Inkjet is building steam; will it ever do anything other than transactional…

Inkjet is building steam and this time in a new report!

"In its "North American Transactional Printing Market Update & Forecast 2009-2014" study, Interquest reports that inkjet presses are gaining volume and installations. Interquest is a leading market and technology research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry.

The 2009 study notes that although inkjet equipment accounts for only four percent of the transactional printing systems (monochrome, spot and full color) used by respondents to the survey, inkjet presses produce 35 percent of the total transactional print volume reported – up from 31 percent the year before. The number of print operations using inkjet equipment took a big jump. The survey found that about one-third of the respondents now use inkjet equipment for transactional printing, up from 16 percent in the first half of 2008."

What will be interesting to watch is how well this technology is received as the quality gets better. All I have heard from printers lately have been thoughts that the volumes will not be there if they take the risk and invest in the technology. But transactional and trans promotional volumes are relatively untapped as not many printers have attempted to sell this business. As the economy strengthens companies will have to return to the drawing board and look at their capabilities and ensure that they are investing in areas they can make money in and that has growth potential.

Printers are struggling to reinvent themselves this time as technology is pushing them away from their traditional business. I have had many comments from printers that were a bit on the negative side on the high volume inkjet, I am worried that they will pass this opportunity up and allow the commercial sector to invest which will shut them out of the business completely. In house marketing departments already have the ability to add 3 or 4 small machines to take over much of their companies printing needs. As in-plant facilities grow in capabilities and skill sets traditional printers will lose their foothold.

It is interesting how much cross media advertising that I receive but printers are saying "no one is doing it." Traditional advertising agencies have stayed away from cross media as it requires them to add additional skill sets beyond just the creative. I think it is time to rethink business plans and put away the ideas of "this is how we have always done it." Every day another printer goes out of business or gets acquired by one of the conglomerates. As employment comes back and companies start thinking about capital reinvestment printers need to be the first ones in their ear talking about where they can spend their money.

The print salesman of the last decade will not be the print salesman of the next. Marketing services and solution selling will take over and the idea of asking for "cost center" business will be over with, as most companies can produce that work themselves. If printers keep shying away from the work the commercial sector will use their IT and marketing departments to develop their own cross media programs and printers will lose out on that business as well. The work is getting printed but will it get into the hands of a printer is the only question.

With the advent of Inkjet this ability to produce high volumes of print inexpensively will be just one more tool in the data center that could easily erode volumes that go out to the local print shop. With the resurgence of direct mail it is only time that Inkjet will get its hold on the industry. Now with everyone demanding quality 1 to 1 marketing in their direct mail programs and as those programs get adopted by larger institutions the run sizes will grow. This business lends itself to inkjet as long as the quality is there, otherwise it will go to the electrophotography devices that we are used to.

As digital presses advance (electrophotography) Inkjet will have new quality levels and substrate standards to meet. Maybe the technology will never get to that point but I doubt it. "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay and the Inkjet companies are working hard to rival the "dry ink" technologies quality and substrate handling it will only be a matter of time before we see the technology mainstream. With Canon's latest purchase of Oce they are making sure that they do not have all their eggs in one basket. This acquisition could prove to be a very valuable one in the future.

Fortunately for those of us that sell the "dry ink" technologies, inkjet is new, expensive and the quality is not quite there. But many companies are joining in the race to develop a new level of inkjet so this will be a no holds barred battle. 

Pirate Mike

Ready, Set, INKJET! A look at this new innovative technology as it comes after traditional printing!

In the previous article, “Inkjet; the next generation of digital?” I introduced the idea that inkjet is being developed to be represented as a “Big Iron” player. As advertising agencies and marketing service providers prove to their customers that relevancy gets results and affects their bottom line that the amount of companies using these techniques will grow.

Even entire organizations like Alphagraphics are required to do cross media campaigns as part of their local efforts. From many of the shops that I have talked to these shops experience an average of 12% as compared to traditional direct mail of 1%-3% on a good day. As these technologies drive printers to have the capability to produce fully variable pieces in large quantities they will quickly outgrow typical electrophotography devices as we currently know them.

As copier manufacturers drive their toner based systems faster we see a convergence of technologies and at the lower end of the spectrum they are there with products like the HP Indigo 7000, the Xerox iGen4 and the Kodak NexPRESS 3600. But in the service bureau arena when looking at fully variable transactional or trans-promotional printing the volumes still push the limits of toner or toner suspended devices. When printers look to manufacturers to make this transition there are only a few choices as of today, but the competition is widening.

In a current article, “The jet set” Mar 1, 2010 12:00 PM, By Denise Kapel of American Printer she touts the advances of digital inkjet web printing. This newly emerging technology is generating a lot of attention. Denise mentions, “Almost half of the respondents to our December 2009 “Web Offset Survey” believe high-speed inkjet presses are a threat to web offset volume.” The need for a technology to be able to produce large runs of variable pieces in an affordable and reliable manner is already here. Traditional methods do not afford a printer the ability to be competitive once the volumes get to certain levels.

We see every area of printing and publishing impacted by the advances of inkjet! In a recent article, Bill Esler, Editor in Chief -- Graphic Arts Online, March 23, 2010 "CPI Launches Inkjet Book Line." It goes on to say, "CPI, Europe's largest book printing firm, has formally commissioned a digital inkjet book printing system, which its has branded the Quantum, built around a 400-fpm HP T300 monochrome inkjet web press." CPI chairman Pierre-François Catté was quoted in saying, "Book printers have 30 to 40% overcapacity. If you are going to buy something, you better make sure you made the right choice." Catté also notes that compressed delivery schedules are changing customer expectations. "One and a half years ago, customers wanted five-day turnaround; now they want two days." Inkjet is here to stay and its making rogue waves!

February 4th, 2008 the Direct Group became the first in the US to install the Océ JetStream™ 2200 system, a very high-speed, fully variable, color inkjet, continuous press. Direct Group President and CEO Don McKenzie said, “The Océ JetStream 2200 system will enable our clients to leverage three significant and converging industry trends – the rapidly increasing adoption of trigger-based mailings, the availability of revolutionary digital printing technology, and the demand for more effective postal strategies to combat recent and future rate increases. The capabilities provided by the Océ JetStream 2200 system will allow us to deliver sustainably improved response rates for our clients, while significantly lowering total campaign costs for customer acquisition programs, including postal and logistics expenses.”

The world’s largest English language print show IPEX is held every four years in Birmingham, England, IPWX (www.ipex.org) is being held this year May 18 to 25. Ipex 2010 is looking like a repeat of Drupa 2008, as it is already being labeled “Inkjet Ipex.” This is where digital printing meets offset head to head. With the all of the new demand being variable print whether it is transactional printing, trans-promotional or one to one advertising companies want to do it and in color, and printers are looking for new ways to get it done! The Fujifilm Inkjet Digital Press is one of the newest innovations to be shown at the show. This new press will utilize single-pass piezo drop-on-demand inkjet head technology and will produce at approximately 180 A4 sheets per minute. From digital sheetfed to continuous web we will see inkjet technology as we have never seen it before!

There are draw backs to Inkjet; the systems are new, expensive and the quality is not where many printing professionals would like them but this technology is still building. The continuous inkjet process has been used for decades in monochrome addressing and imprinting. The first continuous inkjet (CIJ) presses were seen in the 1970s, and today, the process is universally used for wide-format graphics and offset proofing. At Dupa 2008 many of the industries brightest manufacturers came forward with the “next generation” of inkjet presses. “All areas of inkjet have changed,” says RIT's Frank Romano. “The fundamental principles [haven't], but there have been significant developments that make it a more viable process.” Now with On Demand less than a month away we will see what the America’s have to say in our largest exhibition of printing technologies.

I am not predicting the DEATH OF THE COPIER! (Shameless plug for fellow blogger Greg Walters) Toner based systems have rallied as well trying to keep up with the trends for larger runs of variable printing. Xerox uses non-contact flash fusing on continuous-feed, color Electrophotography devices such as its 650/1300 and 490/980. A high-intensity xenon light flashing more than 2,000 times per second gets the job done. Because no heat or pressure makes contact with the paper, the devices can print on a wider array of substrates. Xerox is not the only company to use xenon lights. Founded in 1992 Nipson a French based company located in Belfort also uses this technology. They state on their website, “Thanks to our proprietary dry toner magnetography technology and cool xenon fusing, our presses offer you a unique combination of flexibility, productivity and consistently outstanding quality.”

As inkjet gains popularity and attention we will see electrophotography manufactures turn up the heat as well fighting over their turf as we have already seen great examples of; or invest into this technology as product offering as Kodak and others have done already.

As a consultant to the printing and publishing industry I love to see new tools to bring to my clients to help them achieve their business objectives. There are a lot of good manufacturers out there that are bringing technology to bare at an intense pace. What we don’t realize is that the industry has never seen such a pace of innovation. The last 200 years of printing has not seen the changes that we have over the last 10-15 years. And what is a known is that it is not slowing down at all. As we sit at the edge of a global community we will see communication being more important than ever!

This “new world” helps to anchor the printing and publishing industry for another 200 years as we watch the chameleon change colors yet one more time. One thing about the printing and publishing industry is that it is full of innovators, and tough businessman that will not be left behind. In an industry that has been clouded with companies coming in and going out quickly we will see the “new age” printer become even more agile in a time where it is not just the printed piece that is under inspection but the ability to come up with a good message as well.


Happy Sale’ing…

Pirate Mike

Inkjet; the next generation of digital?

So now for many years we have been hearing about the evolution of inkjet technology. Not the inkjet that you have on the edge of your desktop, but the kind that could eventually take over the digital printing industry. As the need for larger formats and higher speeds increase so does the need for reliability. As every print center looks at the available technology to make their "go or no go" decisions they have to balance capacity, work load, cost, reliability and other risk factors in weighing their decision on what technology to invest in or which to use for a particular application. Technology is advancing at such a pace and the different factions of the production print market are converging at such a rate that these decisions which might have been easy at one point are not ever increasing difficult to parse.

Even during the 2008 Drupa many of the commentators called it "Inkjet Drupa" as many of the innovations that were on display were new Inkjet devices aimed at the trans-promotional space that would ultimately be aimed at another level of lithography. A couple years ago Frank Romano came to Dallas during a speaking engagement "Frankly Speaking" where he was talking about the "new kid on the block." He predicted that Inkjet technology would revolutionize the industry as he did some 20 years ago in his talks about "Desktop Publishing."

As the cost of the equipment gets under control and the quality gets better, high speed inkjet may upset electrophotography all together. There are gaps in traditional offset lithography and electrophotography's ability to fill every need do to the applications balance of speed, quality, print window, cost requirements that lend itself to the need of a new technology that seems to be filled by the new role of high speed inkjet systems.

In an article by Barney Cox, PrintWeek, 24 January 2008 titled "Inkjet technology to dominate Drupa with Kodak and Xerox launches" Barney talks about some predictions that Kodak made about high speed inkjet and its role in the industry by 2015. Now at this time digital printing comprises approximately 15% of all printing today, in Kodak's estimate they felt that their "Stream Technology" would comprise roughly a trillion pages or 1% of the global printing industry. This is a huge growth potential for such an emerging technology. In Frank Romano's model he showed digital printing "toner based" on a gradual slope to 2050 but showed digital printing "inkjet" on a sharp increase as the traditional methods of offset coming to about half of their current rates. The 3 largest and growing areas of print are: Advertising/Promotional 24%, Packaging 18%, and Direct Mail at 13% these areas all are having an increasing demand for a more increased level of personalization and relevancy. This can only be accomplished by digital print methods.

June 16th, 2009 Kodak came forward with this release in part, "The KODAK PROSPER S10 Imprinting System, which features flexible mounting options, integrates seamlessly with web offset presses and web finishing equipment to add variable data to offset printed materials. Operating at 1,000 fpm (305 mpm) with a resolution of 600 dpi, it allows users to print variable data inline, saving time and money over a traditional, two-step process that combines offset pre-printed forms and offline laser imprinting."

it went on to say, "Wilen Direct, which has installed four S10 Imprinting Systems, is outputting 80,000 pieces per hour, or 1.6 million pieces per day, on just one of its presses."

They said "This technology lets us create full variable data print through our offset presses, and it does it three to four times faster than a traditional high-speed roll-to-roll system. As a result, we can move faster than ever while increasing quality.”

Kodak is working hard to development and bring to market this new leader in digital printing, "Kodak is working with customers and prospects under two programs: PROSPER Press Market Pioneers and PROSPER Press Market Leaders. PROSPER Press Market Pioneers will be the first users of a PROSPER Press, with installation targeted between the first and third quarters of 2010."

And Kodak is just one example of a manufacturer working hard to develop this new technology. As the quality and substrate handling ability increases and the initial cost of the acquisition of such devices comes down we will see an increasing migration as we did to the digital cut sheet devices to roll fed, wide to super wide format inkjet. Reliability and cost effectiveness cannot be matched by other methods at this time. Inkjet has a lot of interesting characters in the playing field. Kodak, Xerox, IBM, Agfa, Oce, HP and others.

Interestingly enough Xerox has over 1,200 patents in this arena already. In an article that I recently wrote in April of 2009 "Amidst the slaughter rises Xerox Technology" I talked about Xerox's tenacity to continue their intense research and development plans. And again this month in "In Search of Innovation Xerox joins the gang; and builds a new research facility in India.” I quote a recent Xerox press release that stated this last year they increased their production of patents by 19%.

But in typical Xerox fashion they have been quite conservative in their inkjet direction "We believe inkjet has its place and is suitable for very high volumes," said Xerox production systems group vice president of marketing Valerie Blauvelt. – Barney's article stated. Valerie went on to say, "People have high-quality applications inkjet is not suitable for. These include direct mail and transactional."

At Drupa Xerox did showcase some of it's revolutionary inkjet innovations that they are working on but didn't give a release date. Xerox is advancing the technology with new modular print heads that are more reliable, low cost and scaleable. Xerox has also been developing next-generation ink in the form of "cured gel" ink, which offers more ways to print on many substrates - from coated paper to plastic to aluminum.

In an ever changing business environment the needs of business dictate where research and development money will go. As the needs of business migrate toward the increasing sophistication of variable data to meet the "relevancy" needs of marketing applications and the fact that these applications demand high quality and substrate diversity so too we will see products come to bear that meet these needs.

Just like Plato said 400 years before Christ, "necessity is the mother of invention." In a free market society that economic gain will bring to bear solutions that solve today's critical business needs. In a soft or declining economy the need for relent marketing is increasingly important. Roger Gimbel and Associates,"an international management consulting firm working to ignite business growth through digital technologies" conducted a cross media marketing campaign in 2006 called, "Digitally Cool" which was geared at raising awareness of XMPie and Xerox digital printing technologies. The results were that they:

1. Produced and delivered more than 13,000 customized invitations in six languages, all on tight deadlines and fixed budgets.
2. Motivated 5,300 people, or 41% of invitees, to visit a personalized Web landing page for valuable information exchange. An impressive 26% of all Web page visitors pre-registered for the seminars.
3. Secured 40 - 200 attendees per seminar, adding 1,600 highly qualified prospects to the Xerox sales cycle.
4. Brought a 1000% ROI to Xerox's pipeline.

In the end Roger was quoted as saying, "In the future, we will not be measured by the quality of the output; we will be measured by the quality of the outcome."

Something that equipment reps forget when directing their commercial print clients. Many times all we talk about is speeds and feeds. Well my widget is 600x600 dpi well my widget is 1200x1200 dpi, well my color gamut is wider. In a world where most manufacturers are creating color equipment that produces very good quality color and is "good enough" for most purposes. We need to differentiate ourselves by the services that we provide and not just the hardware we push!

With competition becoming increasingly fierce it is more important that ever that we direct our commercial printing clients to becoming more of a "marketing service provider" and not just a provider of the deliverable. This "solution selling" allows them to hold better margins, buy more equipment and pay their bills. They become more of an asset to their clients thereby creating a barrier to exit for themselves.

By delivering a highly customizable and relevant message to our audience we create a bond that delivers action. This end result is what companies are looking for. This ability to deliver an actionable message also creates a "barrier to exit" as print providers try to deliver real value in retaining and developing their customer base. To that ends as high speed inkjet becomes more accessible I can see this technology giving print centers the ability to economically deliver complex and sophisticated messages that create a "call to action" for their customers. It may also change the way that we sell equipment as well and the pricing models that we use.

As the technology develops we will see presses much like the full sheet 6 color Heidelbergs and Kamoris that we are familar with today but producing fully variable digital printing at speeds we have yet to imagine. Right now most of the technology is aimed at web presses and wide format but surely we will ultimately see more cut sheet inkjet presses as well, like the Riso ComColor press that was unvieled at PRINT09.

The great thing for digital printing consultants is this new technology will give us one more tool in our bag to help our customers deliver their message and drive profitability. This ensures our lifecycle as well. Be watching for new comers to this arena as the economic gain becomes more of a reality to those that hold the keys to this new innovation.

You can read more about this case study at: American Printer's Website in an article self titled, "Digitally Cool."

Pirate Mike