Live from the 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium in Rancho Mirage CA

Day Twos opening session covered commercial and production printing and included the following presos: “Re-Defining the Production Printing Solutions Value Proposition—Versatility, Reliability and Cost-Effectiveness” by Tom Wetjen, Vice President, Worldwide Graphic Communications Industry, Xerox Corporation; “Customizing the Customer Relationship: Online On-Demand Digital Printing Innovations”, presented by Scott Baker, Vice President Worldwide Business Development, GMC Software AG; “High-Speed, High-Volume: The Fast and the Furious in Production Printing” by Steve Reynolds, Senior Analyst, Lyra Research; and “The Future of Wide Format and Super Wide”, from Tom Baratz, Industry Consultant, Lyra Research.

Take-aways? Along with leap year, the Summer Olympics, and the US Presidential election, this is a Drupa year, and the massive trade show in Dusseldorf Germany drives this segment of the business like nothing else. Well, except for maybe new trends (and/or buzz-words), like this years favorite, TransPromotional. And that new Xerox (NYSE XRX) logo? Im starting to get used to it!

Read More..

by Jim Lyons

The Hard Copy Observer, December 2008

2008 -- The Year of Printing Dangerously

Somehow, going back over the year 2008 feels mentally harrowing. Although there are reasons to celebrate, the year was also characterized by nerve-wracking crises that we cannot say are fully past. It was a momentous and historic year for the world, to be sure, but in many ways it was a quieter and more down-to-business year for the printer industry. So in reflecting on a topic for my end-of-year column, no great industry event triggered my imagination. And in fact, the title of this column was the closest thing to a breakthrough I was able to produce for some time, until the rest of the pieces began falling together to support the thesis of the danger in printing in 2008. Why was printing more “dangerous”, at least in some small ways, in 2008? I think there are numerous reasons to be examined as early indicators at least of major changes in the printing and imaging business.

Printing’s association with troubled industries and the accompanying guilt by association is one reason. During this year’s Lyra Supplies Symposium in Las Vegas in August, the expert panel that concluded the event was asked to comment on the future growth, or lack thereof, that they anticipated in the printer supplies business.

While many panelists conceded that printing had recently declined in certain markets, there were counteracting forces leading to an overall GDP-level growth in printing over the forecast period of the next few years. What was the biggest recent source of decline in printing volumes? Banking and finance-related businesses, including real estate, which have traditionally been print-heavy industries. A lull in their business levels showed up in a correlation with pages printed—and this was in August! With the economic chaos since then, it is only natural to assume that when the dust settles, print demand generated from loans, credit applications, title work, real estate bids and assessments will have fallen drastically, because the number of deals is off sharply and so many pages are printed per deal.

The growing “green” consciousness around printing, especially as it ties to cost savings is another reason. The field of managed print services (MPS) has unquestionably been a bright spot for the industry this year. And its success, in finally seeming to take hold after years of discussion, has many pointing to the green trend among end-users (as well as organizations) as the potential reason for this tipping point.

A recent example, not appearing on the Web pages and success stories of corporate MPS providers like HP or Xerox but at the “TechSoup” Web site, is titled “Choosing Print Management Software.” TechSoup bills itself as the “The Technology Place for Nonprofits,” and while its interest in saving money for its readers is not surprising, the site seems to have focused on printing for both cost and environmental reasons. TechSoup ran a special series including features like “Choosing Print Management Software” and “Creating and Distributing Electronic Annual Reports and Marketing Materials” that was presented with a high level of professionalism, although the topics lead customers in the wrong direction for the printer industry.

One further example of how printing became dangerous, or at least on the outs, comes from a Wall Street Journal article from August 22, titled, “Tech Firms Pitch Tools For Sifting Legal Records: With E-Discovery, Lawyers Face Loss Of Client Fees.” The article reports that millions in legal fees are at stake, as hyper-efficient electronic searching supplants traditional manual searching of paper records, which is time-consuming but provides lots of billable hours. While in many cases (sorry for that one) the process involves merely scanning and indexing historic paper documents, there is also much to be gained from those documents never being in paper form to begin with, and then not, at least as a rule, being re-printed from their electronic repositories for legal purposes.

HP and Xerox are two of the “tech firms” mentioned in the article, and you need look no further than the pages of the May 2008 issue of this newsletter to find a story about HP’s acquisition of Tower Software, an Australian based e-discovery firm.

An alarming October 9 article in The Economist brought further squirming from those of us in the industry. Entitled “The Paperless Office, On its Way, at Last: No longer a joke, the ‘paperless’ office is getting closer,” the article contains a case study of a small Austin, Texas administrative business (Breedlove and Associates) and its efforts to go paperless. It includes chilling quotes.

“It is that everyone—clients and staff—is sick of paper. The clients tend to be young, middle-class families…they are good with technology and already pay bills online, use e-tickets on planes, e-file their tax returns, and Google recipes rather than using cookbooks. And Breedlove’s 16 employees are in their 20s, native to Facebook and instant-messaging, and baffled by the need for paper. Now everybody is happier. Next year the firm expects to be completely paperless.”

The article concludes (spoiler alert), however, with the familiar-to-some analogy of the arrival of the “horseless carriage” and the horse population, and the fact that today’s society is home to approximately the same number of horses as 100 years ago, but they are used in radically different ways. So one might argue that paper could be used in ways that we are only now discovering, while being replaced nearly altogether in other areas.

I take the liberty to examine the state of printing about once a year, and thanks to my readers for indulging me yet again. Indeed, to me anyway, printing, or at least relying on traditional printing, does seem dangerous at the end of 2008.

Nevertheless, while trade-offs will occur, vendors will continue to find growth areas where they can prosper.

Read More..

I have three adds/deletes that are worth mentioning in the ever-dynamic ebb and flow of the printer and printing industry segment of the blogosphere (ok, Im being a little sarcastic here).

First, the Planet Print Mode site and its companion blog, have been suspended in favor of a new enterprise by their creator, Adam Dewitz. Having completed graduate work at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Adam has started his own company, Adaptive Publishing, in addition to serving as WhatTheyThink.coms chief blogger, serving as Managing Editor
of the Print CEO Blog.

Second, a comment on a recent post of mine ("Book scanners as a consumer Item?") by a reader and fellow blogger Samuel Driessen linked me over to his mid-February post about "Paperless Home" over at Infoarch. Samuel is with Oce in The Netherlands and writes prolifically on information architecture "stuff" on his blog.

And last but not least, a newer blog has surfaced called, of all things, The Death of the Copier. Creator Greg Walters is just three posts in, but so far has coverage that includes interesting content and opinion on HP (NYSE HPQ) Edgeline technology, Managed Print Services, and paperless and green issues. I like the attitude, and thanks for the link! Keep it up, Greg!

And now time to update the old blogroll!

Read More..

Steve Reynolds, Senior Analyst, for Lyra Research, did his traditional succinct but complete overview of this segment of the business, this year entitled “Developments and Strategies for Office MFPs”. One of his slides, of the semi-facetious but on-the-mark category, was his “Valuation Sheet” for medium- to large-sized copier dealers, in light of the distribution “shortage” caused by Ricoh’s acquisition of IKON in 2008 (yes, this topic comes up a lot). See Graphic. Another point raised by Reynolds was the “color reluctance” holding back color page growth, partly at least economy- (and cost-) related.



Paul Preo, newly-named VP, Workgroup and Industrial Printing at InfoPrint had a very comprehensive and interesting review of the Enterprise Printing environment, including popular Symposium topics such as the linkage between print management and “green” initiatives as well as A4 encroachment on A3 placements. He, like Reynolds, links slower color adoption (at least that the industry would like) to economic problems, but also sees some printing coming in-house and away from out-sourced printing, albeit in lower overall volumes. Preo recommends learning more at infoprint.com.

Printer Industry and Channel Players. Moderator: Ann Priede, Lyra Research. Panelists: Mike Dane, IKON Office Solutions, Inc.; Greg Lamb, Global Imaging Inc.; Kevin Prewett, Ingram Micro. Acquisitions having an impact? IM no, IKON yes (!), challenge is migrating from heavily Canon to all Ricoh. The wide format industry is newer (13-14 years old) so not as much talk of consolidation. IKON was the last national distributor out there, but it’s not over – next logical thing? Perhaps a Manufacturer consolidation? Some foresee one printer vendor buying another, or someone from outside the space coming in? In wide format space, EFI has made 13 acquisitions; they will continue to be active. Trends in leasing? Credit got tight, noticeably when GE Capital exited the market. Manufacturers are working to improve capital availability. Among some others in the wide-ranging potpourri of topics for the panel included channel conflict, the Circuit City bankruptcy, and Samsung’s impending major thrust into the business.

Read More..

I will point my readers here over to my "Goin Mobile" blog and my post on the Mopria mobile printing alliance.

Read More..

Live from the 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium in Rancho Mirage CA

The 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium is history, but I’m still in Rancho Mirage compiling some final notes so I believe this still qualifies a “live”, but it will definitely be the last post under that mantle.

Jay Vleeschhouwer, Managing Director, Merrill Lynch opened the mid-morning session following the Commercial and Production Printing module, with a presentation Adobe Sytems (NASDAQ ADBE) and other imaging-related software companies entitled “A Financial Analyst Perspective on Key Imaging Software Companies”. It was Jay’s turn to participate in a newer Symposium tradition, a Wall Street perspective on a particular company or market segment, that has been built on the popular and more wide-ranging Wall Street panels that close each day of the conference.

Presentations and panels from industry participants and Lyra analysts moved us into the enormous and lucrative supplies segment of our business. The discussions followed a similar agenda to Lyrass August event, which seemed cram-packed as a day-long endeavor, so todays couple-of-hours-long agenda was really a lot to take in! The presentations included “Keynote: The Way Forward—Legal Perspectives on the Digital Imaging Consumables Industry”, from Edward OConnor, Esq., Partner, Trial Division, The Eclipse Group; “Color and Cost Performance: Forecasting Toner Market Trends”, by Cortney Kasuba, Research Analyst, Lyra Research; “Beyond the Laser Bias: Inkjet Market Trends and Forecasts”, presented by Andy Lippman, also a Research Analyst with Lyra; “Changing Channels: The Supplies Distributor Perspective”, by Scott Zahl, Vice President of Vendor Management, Ingram Micro; and “The Hard Copy Supplies Journal Top Trends & Panel Discussion”, with Moderator Charles Brewer, Managing Editor, The Hard Copy Supplies Journal, Lyra Research; Rob Leonard, President, Leonard Consulting Group; Liz Leung, Director of Consumer Supplies, Epson America; and Brad Roderick, Executive Vice President, LaserCycle/InkCycle.

As we entered into the final afternoon and the home stretch, first speaker under the banner of Consumer Imaging and Digital Photography with a great presentation titled “Recent Technology Challenges in Digital Photographic Print Quality”, Catherine Fiasconaro, Vice President, Operations and Director, SpencerLab Digital Color Laboratory, tracked her well-known company’s marketing research studies probing consumers digital photo printing perceptions and habits. One of her conclusions I found very compelling and consistent with my own patterns was a shift from preferring AgX (aka Silver Halide) prints, to accepting and believing that home inkjet print quality could actually exceed that of the traditional method, to still believing it but not wanting the bother of home printing of anything but a small number of prints.

Then Steve Hoffenberg, Director, Consumer Imaging Research, Lyra Research, presented "Beyond Photo Output: Anticipating Opportunities in the Evolving Photo Culture", which offered two revenue and profit paths for the photo printing business – photo books that I’ve also covered in this blog in numerous posts, and the "Long Tail" approach to myriad specialty products that are custom-imprinted with customers’ digital images.

Steve then moderated an interesting panel from industry participants in those two areas, including Tomasz Johannsen, Director, Product Management, EZ Prints; Graham McFarland, President and CEO, ExpressDigital; and Chad Richard, Chief Executive Officer, Simple Star.

Larry Jamieson, Director, Hard Copy Industry Advisory Service for Lyra, presented his Home Printing recap, this year named “Consumer and SOHO Printing in an iPhone World”, and he was even gracious enough to use my iPhone printing anecdote (see "2007 in Review: iPhone Printing") in his opening, and offered a trend showing survey data revealing a down-turn in the home printer-to-PC ratio.

The final module of the Symposium was “Green” oriented, with the keynote, “The Greening of the Printing Industry” by Michael Hoffmann, Senior Vice President, with the (NYSE HPQ) Imaging and Printing Group’s (IPG) Supplies organization.

In stressing the importance of Green issues to HP’s customers, Hoffmann quoted a figure of 80% of Enterprise IT RFQs received in recent times include environmental considerations. He spoke to numerous initiatives especially around energy savings, both in terms of their products’ power consumption, as well as energy used by HP’s sprawling operations that surround the globe. HP is also touting decreased waste initiatives, with actions as basic as making duplex printing easier, but also promoting more efficient printing from the web (see “. Product recycling is big with HP and has been for decades, though with increasing emphasis – see today’s announcement about their conversion to manufacturing inkjet cartridges with recycled plastic. (See announcement.) Hoffmann closed with a compelling industry call to action, that will be posted here when I get the exact text.

Lyra Founder Charles LeCompte offered his view of the importance of Green issues in ” Cradle to Grave: Lyras Whole-View Environmental Impact Analysis of the Digital Imaging Industry” with a very interesting and bold presentation of the environmental “opportunity” facing our industry. Like his “Year 2000” presentation I wrote about (see "Observations: In the Year 2000...") earliler this month, LeCompte suggested some industry steps including following Hoffmann’s Call to Action or something like it.

The day and the conference closed out with the “Wall Street Watch, Round 2” panel, moderated by LeCompte and including Shannon Cross, Principal, Cross Research, and Bill Fearnley, Jr., Managing Director, PC and Enterprise Hardware, FTN Midwest Securities Corporation, and Steve Reynolds, Lyra Analyst. Kodak (who had just announced earnings earlier in the day) HP, Dell, and others were fair game during this, again, wide-ranging discussion, and the remaining audience greatly appreciated the participation of Cross and Fearnley, who with all the earnings announcements, Fed moves, etc, of the last days were seriously and admittedly a bit sleep-deprived!

Read More..

The residential Real Estate business has been unquestionably the most frequently targeted vertical markets for the printer industrys Small Business initiatives over the last few years (see "Real estate marketing made easy" from HP (NYSE HPQ), for an example.) The industrys printing needs -- particularly those ubiquitous sales pieces consisting of relatively short run, one- or two-page (duplex) flyers -- have been a great fit with the growing category of low-cost color (particularly laser) printers. Most anyone in the market for a new home has been exposed to a plethora of these print pieces, whether as hand-outs during open houses or as take-aways from those mail-box-like containers that grace virtually every "For Sale" sign out there.

Of course, the residential real estate market has been the source of much negative economic news for quite awhile now, with housing values and sales both down drastically, at least in many areas, along with the intertwined sub-prime mortgage mess and its fallout. So Ive wondered what affects this may have had on the Real Estate Printing opportunity? One thing Ive personally noticed -- many of those sign-based flyers are now more commonly available in good old black-and-white rather than color. Makes sense -- lower cost per page, and with properties potentially on the market much longer these days, the short runs arent so short any more! (Not sure if durability of monochrome prints versus color would play a part here too.)

And just when things may be looking up slightly for residential housing here comes this from TechCrunch and Michael Arrington. Although his piece "Computer vs Realtor: Computer Wins. Twice." really is about Redfin and their disintermediation of the buy-side agent, the bigger picture speaks to the overall long-term threat to this ultimate "small business" and their traditionally print-heavy practices.

Read More..

by Jim Lyons

The Hard Copy Observer, December 2007

Amazons Kindle Stirs Up E-book (and Printing and Imaging) Excitement

As readers of the year-end issue of The Hard Copy Observer [where this column appears in print form] can no doubt attest, 2007 has been a very big year for the printing and imaging business. The promises of newcomers like Zink and Memjet and new product categories as represented by HPs Edgeline have been exciting to cover. Innovation outside the purely technical, including the formidable challenge to the razor-and-blades business model mounted by players like Kodak and Xerox, have made 2007 a year to remember. Nonetheless, the pinnacle of tech-industry buzz seems to still be reserved for products and services tangential to printing (at best), with Amazons Kindle, introduced on November 19, as the latest example.

Earlier this year I was quoted in a Printer Pundit interview on the DataBazaar blog as describing our industry as "quietly going about our business", a comment that was stated frankly but also with a spirit of pride. Yes, we do great things in this business and have hundreds of millions, if not billions, of satisfied customers, but we are the strong, silent types, right? But truth be told, this stealth approach can sting a little in vain moments—after all, among all the 2007 announcements mentioned in my opening paragraph, only Kindle graced the cover of Newsweek magazine.

So, in an unapologetic attention-getting move, I am claiming the Kindle as one of our industrys own. Electronic book readers are not new after all, and many of our businesss leading companies have covered, discussed, and even invested in these devices. Since at least 2000, the Observer has covered various E-book readers and related products (e.g. see Observer 3/00). As one of the principal ways we use printed paper in our society, books are of great interest to the printer-oriented world, and in Kindles case, as noted in its voluminous press coverage in both the traditional and "new" media, the content solution offered by Amazon goes beyond books to include a selection of newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Even considering e-books primarily as a threat that have the potential to someday supplant the need for the physically printed page, these devices are undeniably an important developing area in the broader "information collection, dissemination, and consumption" industry, and serve as a caution to avoid falling victim to marketing myopia and think about ourselves as "just being in the printer industry."

And, in keeping with my ongoing theme of marketing successes and failures, I would like to point to what I believe Amazon has done right on the "product" side. For all the attention it has garnered, much of the Kindle commentary has been rather negative, starting with its retro (to be kind) industrial design. On the positive side, Amazon has put together an innovative solution. We learned from the iPod/iTunes example earlier this decade that cracking an industry, the portable digital music industry in Apple’s case, was not just about the gadget. As the E-book is about so much more than the reader itself, there are definitely some parallels.

The Kindle solution could not do better than Amazons e-commerce infrastructure for its online bookstore, and the Whispernet connectivity seems to solve the Wi-Fi hot-spot problem I have encountered with my iPhone (and its AT&T Edge network backup that has been roundly criticized as inadequate). The resulting stand-alone nature of the Kindle (no PC required) is a big plus in terms of usability and convenience compared to 2006’s Sony Reader. Closer to our printing world, Amazon had the foresight to include the handling of user-generated documents like PDFs and Word files along with books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs, which are added to the Kindles memory via e-mail. (Conversely, the Kindles inability to print snippets of books and other files is one of the knocks on it that reviewers have highlighted.)

By staying away from engineering a multi-purpose laptop-PC wannabe, Amazon seems to have nailed the design for a dedicated reading appliance that includes a monochrome, e-ink-based display and limited graphics but weighs in at well below one pound (10.3 ounces, to be exact). Of course, behavioral patterns will have a huge impact on market success in the end, and the battle still rages between dedicated (and thus multiple) specialized devices and convenient (but compromised) all-in-one machines.

To complete the marketing analysis, the Kindle has a fairly reasonable pricing scheme, including an acceptable price for the machine and aggressive prices for best sellers (though customers may soon tire of the nickel-and-dime scheme of paying for blogs and e-mail). The Kindle also benefits from the ultimate "place", i.e. distribution channel, as Amazon is one the one of the world’s most heavily trafficked and most popular e-commerce sites. So with the great promotion (including the PR blitz) still ongoing and attention to product, make that solution, details, I predict success for Amazon’s Kindle, and welcome it to our larger printing and imaging family!

Read More..