Blogs

A phone call from an 88-year-old reader from Florida named Milton prompted this week’s blog by Bill Farquharson.

It does NOT take millions of dollars to franchise-ready a business. However, it does take time, patience and persistence.

In this episode of RyansRemarks, Ryan Sauers discusses the qualities of great salespeople versus salespeople who are average.

What the magazine industry needs to focus on is using data analysis to help advertisers deliver highly targeted, high-impact print ads.

Big data is an awesome tool, but the brand review process should not be automated. Here are three tips.

Last week I went to a NAPCO conference in New York City called DigiPub. Its advertised mission…

Ricoh’s Interact 2018 event was full of interesting insights, but that wasn’t the most interesting thing about Interact.

How do you practice lifelong learning while running a business and having a family? It’s not easy, but you need to do it.

I get to visit a lot of bindery operations and there is one “common” denominator that arises in conversation.

Xerox recently unveiled the Iridesse. Now that the glitter has settled, there are a few questions to explore about its possibilities.

Improvements in inkjet is causing a shift in attitude on the in-line vs. off-line finishing debate.

Offset and digital finishing differ. It’s vital to have an understanding of digital finishing when planning a purchase or installation.

The perception of color is dependent on three distinct variables — the light source, the object and the receiver.

A Quality Management System is the most valuable tool in a business’ arsenal!

Color differentiation is often measured in terms of “Delta E.” But what exactly is Delta E?

Kemal Carr, president of Madison Advisors, recaps the excitement of the sixth annual Inkjet Summit that took place in April.

We assisted one of our customers with a business evolution to inkjet. It’s a common journey because of the flexibility inkjet provides.

On March 20, the Book Industry Guild of New York (BIGNY) got straight talk on the state of printing technologies from three printers.

In the search for new finishing developments, Don Piontek received a LinkedIn press release alert on something called “Vpaper.”

Here’s a short list of solutions to ensure a smooth PUR perfect binding process.

So, I was doing some weekend planning on Friday when an email arrived in my inbox with the simple subject line “WOW!” Who could resist opening such a message? The announcement was that Muller Martini was effectively taking over the perfect binding and bookline business of Kolbus.

Direct mail is expensive, so you need to make sure you get it right. Learn the seven key elements to creating the best direct mail.

If you’re in control of marketing and you’ve ignored the direct mail channel – you may be making a mistake.

For anyone who uses direct mail, there’s a good chance postage soon will be going up dramatically. Here’s how to get involved.

Technology has allowed us to increase direct mail ROI even more! By adding technology, you can draw attention to your mail piece.

On Thursday May 11, around 150 Konica Minolta production print users gathered in Vienna for a day of presentations at the inaugural meeting of PROKOM, the Konica Minolta user community. With the focus, at least at first, on users of cut-sheet light to mid-production color and black-and-white digital print, the opportunity for PROKOM is unlike many other user groups, which tend to focus on higher levels of production.

Advertising media, interactive displays, product labeling and packaging, security—all are perfect playgrounds for NFC technology. Yes, some of the marketing applications are similar to QR codes, but without the ugly square that has been driving design-minded folks crazy for years.

Did you know that paper absorbs moisture in the air, which can impact quality? Here’s a short guide on paper in relation to humidity.

Understanding your carbon footprint can decrease your consumption of energy and materials, reducing your carbon emissions.

Designers are visual people and the best way to teach a visual person is to show them. What follows are 10 ways you can use your smartphone to reach out to your designer clients, add value to your company website and make life easier for yourself.

Most successful small manufacturing companies use MIS software. Unfortunately, there’s a failure to launch about 80% of the features.

EFI recently released a significant rewrite and enhancement to the Direct Smile platform and has named it MarketDirect Cross Media.

When you properly plan a personalized variable data workflow, you will have integrated software, press, and finishing in a workflow where there is accountability and verification at every step in the process. Which is surely what you will need for success.

The grapevine has been ripe the past weeks, but now the news is finally out. Fujifilm has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase the majority holding of Xerox Corporation and will merge Fuji Xerox with Xerox.

With Canon’s announcement of the Océ VarioPrint 6000 Titan, it’s a good time to revisit the cut-sheet monochrome digital market.

A financial analyst who specializes in the printing industry recently speculated that “the…

In a short period of time, Ricoh has built an impressive portfolio of high-speed rollfed inkjet presses and cut-sheet toner presses, software, plus a line of services that include color management and workflow analysis. Ricoh continues to invest in this market.

During the One Canon press/analyst event (March 7-9) in Boca Raton, Fla., Canon unveiled worldwide the Colorado 1640 and Mal Baboyian, Senior VP of Canon U.S.A.’s Business Imaging Solutions Group for Océ Product Marketing and Support, thinks it is Océ’s most important wide-format graphic arts product introduction in 25 years.

It’s no surprise to see wide-format shops attracting their fair share of attention in the M&A marketplace. We’ve represented a number of them as sellers in transactions this year, and they make an interesting contrast with our commercial printing and packaging clients.

OK, I digress from my usual finishing tech. discussion this week. Although I’m on the digital finishing side, I spent enough time in the high-volume offset world to become quite familiar with publication, periodical and catalog production.

We were in Japan last month, and as luck would have it, we were there at the same time that Komori held an open house to showcase its newest digital print solutions. This international event took place at Komori’s facility in Tsukuba, Japan, and drew hundreds of attendees from all over the Asia Pacific region. It also provided the opportunity to showcase its Impremia IS29, a B2-format, sheetfed, UV inkjet printer.

In a sense, Berlin Industries was once the king of Chicago. Last week, the remaining assets were auctioned off. If you were there, you could have purchased a Heidelberg Sunday M3000 five-unit web press for a mere $47,000.

What follows is an interview with Rosemarie Breske Garvey, VP at Blooming Color in Lombard, Ill. Blooming Color is doing some pretty spectacular work beyond traditional four-color printing and I wanted to learn more.

A young designer I spoke to the other day was very frank about the fact that she did not like digital printing because you could only print on white paper. Granted there are some print providers that prefer to print on white coated stock all day long (digital or offset, it does not matter to them). And these few give our whole industry a bad reputation.

It looked like a good fit. The seller, unfortunately, didn’t see it that way.

As a trade association president, I knew that one of my most important jobs was to offer our members a friendly, well informed, third-party perspective on strategic business issues. Today, our New Direction Partners clients want the same thing: not just information about the mechanics of M&As, but also a genuine understanding of the industry and the mindsets of the people who own those companies.

For many years, I had the privilege of serving in leadership positions with Printing Industries of New England (PINE), the largest printing trade association in the Northeast. Then as now, I was greatly impressed by the resiliency of our members and their ability to adapt to changing business circumstances.

Slowing down and following a "Best Practices" method to paper trials and qualification will save you time and ink costs by focusing on ink and paper surface compatibility. As your cost for a better inkjet paper and print quality go up, your ink usage should go down. But only if there are best practices in place.

The fifth housing station in the upgraded Xerox 800i/1000i series can now also deliver metallic inks: gold and silver.