Category Archives: technology

To B2 or Not To B2? Sandy Alexander Says ‘Yes’ in Its Beta Test of an HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press

Posted on by

At the HP Indigo 10000 in beta test at Sandy Alexander are Rob Mayerson (left), vice president and general manager, and Mike Graff, president and CEO.

B2-format digital presses were the talk of drupa, and many in the industry are still speculating about where these platforms fit into the scope of commercial print production. But, Sandy Alexander (Clifton, NJ) isn’t paying heed to the rumor mill—it’s weighing the merits of B2 digital printing for itself by beta-testing one of the most advanced examples of the technology.

The test case is an HP Indigo 10000, a 29.5″ x 20.9″ sheetfed press that HP introduced at drupa and plans to make commercially available this year. Sandy Alexander has been working with the machine since October, becoming one of four sites in the U.S. where beta testing is taking place.

The company expects to acquire the machine when testing concludes in March. If all continues to go well, a second HP Indigo 10000 may be on its way to Sandy Alexander’s digital press department as the company gears up to meet what it says is a rising demand from its customers for variable-data printing in color.

For Sandy Alexander—a full-spectrum provider of graphic communications services with a history of being first to test emerging production techniques—early adoption of digital printing in B2 format was a predictable step forward.

The company, which also offers sheetfed and web offset litho and grand-format printing, has been running digital presses for five years, settling on the HP Indigo platform as the solution that best meets its high-end quality requirements. But over time, those requirements began to outgrow the 13″ x 19″ sheet size that, until recently, represented the largest format that most sheetfed digital presses were capable of printing.

A B2 press, on the other hand, can print eight 8.5″ x 11″ pages in duplex, four to a side—a format that gives commercial printers the flexibility they need. That makes B2 the “logical layout” in variable-data digital output for the commercial market, according to Mike Graff, president and CEO of Sandy Alexander.

“It would be naïve to think that 1:1 marketing could be constrained to a four-page product,” he says. To expand into B2, Graff decided to replace a pair of existing HP Indigo 7000s with the HP Indigo 10000 he currently is testing and, depending on discussions now in progress with HP, a second installation of the machine.

One of the HP Indigo 7000s has been retired, and one remains. To help Sandy Alexander maintain digital capacity while the new B2 press comes fully online, the manufacturer has temporarily provided an HP Indigo W7200 web press that will fill any gaps in production until the second HP Indigo 10000 comes in. HP also is supporting the transition by providing an Indigo technician from the factory in Israel to monitor the testing.

Being in the vanguard of B2-format digital printing is “not for the faint of heart,” acknowledges Rob Mayerson, vice president and general manager in charge of digital operations at Sandy Alexander. Nevertheless, testing has progressed to a point where the press now is printing its first live job, a variable-data project running in batches of about 10,000 sheets per day.

Those who have seen the results are enthusiastic, and the kudos are coming not only from personnel at Sandy Alexander. “Customers would like us to be beyond beta” with the HP Indigo 10000, says Douglas Hazlett, vice president of sales and marketing. “They are lining up.”

Industrywide, most of what goes into digital production consists of static output. The HP Indigo 10000 at Sandy Alexander, however, is intended largely if not exclusively for variable-data printing. The company is so committed to reserving the device for VDP, says Mayerson, that it has installed an additional offset press—a six-color Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52 perfector— “to take the static out of here.”

With VDP, Sandy Alexander can offer its customers printing that lets them leverage what they know about the consumers who are buying products and services from them. Print customized with 1:1 content generates response rates that static promotions can only dream about—as high as 30% in some cases, Hazlett says.

Sandy Alexander produces VDP-enhanced materials for automotive, fashion, cosmetic, and retail accounts. Clients furnish the data through a custom content management system that lets them create templated documents, update text and images, and manage their projects in real time. This channel for client input “is as important to the selling proposition as the iron,” Mayerson says.

The result is printing that drives behaviors and triggers outcomes by responding to specific consumer preferences and requests. “Hand-raisers”—expressions of interest culled from web sites and other sources—can be translated into brochures and other pieces that deliver precisely what the end-user wants to see.

Tens, hundreds, or thousands of pieces customized in this way can be printed in the same run on Sandy Alexander’s HP Indigo 10000. Thanks to the 1:1 power of VDP, says Mayerson, “we don’t send you anything that you don’t ask for”—a  benefit that adds value to variable output and enables VDP producers to charge a premium for it.

The VDP-capable HP Indigo 10000 can print in B2 format (29.5” x 20.9”) in up to seven colors at about 1,700 sph (4/4).

Mayerson says that the B2 platform on which this proposition rests is now running on two shifts at speeds of about 1,700 sheets per hour, 4/4, on both coated and uncoated stocks. He points out that because the B2 sheet offers more than twice the printing area of a 13” x 19” sheet, printing the larger format at the same speed increases productivity in proportion.

Like all Indigo presses, the HP Indigo 10000 is an electrophotographic device that uses a printing fluid dubbed “ElectroInk” by HP. Sandy Alexander’s press can run up seven colors of ElectroInk, including Hexachrome, spot colors, and white. For the moment, production is limited to CMYK, fully color-managed with the company’s offset and grand-format processes. The press is soon to receive a field upgrade that will enable it to handle stocks as thick as 18 pt.

A press as formidable as the HP Indigo 10000 “is not meant for someone who dabbles,” says Mayerson, who had to raise the ceiling in the digital pressroom before bringing it in. The machine is heavy enough to need a reinforced floor, and it has temperature-control requirements as well.

Although, as a half-size color press, the HP Indigo 10000 conceivably could take work away from the equipment in the company’s offset pressroom, that kind of job migration isn’t likely to occur. That objective was “very, very secondary” in the decision to install the press, says Mayerson, noting that the machine “was not purchased as a cost-saving device to replace offset.”  There would have been scant ROI, he adds, in paying what the company had to pay for its HP Indigo 10000 just to gain a little production efficiency.

Besides, the two processes can be teamed profitably in projects like the car owner’s information kit that Sandy Alexander produces for one of its automotive customers. Here, the mailing envelope and the portfolio enclosure are printed on litho equipment. Digital printing customizes the diecut, tabbed, and wire-bound booklet inside the portfolio.

The company’s advance into B2 digital production is in keeping with its policy of making continuous technical progress on multiple fronts. Among its other innovations, Sandy Alexander was one of the first printers to use gray balance as a technique for controlling color on press. It also served as a beta test site for GRACoL G7 certification, and it was the first printer in the East to install an eight-unit litho press.

“If you stand still, you are guaranteed not to succeed,” says Graff. Pioneering new methods of solving problems for Sandy Alexander’s customers is “just the fabric of the company,” he says.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Phila. Area Printer Helps HP Promote Graphic Arts Experience Center

Posted on by

Paul DeSantis, director of information technologies at ANRO, appears in a video produced by HP to promote its Graphic Arts Experience Center. Located in Alpharetta, GA, the 60,000-sq.-ft. facility serves as a technology demo showroom and as a site for customer training. (A detailed report about the Graphic Arts Experience Center can be found here.)

ANRO (West Chester, PA) is a full-service commercial printer that provides corporate printing, mailing, fulfillment, and digital communication services. It recently installed an HP T300 color inkjet web press.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

DG3 Introduces “QReach” Solution for Mobile Engagement

Posted on by

DG3 (Jersey City, NJ) isn’t the first graphic communications company to place QR codes on printed matter. But, it may be the industry’s first QR code solution provider to state for the record that underpinning print sales isn’t the solution’s primary objective or even a meaningful measure of its success.

Mobile connectivity is what DG3 is out to promote with QReach, a program soon to go live for a selected customer segment. “We don’t necessarily expect to drive print” with QReach, says Joe Lindfeldt, executive vice president for strategic development. “We’re using print to drive digital engagement.”

When it comes to the way the industry typically implements QR codes, Lindfeldt says, “so much of the dialog is anchored in print. We say, don’t worry about it.” This contrarian approach stems from a belief at DG3—a company with deep roots in financial and business printing—that print is just one of many contexts in which graphic communications can take place.

Print, says Lindfeldt, “is not a medium unto itself—it’s part of a marketing mix. Our strategy is to move content into any visual medium that’s relevant.” He also notes that mobile phones and tablets are rapidly becoming “the primary and most frequent touch points” for graphic communications in online form. That’s the rationale behind QReach, which aims to make QR-coded print the stepping-off point to mobile engagement across the bridge of smart devices that hundreds of millions of people now carry.

The solution, as Lindfeldt describes it, is a turnkey, automated system of QR code management that will work best for customers that already rely on repeat communications in print. After initial setup, users have 24/7 access to their templated documents in a browser window and can specify where QR codes should be positioned upon them. They also can upload whatever digital content—for example, a vCard for contact information, a URL for a landing page, or a link to a video—is to be associated with the customized QR code.

From this point forward, says Lindfeldt, everything is automatic, from preflight and workflow entry to production and distribution of the documents by DG3. A QReach bundle includes code generation, mobile content deployment, testing across all mobile devices, and one full year of content hosting. Pricing, Lindfeldt says, rewards high-volume repeat utilization, although the solution can be scaled for mobile campaigns of any size. DG3 also can provide mobile-optimized landing page design, social media integration, automated e-mail response, metrics tracking, and data analysis.

Lindfeldt says that DG3 will target QReach at financial institutions, mutual funds, publicly held companies, and other “heavily regulated customers” looking for an efficient and regulation-compliant way of fulfilling their reporting requirements via mobile engagement. That’s a potentially huge opportunity for digital outreach because, as Lindfeldt notes, “in any given month, we’re communicating with 25 million shareholders” on behalf of DG3 customers.

The company, which has branches in the U.K. and in several locations in Asia, is committed to mobile engagement as a service offering. It established a digital marketing division for the purpose in 2010, and in the following year, it acquired a company that Lindfeldt calls “the thought leader in QR”: The Ace Group, a Manhattan printer widely known as one of the metro area’s earliest adopters of QR codes and related mobile technologies.

Lindfeldt says that QReach is one of four fundamental modes of mobile engagement that DG3 has either deployed for its customers or shortly will bring to market. The others are near field communications (NFC), which enables tagged printed surfaces to interact with mobile devices; Bluetooth wireless technology, which can be used to drive digital printing equipment; and image recognition, implemented as AR (augmented reality) for camera-equipped smartphones and tablets. Lindfeldt says that DG3 is working on what he describes as “some of the most interesting AR applications in the industry,” including an AR-based, interactive auction catalog.

He’s aware of the skepticism that some of these technologies have encountered,  particularly QR-coded print, which has been depicted as a solution that never entirely caught on with consumers. This critique, for example, cites research claiming that 60% of North American consumers who scanned QR codes in a given period did so only once.

Lindfeldt says he’d rather concentrate on the remaining 40% who presumably engaged with QR codes more than once—a favorable augury, he believes, for launching a program like QReach. In any case, he says, what counts is the additional engagement that can be gained at relatively low cost by adding customized QR codes to printed matter.

According to Lindfeldt, consumers of print now understand what QR codes can do and are “becoming less afraid of them” as a result. That will make it easier to turn them into the portals of connectivity that they always were meant to be.

“We really believe in mobile engagement,” Lindfeldt says. “It’s just a matter of getting our customers comfortable with it.”

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Spiel Associates to Introduce Automatic Wire Binder at Graph Expo

Posted on by

Bindery equipment dealer Spiel Associates (Long Island City, NY) has announced that it will introduce the Rilecart B-535 at Graph Expo 2012.

Combining economy and automation, the Rilecart B-535 is a fully automatic, double loop wire binder capable of binding books at 3,000 units per hour. Spiel Associates says that when the operator drops a book onto the conveyor, the B-535 does the rest: it inserts the wire, crimps the wire, and delivers the finished book. The machine will bind books from 3.25″ X 4″ inches up to 12″ X 121/2“. Spiral diameters can range from 1/4” to 1 1/4“, allowing for a maximum book thickness of 1”.

Skip binding up to five parts is attainable, according to Spiel Associates. An in-line punching section is optional, and a calendar machine also is available. To see a video of the Rilecart B-535, click here. For more information, visit Spiel Associates or call 1-877-BINDERY.

At Graph Expo (Chicago, October 7-10), Spiel Associates will be in booth 2651.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Sandy Alexander “Goes Small” with Purchase of Speedmaster SM 52 Press from Heidelberg

Posted on by

Following its successful launch of a wide and grand format division for retail and visual merchandising, Sandy Alexander (Clifton, NJ) reports that it has “gone small” with the purchase of a Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52 lithographic press.

“The purchase of the Heidelberg six-color perfector with coater provides us with total flexibility in meeting a client’s printing needs,”  said Mike Graff, president and CEO of Sandy Alexander. “We are now platform agnostic. We have equipment for any size piece or order. We will print with the press that provides our clients with the most impactful marketing campaign at the most efficient price.”

The 20” Speedmaster SM 52 will complement Sandy Alexander’s other printing capabilities, which range from digital printing, full-size sheetfed, and full web with inline finishing and inkjetting to wide and grand format printing. The company says that combining the Speedmaster SM 52 with its digital capabilities—including a soon-to-be-operational HP Indigo 10000 and existing HP Indigo 7500s—will give its clients total flexibility in producing quick-turnaround projects whether they consist of static print or variable data printing for one-to-one marketing.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Pitney Bowes Transforms the Meaning of “Mailing” with Volly and Other New Digital Solutions

Posted on by

Say “Pitney Bowes” (PB) to the man or the lady in the street in a word association test, and the response probably will be “postage meters.” That’s fine with this iconic Fortune 500 company, which has been making the gadgets for more than 90 years and is far and away the world’s largest seller of systems for imprinting postage on mailing pieces.

But, because of displacement by the Internet, the uncertain outlook for the U.S. Postal Service, and other factors shrinking the volume of what postage meters exist to process, the mailstream isn’t the same as it used to be—and neither is Pitney Bowes. Since 2009, the company has been undergoing a strategic transformation aimed at making it less centered upon physical mail and more diversified as a provider of alternative digital delivery services.

Pitney Bowes offered a progress report on its transformation at Global Innovation Day, an event held recently at its world headquarters in Stamford, CT. Originally an internal open house for employees, Global Innovation Day was broadened this year to include briefings for journalists and analysts. The program for the media featured updates on Pitney Bowes solutions for cloud-based mail management, do-it-yourself marketing campaigns with QR codes, and e-commerce for international shippers.

Also on the agenda was Volly, an integrated content delivery and bill payment service that Pitney Bowes first unveiled last year and is readying for consumer rollout at the end of 2012.

Pitney Bowes serves enterprise customers as well as small and medium businesses (SMB), deriving its revenue in equal shares from the two segments. Most of what was presented to the media at Global Innovation Day is targeted at the SMB market as pbSmart™, a suite of cloud-based solutions designed to help small and medium businesses market themselves with the same sophistication as larger companies. Pitney Bowes says that about 30,000 of its customers are now using pbSmart solutions.

The general objective, said Neil Rader, vice president and general manager for SMB, is to migrate the technologies downstream to a point where it becomes easy and desirable for these customers to use them. If embracing digital solutions causes SMB marketers to become less dependent on postage meters and other conventional mailing equipment—as some of the products shown at Global Innovation Day are designed to do—that outcome will not be at odds with the new identity that Pitney Bowes is striving for.

“We are a communications management company,” Rader said, adding that Pitney Bowes has solutions to support the full mix of digital and physical channels its SMB customers typically use.

Road warriors, low-volume mailers, and others who need stamps but not stamp-imprinting equipment can have one without the other by signing up for pbSmartPostage™. The service, described by Pitney Bowes as the first web-based shipping and mailing solution, lets users with an Internet connection output stamps and shipping labels from any printer, wherever they happen to be. Besides eliminating the need for postage meters and trips to the post office, pbSmartPostage also schedules USPS pickups, tracks package delivery, and generate usage reports.

Under monthly pricing plans that are not volume-based, users can replenish their postage accounts online with a credit card. Subscribers also have access to USPS discounts that can save them, according to Pitney Bowes, an average of 8% of their postage costs.

Some of the same functions are built into pbWebConnect™, a product launching this month. pbWebConnect is for business mailers who continue to rely on postage meters but who also want the option of managing their mailing activity online. pbWebConnect makes this possible with the K700 mailstation, a Pitney Bowes meter offering a direct Internet link to the company’s data center.

Once connected, the meter can be accessed remotely through a Web browser, and many of its common functions can be automated—for example, postage account refills, postal rate updates, and alerts for high postage (i.e., over-stamping). Trackability, report generation, and USPS discounts are additional benefits of pbWebConnect.

Like any other vendor of communications management technology, Pitney Bowes appreciates the marketing potential of QR codes. It also acknowledges that QR codes have been slow to catch on at the SMB level, mostly because small businesses don’t fully understand what they can do with 2D barcodes once they’ve generated them. Hence the development of pbSmart™ Codes, introduced last October as an all-in-one solution for building integrated marketing campaigns around customizable QR codes.

The service—entirely cloud-based, and available to try free of charge—builds an end-to-end campaign from code generation and messaging to back-end tracking and analysis. The landing pages are mobile web sites that subscribers can create and modify from templates. Logo-bearing QR codes, encrypting links to coupons, discount offers, and other marketing inducements, can be applied to printed media and to high-visibility promotional items such as mugs and T-shirts. (Pitney Bowes can supply these goods through its relationship with Zazzle, an online retailer of customized consumer products.)

At the back end, pbSmart Codes presents response rates in real time, collects the results of mobile customer surveys, compiles e-mail leads, and saves the data for reference in future campaigns. Pitney Bowes also supplies ScanShot, a multifunction mobile bar code reader available from online app stores.

At Global Innovation Day, the company also promoted its suite of global e-commerce solutions, aimed primarily at U.S. retailers wishing to take the surprises out of fulfilling orders across international borders. Import duties, foreign postage, and other transactions for global shippers are addressed by these solutions.

Easily the most ambitious project in the transformation of Pitney Bowes is Volly. Its objective is to replicate physical mailboxes with virtual ones—not because the company foresees the disappearance of conventional mail delivery, but because it is convinced that consumers also want a digital equivalent that serves the same purpose.

Pitney Bowes says that consumers who can be persuaded to sign up for Volly will find it a friendly and fully secure workspace where, free of charge, they can view and pay bills, organize and archive records, clip coupons, and order things they want—just as they do through the medium of paper mail, but now, minus the clutter and the inconvenience of handling paper.

Within the Volly environment, says the company, a consumer can see and manage all of her opt-in retail relationships in one place. She’s no longer obliged to visit separate Web sites, memorize a corresponding number of passwords, or endure any of the other repetitive drudgeries of uncoordinated online shopping.

Direct-mailing retailers that choose to connect with their customers through Volly are promised benefits of their own, chief among them the opportunity to integrate a paperless channel with their conventional mailstreams. They can continue to send physical mail to customers who prefer paper, but in Volly, they also have a straight path to consumers who are growing comfortable with the idea of shopping with smartphones, tablets, and other e-devices.

When Pitney Bowes first announced Volly in January of 2011, the service did not yet have a critical mass of participation by retailers or consumers. The basic platform existed, but the next step was to build up its transactional capabilities by enlisting the support of third-party providers of billing and mailing services to businesses that sell retail goods and other products to consumers.

With about 50 such partnerships in place, Pitney Bowes believes that Volly now can achieve the density of digital mailing it will need in order to be successful. Using its employees as focus groups, the company also has tested and extensively modified the elements of Volly that consumers will see.

The result is a Volly that finally is ready for general launch in the U.S., which Pitney Bowes says it intends to do in the fourth quarter of this year. B2C partners have come aboard as well, although the company declined to identify them or to say how many have signed on. These brand owners are expected to join Pitney Bowes in promoting Volly to consumers at large.

Those who accept the invitation will be able to aggregate all of their bill-paying within the Volly portal, which Pitney Bowes promises to keep spam-free by permitting communications only from the accounts to which consumers have opted in. Calendars and to-do lists (see screen shot) will help them stay ahead of bills coming due and confirm payments that they have already made—a feature requested by the employee focus groups.

Participating businesses can use Volly to present coupons, catalog offers, and other promotions to consumers through branded landing pages. Fully implemented, the consumer-facing parts of Volly will serve as virtual transpromotional documents that combine billing information with targeted marketing communications as directed by the brand owners.

Reassuring consumers and retailers that they will be in driver’s seats has been a keynote of the project from the beginning. As the launch nears, said Bernie Gracy, vice president of business development for Volly, “we are setting a table between customers and brands that both can have control over.”

Among the first to dine at the table will be citizens and businesses in Australia, where Australia Post, the nation’s postal service, has announced that Volly will be the platform for the Digital Mailbox service it plans to launch later this year. A press release from Pitney Bowes says that the company will provide Australia Post with the software, technology and mailer-integration infrastructure to begin secure, digital delivery of content from business mailers in the Commonwealth.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

DG3 Digital Marketing Introduces Mobile Engagement Package

Posted on by

The Digital Marketing Group of Diversified Global Graphics Group (DG3) (Jersey City, NJ) has introduced QReach, a mobile engagement package that it says will enable companies to experience the benefits of mobile engagement with QR technology easily and cost-effectively.

The QReach offering is designed to mobilize print communications with QR codes and hosted content at an attractive price. DG3 Digital Marketing is targeting the package at companies that have an interest in, but limited experience with, QR code technology.

The QReach bundle includes branded QR code creation; mobile content deployment; testing across all mobile devices; one full year of content hosting; and data-rich web reporting to track campaign performance. With DG3 as a single-source provider, a company can power its printed materials with mobile engagement under one roof. Key benefits of the bundle are said to include:

• scan rates increased by up to 30% with branded QR codes

• privacy and security ensured in the DG3 private cloud

• improved engagement using mobile optimized content

• same workflow as submitting a print document

• low-cost option that makes materials interactive

Complete details are available at DG3’s digital marketing website. DG3 also offers customized QR and mobile engagement solutions to fit any company’s communications objectives.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Much Changed, On Demand Conference & Expo Returns to NYC

Posted on by

Those who remember the On Demand shows in their heyday as digital print equipment expos would have had some difficulty recognizing the event bearing that title at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center last week. Although the name remains, not much else of On Demand’s original look, feel, and purpose is still there. The event has moved in a different direction, and hard-copy output doesn’t appear to have made the move with it.

Questex Media Group, the producer of On Demand, says that the conference now is dedicated to ‘the technologies that monetize, optimize, and control content.” Co-located with On Demand at Javits was another Questex property, info360, a seminar program for IT professionals. Questex says that together, On Demand and info360 constitute “the largest enterprise IT event in North America.” Each conference was supported by exhibits, with info360 accounting for about twice as many of the 120-plus booths as On Demand.

On Demand’s profile has changed in other ways as well. It no longer shares venues with the AIIM conference, its previous expo companion, which now has a separate event of its own. Its days as a traveling show, likewise, seem to be behind it. On Demand also has been produced in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., but a spokesperson for Questex said that New York City, with its heavy concentration of IT professionals, probably will be its permanent home from now on. But this does not necessarily mean another engagement at Javits. When On Demand returns next year, said the spokesperson, its conference setting probably will be a hotel.

Last week (June 13-14), the program was organized around four tracks: content creation, content delivery, marketing technology, and social and mobile business. On the expo floor, in a sliver of the space that On Demand once occupied at Javits, the stands and the pipe-and-drapes variously belonged to four “technology pavilions”: mailing and fulfillment, cross media, digital workflow, and what Questex calls “SoMoLo.” This denotes, according to Questex, social, mobile, and local platforms for content creation and distribution. (A special program focused on this niche, dubbed SoMoLo@NY, was co-located with the info360 conference.)

Given the sharp shift in emphasis, it wasn’t surprising that the show floor bore little resemblance to the equipment-heavy displays of earlier editions of On Demand. HP and Kodak had booths, but anyone looking for Indigo or NexPress presses in them searched in vain—both companies used their space to promote scanners and document management solutions, not digital production printing. Makers of conventional printing equipment were not represented at all, having long ago failed to gain traction in the market segment for which On Demand was first conceived.

Nevertheless, there were a few familiar elements from earlier, more production-centric On Demand shows, and even a few pieces of production equipment. These were courtesy of Atlantic, a provider of imaging, printing, and office support services, which had a Konica Minolta bizhub C8000 press, a Ricoh Pro C651EX press, and a wide-format inkjet printer in operation on the floor. Spiel Associates, Graphic Whizard, Duplo USA, and Spiral Binding James Burn USA, all stalwart exhibitors at metro area trade shows, added their presence and their offerings of production equipment.

Two printing trade associations also did what they could to preserve some of the flavor of the original On Demand. Printing Industries Alliance (PIA), representing graphics businesses in New York, northern New Jersey, and northwestern Pennsylvania, was on hand to promote its upcoming Franklin Event and other activities for firms in the region. Printing & Graphics Association MidAtlantic (PGAMA) used the opportunity to talk about its Addy Award-winning PrintGrowsTrees campaign.

The On Demand conference program, which consisted of about 30 sessions, stuck mostly to content creation and distribution in digital form. A few of the presentations addressed hard-copy production: for example, “Hybrid Workflows: Making Digital and Offset Work Together.” A session titled, “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Merging Cross Media Marketing and Print,” also acknowledged print’s place in the media mix.

Featuring 70 sessions organized into eight tracks, the info360 program covered a range of IT-oriented subjects including information sharing, social media, workgroup collaboration, and online content strategy. The companion program, SoMoLo@NY, focused on leveraging its trio of media for outreach to consumers.

We wish Questex and its partners success in their efforts to reposition On Demand for a new audience in a redrawn media landscape. But, its change in character also is a bit disheartening for those who can recall the days when the metro area’s print and graphic communications industry was capable of supporting production-focused trade shows of its own.

Graph Tech, Graph Expo East, Graphic Communications Day, and other local events have come and gone as venues where the big iron and the big grey boxes could hold sway. But now that On Demand has evolved beyond providing that opportunity, it’s hard to see how a show dedicated to production technology could ever be put on in the region again. The expense and the logistical difficulty probably have stopped the presses permanently as exhibition assets for the tristate area.

For another perspective on what has happened to On Demand, see this commentary.

 

 

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

At drupa, DWS Printing Opts for High-Performance Speedmaster XL 106 Press from Heidelberg

Posted on by

At drupa 2012, executives of DWS Printing Associates and Heidelberg (HUS, HDM) announced the purchase of a high-performance Speedmaster XL 106 press by DWS. From left: Clarence Penge, v.p., sheetfed product management, HUS; Tom Cummings, account manager, HUS; Marcel Kiessling, management board, HDM; Tom Staib, president, DWS; John Gulino, director of quality assurance, DWS; Stephan Plenz, management board, HDM; and John Rocker, senior v.p., sales, HUS.

DWS Printing Associates, Deer Park, NY, made the most of its recent trip to drupa 2012 by purchasing a new Peak Performance Speedmaster XL 106-8+L sheetfed offset press from Heidelberg. The manufacturer says that when it is installed, the eight-unit, coater-equipped press will be the first of its type in the U.S. with the combination of inline sheeting, hybrid UV capability, and advanced color control technology that DWS has specified.

A Heidelberg press release quotes Tom Staib, president of DWS, as stating, “We needed to expand our current production capabilities and efficiency and wanted state-the-art technology that would enable us to handle an wider variety of printing substrates and give us a competitive edge. We did not want to catch up with our competitors. We want to be a technology leader.”

DWS designs and prints many different kinds of labels for branded food, beverage, and household products. It also has a niche in specialty labels for the craft beer market. The company, which traces its origins to a New York printing house started in 1865, is in its third generation of ownership by the Staib family.

Heidelberg, which launched the Speedmaster XL 106 at drupa, calls the press the new flagship of its XL Peak Performance segment. The 41″ press, which can perfect at 18,000 sheets per hour, is said by Heidelberg to be 30% more productive than the previous leader in the XL press series.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Sandy Alexander To Become Beta Test Site for HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press

Posted on by

Sandy Alexander, a leading direct mail and commercial print provider, has announced today that it will become a beta site for the HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press. The system will be operational this fall at Sandy Alexander’s carbon- neutral digital printing facility in Clifton, NJ—powered, the company says, with 100% wind energy.

“When HP approached us to be one of the select beta sites in the U.S. it was an easy decision,” said Mike Graff. CEO and president of Sandy Alexander. “The HP Indigo 10000 allows us to transform our offerings, created by the unique combination of format size and image quality. It doubles our digital printing output, providing the capacity to support new programs awarded by Fortune 500 clients in the automotive, pharmaceutical, financial and travel industries.”

The HP Indigo 10000 is the first B2-format (29.5″ x 20.9″) sheetfed press in the HP Indigo line. The B2 sheet size, said Graff, “offers our clients both increased creativity and efficiency, providing them with a competitive advantage in the marketplace while also increasing their marketing ROI.”

According to the company, the beta testing  is part of a strategy to expand Sandy Alexander’s solution set for one-to-one marketers. The plan calls for the HP Indigo 10000 to be complemented by an HP Indigo W7200 digital web press and another HP Indigo 10000. The company will apply what it calls its industry-leading cross-platform color management solutions to these systems.

Concurrently, the company will also expand its service offerings in content management, enabling its clients to more easily implement and manage personalized communications with highly targeted messaging.

“We know that as a proven leader, Sandy Alexander will put the high print quality, productivity, and versatility of our new generation, 29” Indigo 10000 digital press to the test in its demanding, high-end production environment,” said Jan Riecher, vice president and general manager, Graphics Solutions Business – Americas, HP.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post