Indigo printers that would

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Continue on page 48

change print history. Xerox entered with its DocuColor 0 0 and later the i en3 and others from odak iekon HP and more Thirty years later almost every printer has a hy rid production of o set xerographic and inkjet technology.

And the materials have evolved too. What was once print on paper is now print on plastic P C vinyl and textiles PRINTIN nited highlighted how printing continues to evolve at a fast pace. Some print suppliers are also em racing 3D printing with companies like assivit o ering 3D printing for in-store displays and 2 ½ D printing for bus signage.

Just as printing has evolved so have designers. raphic designers in the 1 0s were on the leeding edge using Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXpress and Apples IIFX. Logos, magazine layouts, album covers, adverts, marketing materials and others all had a creative explosion. The internet, email and social media rought a out mni-channel communications pushing printers and designers to work across multiple mediums. As a result, today’s designers are not merely graphic designers. They are branding managers,

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GRAPHIC DESIGN marketing managers and visual merchandisers.

“What used to take weeks now takes days, and our clients expect immediate gratification for oth them and their customers Amanda Altman president of A3 Design, said. “For example, logo design has become a living reathing story for a company Today it consists of every touch point a company has with a consumer employee and vendor. Our job as designers and brand advisers is to keep the creative train on the track To make sure that all of the pieces of communication from the graphics messaging packaging displays and digital are done with finesse consistency and authenticity.”

Graphic designers are the most common, responsible for 2D designs Some graphic designers have honed their skills to become specialists in one area, such as logos packaging or type design There are visual merchandisers responsi le for the look of retail displays and brand experiences in stores. Visual merchandisers use wide-format and 3D printing to create today s retail experiences. Interaction designers or industrial designers focus on the experience of the product - how it feels works and engages with the user Product designers are the um rellas for everything under the product, encompassing the digital and physical requirements. And this list only gets bigger.

There are we developers user experience and user interface designers These individuals are highly focused and skilled and their roles are focused on one thing - the digital realm There are footwear and apparel designers who are very tactile and visual Today s textile designers are engaging digital printing like desktop publishing did 30 years ago There are architectural designers who are responsi le for the interior or exterior of a uilding They are using today s print technology to create an environment that may look like bamboo but is printed on tile or wrapped on metal.

The role of design has evolved so much that there is now a color and material designer These individuals are responsi le for concept oards and provide seasonal direction and design themes that can be applied across materials A rand may have a seasonal pallet of 100 to 1 0 colors and a color material specialist looks at how colors produce across materials from print packaging textile plastics leather or whatever the role specifies For the designer rooted in pen and paper, there are technical designers to support them These technical specialists are similar to prepress managers but reside inside the rand They re uire a deep knowledge of

printing techniques and take sketches and turn them into accurate Illustrator files that can e produced Packaging engineers look at material and design to find ways to save space, protect products during shipments and leverage new materials for sustaina le packaging All this plus a focus on how packaging interacts with consumers.

Ink et technology from em et and eteor Ink et Ltd are changing manufacturing and empower anyone to create and design printed products. Inkjet is reshaping the world of direct-to-consumer manufacturing For example our grandparents wallpaper was limited to what they could order from ooks and in many cases it was easier to plaster over wallpaper than take it down. Inkjet technology has changed all that. It allows interior designers and DIY folks to e more creative and design and produce their own custom wallpaper designs This same technology makes it easy for marketers product managers sales small business owners, consumers or anyone else to think beyond wallpaper to sets, exhibits, trade shows, murals, interiors, tiles, plates and much, much more.

It’s time to market to all creatives Printers who define themselves to paper limit their growth and possibility. Branding is at the heart of a company it defines the organization s value products and services Today that includes the physical product, labels, displays, packaging, shipping, retail space, on-line, apps and everything else. Branding is how consumers in a millisecond identify a product and choose that product If you think creatives are simply graphic design, then maybe you should stop watching ad en Today s creatives are marketing departments, branding agencies, product managers and everyone else in those departments To e successful in the next decade, printers will need to start marketing their usiness o erings and uni ue application o erings to all types of creatives - not ust graphic designers Find article here PrintingNews.com/21109267.

Shoshana Burgett Shoshana is a thought leader and industry consultant with over two decades of experience in on-demand printing, manufacturing, and personalization. She has been at the forefront of personalized production and omnichannel communications with a proven track record of developing successful go-to-market strategies.

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GRAPHIC DESIGN Continued from page 46

Why this particular workflow

you, the general public.

This is a tricky and precarious workflow. As you move through the process, you hope that everyone is making the correct decisions along the way. One wrong choice and someone could be sitting on a lot of inventory and causing a chain reaction of unhappy suppliers and clients. Even the best research can lead someone astray. Designers are constantly walking a tightrope between conservative designs they know will sell, and unique and innovative designs that will make a splash. Everyone wants to be the first to market with a new idea and potentially have a huge payout, but that comes with risk.

The traditional model also produces a lot of waste because mills are designing a multitude of designs.

Thousands of designs are created and presented each year to jobbers and OEMs with the goal of obtaining one or more design product placement.

Jobbers and OEMs only have availability for 3% of all the designs created, leaving 97% of the designs never to be seen by the A&D or their clients.

This model has to do with the traditional manufacturing methods for producing large quantities at the mill. For a mill, the larger the volume, the lower the cost per yard.

In the case of rotogravure printing, a conventional print type for vinyl or polyurethane upholstery, the minimums are roughly 300 to 500 yards. In most cases, 300 yards is too much for any one OEM or A&D to use on a single project, so jobbers fill the role of inventorying the yardage and selling cut yardage to the OEMs and A&D community.

Three hundred yards of a single color is a huge investment and risk to take on. For a smaller jobber, it prohibits them from developing proprietary designs, possibly leaving them competitively vulnerable to the competition.

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What does this mean for the uture

companies could start to offer a custom design printed “one-off� to an individual. Suddenly, a home sewist or crafter could see their designs on books, mugs, phone cases, even fabric-by-the-yard.

As the years passed, printers and inks became more sophisticated; and with additional ingenuity, products started to enter the commercial interiors market because they could now pass the more stringent testing standards. This new technology offered low minimums and palatable price points, which began the shift from the traditional workflow to the emerging workflow. Combine this technology with the image playgrounds of Pinterest, Instagram and Behance, and the A&D and their clients now have access to countless ideas and a broad base of talent.

Rather than jobbers and OEMs Continue on page 63

In the early 2000s, digital printing began to gain popularity within the DIY community. New print technology and simple product standards for home goods meant

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HUMAN RESOURCES

Hiring in the Digital Age How to hire and retain the millennial generation.

Article by Debra Thompson

O

ne of the biggest business challenges today is the recruitment and retention of the workforce. This concern is not a new one, but it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find the right people to fill positions within our industry. The shrinking labor pool ultimately correlates to lost business opportunities.

The workforce you should focus on recruiting are millennials (1981-1996) and the older individuals of Gen Z (1997-2015).

Gallup estimates that there are approximately 73 million millennials in America. Millennials already are the largest segment in the workplace.

Within the next two years, 50% of the U.S. workforce is expected to be made up of millennials. It will be 75% by 2030, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Millennials became the largest generation in the labor force in 2016.

It is true that these new generations are different, but it’s also true they can add much value to your organization.

Our industry has become more technical and will continue to trend that way. In order to take market share and grow your business, you will need the employees that are intuitively tech savvy.

Gallup Research reported that “millennials are the first-generation digital natives who feel at home on the internet. While the vast majority of Americans surf the web from a desktop or laptop computer at home or work, 85% of millennials access the Internet from their phones – more than all other generations.”

It’s time to separate fact from fiction and strategize your recruiting efforts to add millennials to your team.

Label 1: Job Hoppers Millennials have the reputation of being job hoppers, so don’t waste your time recruiting them.

There is some truth to this statement, however it is usually the result of how the employee was treated and what opportunities they were given. Millennials want to grow on the job, and that doesn’t necessarily mean they want promises of promotion. In an article in “Forbes Agency Council,” by Don Scales, “According to a recent survey of millennials, training is the numberone factor they consider when accepting a job. Investing in their skills set is going to resonate far more than dangling the promise of a more prestigious title and more pay in front of them.”

Debra Thompson

Label 2: Self-Centered

Debra Thompson is president of TG & ssociates a consu tin rm specializing in “The Human ide o usiness s eci ca or t e ra ics industr .

Debra can be reached at debra@tgassociates.com or www.tgassociates.com .

Millennials are self-centered and don’t care about the company as a whole.

If you speak with authenticity and transparency, and don’t try to sell them a dream, you will gain their trust.

Companies that place a premium on hiring millennials, have a rigorous and lengthy employee intake process.

Candidates are given expectations about the hiring process and what it’s like to work for you and how your company acts as a responsible corporate citizen. The hiring process is also the time to ask what is going to be important to them if they join your organization.

They need that personal touch, because many candidates have no idea what our industry is about, how exciting it is or how much opportunity they will have in the graphic industry.

Millennials find innovation important, so use it to attract millennial talent. By creating a completely digital application process, as well as using social platforms to help recruit talent, you can attract more candidates.

Create a mobile-friendly career site so they can find your open position from any device. Also make sure your application forms and pages are easy to fill out on smaller devices, including easy uploads for attachments. If you are using outdated tools or systems, it could push millennial prospects away from your company.

The careers section of your website should be a fountain of great information and dialogue with your business. Having videos, or providing YouTube stories, or conversations with your employees talking about your business, sharing their stories of what it’s like to work there, is another way of getting a candidate to see your business as a place they would like to be a part of.

Find article here PrintingNews. com/21110116 ■

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TEXTILES & APPAREL

Springs Creative Leverages

133 Years of Textile History for Today’s Digital Printing

At the AATCC/SGIA Digital Textile Printing Conference 4.0, one of the high points was a presentation by Kathy Phillips, Vice President of Design/Trend at Springs Creative, a showand-tell that highlighted the company’s rich history in textiles.

(Above) Elliot White Springs (1896–1959) (Left) Samuel Elliot White (1837–1911), founder of the Fort Mill Manufacturing Company.

Article by Cary Sherburne

S

amuel Elliot White founded the Fort Mill Manufacturing Company in 1887 in South Carolina. Over the years, the company has evolved, including the combination of five South Carolina cotton mills into one company, the Springs Cotton Mill, run by his son Elliot White Springs in 1933. By 1959, Springs Cotton Mill was the largest manufacturer of sheets and Cary Sherburne Cary Sherburne is a well-known author, journalist and marketing consultant whose practice is focused on marketing communications strategies for the printing and publishing industries.

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pillowcases in the world, producing more than 20,000 sheets per week under iconic brands such as Springmaid and Wamsutta.

Elliot White Springs (1896–1959): South Carolina businessman and an

American flying ace. A daring aviator, he was the fifth-ranking U.S. Pilot of World War I. After his father’s death during the Depression, Springs was forced to take command of the Springs family cotton mills. He was the mastermind behind the Risqué Springmaid sheet ads. He forever changed the American advertising with his famous series of ads that he wrote and designed himself.

By 2019, after shedding several parts of the business, Springs Creative was the last textile company with the name “Springs.” Kathy Phillips, vice president of Design/Trend, and her team are zealously guarding the heritage of the company in the form of more than 600,000 antique

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TEXTILES & APPAREL “This was a library for our inhouse designers to use as inspiration,” Phillips said. “When I started with the company in 1998, if we were doing Wamsutta bedding or bath, for example, we would go into the card catalog and look for inspiration by era, motif or other characteristics. We believe there are about 400,000 cards in the collection. We also inherited the flat files—which contain all the hand painted artwork/designs created when textile designers hand painted everything on boards. There are about 100,000 of those.”

Phillips left the company for a time and then returned five years ago.

At the time, the company was looking for ways to commercialize this massive collection.

“We didn’t have a name for the archive,” Phillips said, “so we created the Baxter Mill Archive. Baxter is our CEO Derick Close’s daughter’s name and an old family surname.”

It has been a massive undertaking to tag every single archive, giving each piece a number, and scanning

documents accumulated over the years in a vast library. These include not only Springs’ designs, but also the Ilene Danchig Documentary Textile Collections acquired in 2017, all under the brand Baxter Mill Archive.

“The library consists of all the fabrics that Springs has designed and manufactured dating as far back as the 1880s,” Phillips said. “There is also a book that has great images,

‘The Springs Story: Our First 100 Years,’ and the Baxter Mill archive was featured in Elysian Magazine’s Summer 2019 issue as well.”

There is also a Baxter Mill Studio on Spoonflower that features designs that were inspired by the archives.

The analog version of the library is captured in a number of card catalogs consisting of 5 x 7-inch cards that include swatches and a number of tags identifying the swatches.

Kathy Phillips

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(Left) An organizational challenge. (Above) The Baxter Mill Archives today.

them (with the help of summer interns) to build a digital platform that can be used internally and eventually externally as inspiration for the company’s fabric-by-the-yard business with customers such as Joanne Fabric and Hobby Lobby.

“An example would be Joanne Fabric looking for a new flannel design with birds,” she added. “We can dig into our archive for that

inspiration.”

In 2017, Springs Creative purchased the Ilene Danchig collection with more than 100,000 pieces.

“Ilene traveled all over the world.

My favorite quote from Ilene is: ‘Some people collect diamonds; I collect textiles,’” Phillips said. “Her eye for fabric was incredible; it’s a wonderful collection that complements the Baxter Mill Archives. When Ilene

wanted to sell her archive, she was thrilled to meet Derick Close, the CEO of Springs Creative, who was going to keep it together, recognizing it as her collection.”

This is where digital textile printing comes into the mix.

Springs Creative is a leading supplier of fabric for the DIY, craft, hobby and home sewing textile markets. In 2014, the company purchased a Mimaki dye-sublimation printer for R&D purposes.

“We quickly discovered that we could use the printer for commercial

Early mill machinery.

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(Above) Springs Creative Home Decorative Digital Fabrics Designs Inspired By The Archives. Digitally printed fabric with a woven look. (Right) Examples from the Ilene Danchig Collection.

purposes as well,” Phillips said.

Springs has licenses with Disney and many other iconic brands. She recounted a situation with Disney’s “Frozen” where Joanne Fabric needed additional fabric quickly due to the unexpectedly high interest in the movie. Springs was able to print a 40,000-yard order in a two-week turnaround.

“Needless to say, that was the start to our digital printing business,” she said.

Today, the company has two directto-cotton digital textile printers and five dye-sublimation printers, as well as an HP Latex wide-format printer for wallpaper.

“Springs Creative is a premiere partner for curating upholstery and collections for residential and commercial use,” Phillips said. “We now combine our world class digital technology and our treasure trove

of archives to create truly unique and beautiful products for the home industry.

“The beauty of digital print is not just about printing quickly,” Phillips said. “You can also use a virtually unlimited number of colors. Instead of weaving a fabric, you can scan in an original woven document or an 18th-century needlepoint and print the designs on beautiful fabrics creating a 3D effect.”

Archive availability and licensing today is B2B. The company sells and licenses the majority of its archives to the home furnishings and fashion industries.

“For example, Anthropologie may lease a 19th-century antique throw as inspiration for a home design product,” Phillips said. “We will lease the design for two years, with the option of renewal. This way, we are able to keep the original document

in our archive library. We are examining various business models to understand what would work best for us and for potential customers. We are currently digitizing the archives to be available online. That being said, there is something about the tactile nature of seeing these fabrics live.

My favorite part is when someone comes in, sees an Italian Renaissance velvet piece, and can’t believe they are touching it (with gloves, of course!).

So another goal is building a place for people to come in for an experience with lab coats and gloves, and go archive diving! We want to build an ‘experience for everyone to explore the beauty and history of textiles around the world!’” Find article here PrintingNews.com/21111859 ■

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MANAGEMENT

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MANAGEMENT

Things to Stop Doing in 2020

Every one of those bad habits costs the business money.

Article by Pat McGrew

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e all have bad habits.

Sometimes they start as a quick fix to an immediate need, and sometimes they evolve out of processes built to serve products and equipment that is no longer part of the business. Over time, they become ingrained in the fabric of how work is sold and how jobs flow through the business. Every one of those habits costs the business money. It might be a little. It might be a lot. But it is costing money.

As you approach 2020, this is a great time to find those habits and banish them to the past. Here are three things you should stop doing today for a healthier and more profitable 2020: 1. Stop accepting jobs that lack complete specifications, including substrate, finishing, and delivery requirements.

2. Stop using freeware and apps downloaded from the internet in your core business processes.

3. Stop letting sales team members dictate discounts.

Here is why.

Don’t Accept Jobs with Incomplete pecifications In 2020, every job that you accept without complete specifications means that someone must chase down the details, confirm inventory availability, and verify finishing requirements. No matter what the

estimation and quote say, there is still a need to verify every aspect of the job before it enters production.

When that doesn’t happen, the risk to the job is high. Incorrect substrates, wrong trim, database mismatch for variable-data work, and even incorrect mailing dates all impact the final margin on the job. You may find that jobs that showed a healthy margin during the estimation and quoting stage end up with a loss when the job details are tracked.

If you remember nothing else, remember that jobs that come into the shop without complete specifications cost money and bankrupt the anticipated margin.

Banish Freeware In 2020, make a point to find every instance of freeware, including free fonts, and banish them from your server. Remember that freeware is worth what you pay for it. No matter what problem it was meant to solve, the risks of freeware are too high for any commercial or transactional environment. If the software is performing well and continues to meet a need, look for the PRO version and pay for it. Ensure that you have a path to support if something goes awry. And always review the license agreement, especially for fonts. Many of the free fonts are not licensed for commercial use, which means that they aren’t meant for print-for-pay

environments. Do the risk mitigation and ensure that all your software is licensed and up-to-date as you start the new year.

Don’t Let the Sales Team Dictate Discounts In 2020, review your processes around discounting. During reviews and assessments in a variety of transactional, print and mail, direct mail, and pure commercial shops, an interesting commonality emerged in 2019. Most shops allow the sales team members to intercept the invoicing and apply discounts.

There may be many reasons, from a delay in job execution to a sense that the customer expects a discount.

Regardless of the reasons given, no discount should be applied to a job without a review. It might come from sales management or business management, but it should take more than one person to approve a discount on any billable work. Take the time to ensure that discounts aren’t being applied without review and set up clear processes for when a discount is warranted. Every discount has a material impact on the final profitability of the work, so take the time to be in control.

These are the top three bad habits to break in 2020. Tell me what you will stop doing in 2020! Send them to me at pcm@mcgrewgroup.com.

Find article here PrintingNews. com/21111617 ■

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TEXTILES & APPAREL

Digital Pigment Gains Ground on Analog Production

Pigment inks are the preferred ink choice of the textile printing industry. Reactive, acid, disperse, and vat ink systems all have their place, but the simple fact remains that pigment printing is number one.

Article by Debbie McKeegan

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igment inks are the preferred ink choice of the textile printing industry. Reactive, acid, disperse, and vat ink systems all have their place, but the simple fact remains that pigment printing is number one.

In 2017, out of 32 billion square meters of textiles printed by whatever means, more than 25 billion square meters were printed using pigment ink technology. Of this figure, approximately 1.8 billion square meters were produced using digital printing, but with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in excess of 15%, the volume of digital textile printing is now expected to grow to more than 2.5 billion square meters by 2021.

Digital Printing with Pigments Is Set for Huge Growth As far as digital printing is concerned, pigment printing is only just starting to grow, with reactive and dye-sublimation printing having previously dominated the digital textile printing sector. With the exception of direct-to-garment (DTG) printing, the early digital printhead technology for roll-to-roll print production was unable to cope with

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the higher solids content of pigment color at high speed. Therefore, the early application of digital technologies concentrated on the reactive and dye-sublimation printing sectors, where the water-based inks flowed readily, offering reliable print performance.

However, these early teething troubles with pigments have now been overcome, and the current prospects for growth are exceptional.

Building on their success in the DTG pigment market, and leading the way forward for roll-to-roll pigment print technology, is Kornit Digital, which has produced a range of machinery and inks.

The Kornit Allegro, a singleprocess print system, offers an economical, high-speed roll-to-roll digital textile printing machine of industrial quality using nonallergenic, sustainable inks. The Allegro offers complete integration with web-to-print platforms; an eco-friendly, 100% waterless process; and a fully automated inline production process cycle with no need to pretreat fabrics prior

to print. It is both versatile and economical and marks a turning point for textile manufacturers who increasingly are now choosing digital pigment print systems over traditional chemical dye systems and cumbersome analog processes.

Digital Pigment Textile Printing Is Gaining Ground on Analog Technologies Let’s take a look at six further factors that are driving the marketplace to a digital future:

Price/Cost Pigment ink systems by their very nature use a simple combination of chemicals and colorants which are cheaper to produce than other ink technologies. The actual process

cost of pigment ink printing, which is less involved and technical than the others, brings the relative cost equation very much in favor of digital pigment inks.

Ease of Use There is no doubt that printing with pigment inks is substantially less demanding than printing with other ink technologies. All the other ink technologies use complex color development and post-processing systems which are cumbersome, heavy in consumption of water and energy, and difficult to administer.

Of all the available inks, pigment

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TEXTILES & APPAREL ink is the only technology that gives the user an immediate product for approval. With pigment inks, there is no need for steaming, washing, and/ or drying. Pigments are the only ink technology where a printed fabric can be immediately approved on the printing machine with safety and confidence.

Compatibility with All Fabrics Of all the benefits of digital pigment ink printing, the most appealing is that it is suitable for all fabric types, whatever their fiber composition. All of the other dyestuffs are only compatible with a particular fiber group—reactive inks with cotton, disperse inks with polyester, and acid inks with silk—and any attempt to cross the boundaries into other fibers is not feasible.

Digital pigment inks don’t differentiate between fibers. They are suitable for linen, cotton, viscose, polyester, silk, nylon, and a variety of other fibers. Importantly, pigment inks are the only ink technology suited for non-homogeneous fiber blends such as polyester-cotton or viscose-nylon. This is because the pigment ink is deposited as a solid stain on the fabric and doesn’t rely on a chemical reaction to be fixed. Fiber-blended fabrics account for more than 60% of all fabrics printed worldwide, and pigment ink printing is the most favored process by manufacturers because of its adaptability across the fiber and fabric spectrum.

Non-Allergenic Digital pigment inks are generally chemically inert and have none of the allergens associated with chemical dyestuffs such as reactive, dye sublimation, and dispersed. For this reason, it is the preferred process

for baby and children’s wear which is printed using pigment inks, and where the attainment of the following 100 standards by OEKO-TEX is virtually mandatory: Product Class I: Articles for babies and toddlers up to three years of age (underwear, rompers, clothing, bed linen, terry products. etc.).

Product Class II: Articles that are worn close to the skin (underwear, bed linen, T-shirts, socks, etc.).

Newly developed digital pigment inks from Kornit Digital achieve all these standards.

nergy

ciency

The process for pigment ink printing is particularly economic in energy terms. Pigment ink printing only requires heat fixation and final finishing, whereas all the other inks require either HT Steaming, washingoff and drying, or the use of media such as paper to complete the print process. These extra processes are very costly in energy terms and it is true to say that, on average, pigment ink printing uses less than 15% of the energy used by other technologies.

Sustainability Pigment ink printing has immaculate environmental credentials, for it uses very little water, discharges no significant process effluent, and uses much less energy. For example, it has been calculated that to print and finish a meter of reactive print, more than 50 liters of water will be used, most of it raised to its boiling point and then discharged as effluent into the local environment. Pigment printing uses little or no water, there is no effluent discharge, and its use of energy is minimal, offering a practical, sustainable solution for our environment.

Pigment ink printing with an

addressable market size of 25 billion meters per year allows digital technologies to make a huge positive impact in an established sector of the world’s textile market. For an industry that is challenged by demand for ultrafast delivery times and just-in-time manufacturing, the future is set for digital manufacturing. Pigment historically is the inkset of choice for the bulk of the textile industry, and with established credentials and performance standards, pigment appeals to the manufacturing community. For many textile companies, faced with numerous commercial issues and now forced to look to re-equip with the next generation of machinery, it’s a simple choice.

Digital pigment ink printing services the five main fabric printing sectors: Fashion and Apparel, Soft Signage, Home Décor, Sportswear, and Contract Décor, all of which are established markets for pigment printing. The consumer demands high-volume industrial print alongside speed, sustainability, efficiency, versatility, and flexible manufacturing.

The textile sector now faces new opportunities and challenges that must be addressed and overcome.

Printing using pigment inks while utilizing a digital printing process offers companies large and small the commercial freedom they need to succeed. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21110112 ■ Debbie McKeegan Debbie McKeegan is the CEO of TexIntel. As a multi-disciplinary creative and renowned digital print pioneer, she holds over 25 years’ experience within the Textile manufacturing industry.

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TRADE SERVICES

Getting to Know AATCC From scholarships to professional development, AATCC is changing with the times.

Article by Kerry King

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he American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) will be 100 years old in 2021, and I am honored to serve as its president as we approach the century mark.

The association has continued to evolve over the years to meet the needs of those in the everchanging textile, apparel and materials industries – including students, researchers, product and fabric designers, colorists, dye and chemicals suppliers, manufacturers, quality control as well as merchandisers and retailers.

One of our biggest opportunities is educating the textile supply chain about all that AATCC has to offer its members. If you are not already a member, we hope our story will inspire you to join. If you are a member, thanks for your support.

And perhaps you will learn even more about the association here!

Our Roots in Textile Wet Processing We typically describe ourselves as having roots in textile wet processing, since a lot of what we do is focused on development of standardized test methods, and associated education and training, to support the evaluation Kerry King Kerry King is President of AATCC and VP of R&D at oon o er it professional experience in areas related to digital te ti e rintin se n product development, a are t and si in and emer in tec no o ies.

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of products within the textiles sphere.

Typical test methods are focused more on coloration and finishing, and other aspects of wet processing.

For example, color fastness properties are among the key test methods we are focused on, including the effects of laundering, exposure to light, crock (rub fastness), perspiration, stain resistance and the efficacy of fabric finishes.

Over the years we have developed test methods that are related to performance features such as properties for weathering, outdoor use, moisture transport or moisture resistance. We also engage with other associations and industry groups to ensure the test methods we develop meet the needs of supply chain participants globally.

Staying Ahead of the Curve Since we obviously don’t live in a static environment, our test method committees invest in periodic review of existing methods to ensure they meet industry needs and are in keeping with technology, processes and product safety requirements as they change over time. We also develop new test methods based on the needs of the industry and in response to performance requirements that benefit consumers.

One area that has changed a great deal over the last 10 or 15 years is home laundering, with new kinds of washing machines and new kinds of laundry detergents entering the marketplace. Our test methods have been adapted in response, and this is an example of where we are working to keep our test methods current

with the changing landscape: How do we develop products and what do we need to do to alter our products to be more in keeping with what consumers are expecting?

Getting the Work Done: Committees and Interest Groups In order to make our work as effective and efficient as possible, we have structured both committees and interest groups made up mostly of member volunteers, and we thank them for their service!

A member can participate in various committees and can be a voting member of up to three test method committees but can participate in as many as they want.

There are also three special interest groups: ■ Chemical applications, for members that are interested in how chemistry is changing or what research is happening within wet processing.

■ Concept to Consumer, or C2C: The C2C group is intended to provide greater connection between product developers and technical and manufacturing experts within the textile supply chain.

■ Materials: These are folks that are working in areas that have to do with the development of new fibers, new fiber technology and manufacturing techniques.

Sustainability is Key Underlying all of this is the issue of sustainability. Our sustainability

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committee is currently pursuing the issue of fiber shedding as part of laundering, and investigating test methods that will aid in the evaluation of this property. Our membership has a high level of interest in sustainability, and test method development helps us to better understand the problems and work toward technology solutions, so we as an industry get better. Through our education programs, we help companies understand best-in-class technology and process so that our industry can become better stewards of the environment.

100 for 100 We also want to expand those scholarships even further and are launching our 100 for 100 campaign in honor of our 100-year anniversary – campaigning to fully endow $100,000 per year in scholarships in time to celebrate AATCC’s 100th birthday in 2021. Endowing these scholarships ensures support for textile students far into the future!

Just $100 from every individual member and $1,000 from every corporate member would meet or even exceed the goal!

Within the foundation, we have funds that go to support a wide variety of scholarships. Some are directed at specific colleges and universities; and others are devoted to specific fields of study. The application process is specific to the scholarship the student is interested in.

Looking Ahead The separation between

manufacturing of products and the design and specification of those products has informed what we have done over the last five years in terms of education and training. As we look ahead at such issues as localized production and microfactories, some of the things we are considering are the gaps in expertise we may have.

This is an area where digital textile printing has a significant role to play.

We are open to collaborating with other industry groups to support the education of our members. For example, we formed a partnership with SGIA four years ago and have now conducted four Digital Textile Printing Conferences together, with the last one attracting almost 140 attendees. We are looking at other educational opportunities for our respective members as well. This effort also goes hand-in-hand with sustainability.

Although the topic of domestic manufacturing is important to many of our members, we see ourselves as an association that focuses on understanding where the need arises for education and training, and supporting our members in the exchange of technical knowledge wherever their manufacturing happens. Toward that end, we continue to find ways to help our members network and connect with each other through in-person events and digital communities.

We want to foster an exchange of information that allows members to learn from each other as well as to take advantage of our education and training programs.

We also recognize that there are a lot of students and young professionals who don’t necessarily have a landing place as they graduate and go out into the work world.

For me as a young professional, it was helpful to connect with the

association; and I learned so much from being around some of the more senior members, having them share stories and tell me more about the work they do, and being part of a community. We are striving to engage more with younger members, both to learn from them and to understand what they are looking for as professionals and connecting them with other resources in the industry. That also helps ensure that knowledge is transferred as older members retire and move on to other things, as well as ensuring we are able to attract new talent to the industry’s workforce.

Our work around sustainability will also continue to grow. Our California section recently hosted a conference around this theme; and as an association, given our expertise around coloration and wet processing, we are striving to find other opportunities to play a key role in helping to inform the industry and support research and development in areas that will improve our footprint.

We also need to do a better job of connecting with resources around the globe who are users of our test methods, improving connection points with our international members. As the industry changes shape and the story of where products are manufactured continues to evolve, global manufacturing is not going away. But it will blend with microfactories and localized manufacturing. We see our job as identifying the topics that need to be addressed and finding ways to support this evolution.

So with a lot of challenges ahead, we are excited to bring our membership along with us as we continue to address these challenges in new and different ways. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21111608 ■

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urst estructures Te tile Printing egment A Winning Partnership Canon Production Printing ne ision Canon Production Printing has partnered with OneVision, a market leader in prepress software solutions, to offer large format graphics customers in Europe improved operational efficiencies through end-to-end workflow automation.

Canon Production Printing has partnered with OneVision, a market leader in prepress software solutions, to offer large format graphics customers in Europe improved operational efficiencies through end-to-end workflow automation. Achieve seamless integration between your large format printer and software.

With OneVision’s state-of-the-art Wide Format Automation Suite, print service providers working with Canon’s award-winning Colorado roll-to-roll and Arizona flatbed printer series can now increase productivity and reduce waste to support growing production volumes.

The OneVision software works from the moment the order is received. It automatically picks up the job data, creates print files and checks them against 130 different error criteria, automatically correcting errors identified.

Color management is also optimized.

With the Wide Format Automation Suite, perfect print-ready files are created in seconds. Automated nesting and data normalization remove the complexity of handling files, speeding up RIP and print time, as well as optimizing all available space on the media by automatically arranging artwork on any given print size.

www.printingnews.com/21110452

The new segment manager, Dr. Stefan Kappaun, has responsibility for the strategic direction in home textiles, clothing and accessories.

Durst has restructured its segment for industrial textile printing. The new segment manager, Dr. Stefan Kappaun, has responsibility for the strategic direction in home textiles, clothing and accessories. Dr. Kappaun also will be the connecting link to the Large Format Segment, which takes over soft signage and fabrics in the portfolio.

Dr. Kappaun is a member of Durst Group’s executive team and heads the ink business for all segments as Executive Vice President Inks & Fluids. A technical chemist with a focus on polymer science and a trained business economist, he is an expert in materials science and the development and marketing of ink systems for digital inkjet printing.

www.printingnews.com/21111223 Make lock hows their ew Printer or T AM ducation at TT mCreate is packed with features designed to empower kids to turn their creative ideas into reality Global STEAM education solution provider Makeblock released its latest tech - the mCreate 3D printer - at BETT London. The versatile 3D printer doubles as a laser engraver and is specifically designed to be used in classrooms to encourage creativity and learning.

The latest from Makeblock rounds out the company’s complete STEAM education ecosystem, which includes educational software and hardware aimed at teaching coding and other relevant skills to the workforce of the future.

With mCreate, students can create fun projects by integrating Makeblock’s mBuild electronic modules.

www.printingnews.com/21111419

FI s ew Mid- olume oll-to- oll m and m Printer ine na les and Applications with Top- uality Prints

nlimited

esigns

Electronics For Imaging, Inc. is launching a new mid-range roll-to-roll printer line that helps sign and display graphics customers drive more volume with high-end digital print for endless applications and designs.

The new EFI VUTEk D3r and D5r LED inkjet printers leverage many of the advanced capabilities from EFI’s highly successful VUTEk 3r+ and 5r+ printers, offering a mid-range solution for an even wider variety of high value applications thanks to its combination of white and clear inks, as well as its Museum print mode. The new printer line also supports the unique collection of options for VUTEk roll-to-roll LED printers, providing a full system for higher efficiency and a lower total cost of ownership. The VUTEk D3r, which prints up to 2,196 square feet per hour, is making its worldwide debut at the EFI Connect users’ conference, Jan. 21-24 in Las Vegas, and making its European debut at the EFI EMEA Ignite event on Jan. 29 in Brussels, Belgium.

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SALES CLINIC

There’s Gold in Those Hills The first step to finding new customers is to do a little prospecting.

Article by Dave Fellman

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re you – or your salespeople – doing enough prospecting?

For most printing salespeople, I’m afraid that the answer is no. I hear a lot of talk about wanting to make more money, but I don’t see as much action toward making it happen. There’s a simple equation at work here – more money requires more customers.

Yes, you can make more money by increasing sales with current customers, but there’s a risk attached to that strategy. The bigger they get, the more it hurts if you lose them. So, if you want to make more money – and minimize the risk of making less – you should probably do more prospecting.

Skills and Attitudes Obviously there are skills involved in effective prospecting, but I think it all starts with attitude. The following five statements represent the attitude that I would like you to have.

■ I do want to make more money (or minimize the risk of making less.)

■ I will make time to prospect for new customers.

■ I won’t get discouraged if I don’t get immediate gratification.

Dave Fellman Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, a sales and marketing consulting rm ser in numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact him at dmf@davefellman.com .

■ I will identify and pursue worthwhile prospects.

■ I won’t lose sight of my goals.

This all begs a question. Is prospecting fun? In my experience, parts of it are, but most of it isn’t.

That begs another question. What is prospecting anyway? Here’s my definition: Prospecting is an activity chain that begins with the identification of suspect companies, and ends with the first meeting between the buyer and the seller.

The term “suspect” refers to a company that’s not yet a qualified prospect. In order to be considered a fully qualified prospect, you have to know – not just think or hope – that they: ■ buy, want or need exactly the kind of printing you sell ■ buy, want or need enough of it to make pursuing them worthwhile ■ have some real interest in buying from you In truth, we should probably call this process “suspecting,” but I’m not hopeful I’ll ever succeed in changing that terminology. So let’s call it prospecting, and let’s also recognize that prospecting is all about getting to that first meeting. Which is fun, right? The meetings anyway. It’s the work you have to do to get the meetings that’s usually not fun, especially considering that most of your suspects will decline to meet with you, or even return your phone calls and emails. That’s why it’s so important to have a strong prospecting attitude.

Critical Skills What skills are required to be effective at prospecting?

■ Analytic Skills: the ability to identify good market niches and to calculate a suspect’s annual volume potential ■ Research Skill: the ability to identify the decision-maker and the rest of the players ■ Communication and Convincing Skills: the ability to craft and deliver an introductory message and to deal with a number of predictable earlystages objections ■ Organizational Skill: I won’t let any new business development opportunities fall through the cracks!

Beyond Prospecting Looking beyond prospecting, I like to say that the first meeting is the end of the prospecting stage, the beginning of the convincing stage and the heart of the opportunity stage. The opportunity part is really important. You must understand that most of your first meetings will be held with suspects; in other words, you won’t know when you fist sit down with them whether they’re fully qualified prospects. So the main part of the agenda is to qualify.

Remember that being willing to meet with you is often a long way from being ready to buy from you, so the first meeting is your opportunity to learn exactly how you can differentiate yourself from the printer-in-place.

So, are you really doing enough of all of that? Find article here PrintingNews.com/21110129 ■

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architectural and interior design firms has been the most successful strategy, as these kinds of applications are usually planned as new facilities are being designed, constructed or remodeled. In terms of vehicle graphics, going to car shows can also often be a good way to jump start new business.

Get

ut o the

ce

We often stay so focused on our own business that we tend to ignore what is happening in the world around us. Or if we do get out, we remain oblivious to the environment, especially if we’re staring at a phone 90% of the time. Sign and display graphics are the most conspicuous form of print. Don’t ignore them. For example, walking around my downtown, I noticed that in the past couple of years, a unique variety of light-pole graphics started proliferating and have become more and more popular and commonplace.

When a new type of graphic turns up more and more frequently, that’s a good indication that it’s an in-demand application. Don’t let that opportunity go to waste; learn how to produce it and then emphasize it in your marketing and promotion efforts.

It doesn’t even have to be all business. I was in a cheese shop in Manhattan a couple of years ago and noticed that their interior wall graphics used magnetic materials from Visual Magnetics to dynamically change the display depending on what specific kinds of cheese they wanted to highlight.

There is a local brewpub in Saratoga Springs that uses dynamic digital signage—via Untappd—to highlight what specific brews are on tap on a given day. Just noticing the signs around you can stimulate creative business and product ideas.

Build a Targeted Sales Portfolio Any good sign and display graphics provider has a portfolio of completed projects on their website. (You do, right?) It’s important to have such a portfolio because very often clients may not know just what kinds of graphics are available or feasible. They’re often focused on their own business—or staring at their own phones—and don’t pay attention to signage and other display graphics. So as a print provider, you can show them how exploiting a new type of display graphic can attract more attention to their business.

Not only having a portfolio, but having a series of

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targeted portfolios is important. Organize your projects by vertical market. A bank has different sign and display needs than a hospital, which has different needs than a restaurant, which has different needs than a school, or a retail store, or a corporate office. Target your sales and marketing materials to single out these verticals, so if you are pitching interior graphics to a bank, your prospect isn’t saying, “Well, you know, we don’t need salad bar graphics.”

Eat Your Own Cooking It can be surprising how often wide-format print providers fail to utilize their capabilities for their own display graphics needs. One of the challenges new entrants into the market can have is building up a portfolio— producing graphics for one’s own business is a great way to get some examples onto your online photo gallery. At the same time, if needed, pro bono work for a local charity, school or other cause can also be a good way build up a portfolio until you develop a roster of paying clients.

Focus

n a olistic Approach to Print

Ultimately, you don’t want to be in the business of selling products. You want to be a strategic partner for your clients, and that involves a more consultative approach to print sales than just taking orders over a counter or through a web portal. It’s about helping clients solve problems—and specific types of print are among the tools at your disposal to solve those problems.

That’s why offering many different kinds of print—smallformat, commercial in addition to various kinds of wide format—can help retain customers, especially if you can function in the role of asset management for them. I’ve heard this described as “golden handcuffs:” you want to be indispensable to them.

2020 and Beyond The 2010s was a banner decade for wide-format printing (as it were), and the next decade is only going to build on that. The keys to success? Keeping up on top applications, knowing what’s in demand and marketing, marketing, marketing. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21110061 ■

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GRAPHIC DESIGN Continued from page 48

controlling the options for the A&D and their clients, A&Ds can now work the model backward. The A&D and their clients can now specify the designs they want and have them manufactured on demand.

A great example of this shift is with architect Paul Lewandowski. He is currently in the process of designing custom wallpaper for his client, Exterus in Portland, Maine, for use in their restroom. This custom wallpaper will be printed by Megaprint in nearby New Hampshire.

“Since this project is a commercial furniture showroom, we wanted to make sure that design was front and center to inspire designers coming in,: he said. “In my opinion, bathrooms are often overlooked as design opportunities, but they have some of the highest branding and impact potential. Designing a custom product like the wallcovering at Exterus, based on the flora and fauna of northern New England forests, is an affordable way to create a unique and memorable story.”

As we enter a new decade, we

will see an even more significant shift in on-demand printing and manufacturing. The traditional business model is collapsing. The

lines between the mills, jobbers and OEMs are becoming blurred. Jobbers, mills and designers are buying their own printers. Jobbers become mills, mills become jobbers, designers become entrepreneurs, and everyone now has access to the A&D and their clients.

As we move into this unknown area, one thing is for sure: There will always be a need for talented, trained designers to convert all of these amazing ideas and concepts into beautiful end products. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21109268 ■ Kristen Dettoni Kristen Dettoni is a designer with twentyseven years of experience in design, management, and marketing. She is the founder of Design Pool, an online resource for licensable patterns.

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ASSOCIATION INSIGHTS

Catch up on the latest trends at the ISA

International Sign Expo 2020

Article by Lori Anderson

A

s business continues to go at a breakneck pace, taking the time to rethink and strategize might seem the last on the to-do list. But when new opportunities and new ideas present themselves, the smart business leader is always poised to capitalize.

Pixie Nunez came to the sign, graphics and visual communications industry as an outsider—and has helped bring a new way of thinking to ARI Graphix and its parent company, Albuquerque Reprographic, Inc. The company had long visited print-specific tradeshows. And while there were plenty of small changes to explore, Nunez, the company’s general manager, pushed to think even bigger. She attended ISA International Sign Expo for the first time in 2017, where she found a spark of inspiration into other areas of graphic expertise.

“I spent a half-day walking the floor and realized how much more information was available at the tradeshow,” Nunez said. “This

Lori Anderson Lori Anderson is president & CEO of the International Sign Association (ISA) which serves the international on-premise signage and visual communications industry.

66

changed everything.”

These days, about 80% of the company’s business is in signs and graphics. That’s a pretty significant change—and a quick one, too. In less than three years, thanks to the ideas she gathered at ISA Sign Expo and her own initiative, she has opened up a sizeable line of business.

“We’re still learning all the different materials,” Nunez said. “But coming into the industry somewhat ignorant was an advantage. We were able to build relationships with people who could help us, like sign wholesalers.”

It’s that sense of discovery that ISA International Sign Expo has opened.

“My belief is you don’t know what you don’t know until someone shows you,” Nunez said. “It’s important to keep an open mind. Even though your business may be working, you have to stay open to working on your process because there are always avenues to improve.”

Each year, ISA International Sign Expo delivers those avenues. In 2019, Nunez specifically sought out more information on LED lighting so that ARI could understand lighting behind graphics.

“We do some really creative printing on acrylics and other types of materials,” she said.

She also saw a visual display, which the company purchased as a way to advertise its many services.

“People are used to coming in to

pick up construction documents, and they don’t always see the messages of all that we offer,” Nunez said. “They used to rotate on a TV, but this really catches attention.”

Attending has “really taken us from being behind to being on the innovative side of signage. At the beginning, we were imitating others,” she said. “Now people are imitating us. The more we’ve learned, the more it has allowed us to make our graphics more interesting.”

I hope you’ll plan to attend ISA Sign International Sign Expo 2020, held April 2-4 in Orlando, Fla. Come a day early, April 1, and dive deeply into those new growth opportunities with our pre-conference workshops.

Maybe you’ve seen the opportunities in wrap, and while some of it makes sense to a sign, graphics and visual communications company or a printer, the business aspects present unique challenges.

Justin Pate of The Wrap Institute and John Duever of Vinyl Images and Design present the Business Boot Camp for Wrap Professionals

by Avery Dennison. The day-long sessions will focus on ownership, sales and marketing and upselling among other topics.

Wayne Peterson of Black Canyon Group will help leaders bring a business development process to their companies in the day-long Strategic Management Workshop.

Bill Farquharson of Aspire For offers a half-day session, Finding Success with Wide-Format Print. And Karen Vanhoy of Atlas presents the halfday session, Developing Exemplary Project Management Teams.

There are plenty of ideas and inspiration to help you expand in a constantly changing environment.

Register at www.signexpo.org.

Find article here PrintingNews. com/21111842 ■

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INSIGHT YOU NEED. ANALYSIS YOU TRUST.

Your comprehensive source for emerging trends in our evolving industry.

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