rasmuswikman
New member
Since I entered the printing industry three years ago I've become more and more surprised (or horrified) of the shrewd relation between supply and demand. Since our business is all digital I don't really know if it applies to the "traditional" part of the industry aswell (offset etc). There are few free ($99 for a printer comparison report!) objective sources of information, and discussion forums (like this one) are only starting to get populated.
Four of my major issues with the suppliers (equipment providers) are:
1. The prices
It's hard to find information on who pays what (especially click costs). The secrecy lends me to believe that there is a large difference. And if there isn't, then why aren't they published? Born in the 80's I'm used to getting information about products BEFORE I buy them WITHOUT having to listen to sales people. (Yes, I bought my Volkswagen Polo by surfing on the net and without test-driving it, and I love it!)
Edit 2: What I'm really trying to say is that while I understand that the click-model is a good way of measuring the need for service, I think that the difference in price between monochrome and full color is too steep. It "forces" us to sell black & white while roughly 95% of our customers want color.
I'd like to see is a simple service like Pricerunner where we (anonymously) could fill in the details of what and to who we pay for software, hardware and service.
2. The competition
First they sell their services and machines to inhouse printing, second they come to us PSPs selling the same machines. Result? They've taken away the most profitable client segments and left us with scraps. And the print buyers are locked to them. With us PSPs as the middle hand, we could make sure that the print buyers are getting most out of their money by letting us choose on what equipment to print and where. I'm not saying that it's such a huge problem yet, but for example we're getting more and more clients that only want to buy covers for their presentations that they'll print and finish inhouse.
While HP recently has changed their strategy and is morfing marketsplash.com from a competing service to a assistive service, Canon has even announced that they are focusing their strategy to inhouse printing (according to an industry news site). If there was a healthy supply & demand on the market, then companies wouldn't have to resort to inhouse printing because with JDF the printing could be done outside the house.
3. Compatibility
While they all claim to have full support for JDF, it's absurd how hard it is to find information to evaluate compatibility issues. I haven't made extensive research, but the machines I've tried to find information about has made me sceptical to say at least;
EFI Fiery - When I tried to find information about the JDF Connector I was constantly made aware of the fact that I'm now on dangerous water and that I have to buy this and that product to make sure that everything works (or really; that they can squeeze a little more money out of me to make sure I don't have any resources to educate my personnel in using the software).
HP Indigo - They have SDKs, but I still feel like an intruder when I'm trying to find information. The only thing that makes me push onwards trough the "WARNING"-signs is that if I'm paying 300 000-500 000€ I do have to know EVERYTHING about potential issues.
Duplo 645 - Though they have no information whatsoever on software on their site (which I find quite strange since the software to control it is so incredibly simple), they have been very communicative and I have high hopes that I will eventually be able to send JDF straight to the machine.
4. Software (Edit 1)
With a background in web development I fear that the printing industry is in for a similar ride as the dotcom-boom. I haven't had time yet to really go through exactly how JDF is handled by different equipment, but my gut feeling is that the coding required to create a W2P/MIS/PPM is not very complex compared to the open source CMSs like Joomla.
So the only missing link is a coder writing a JDF/JMF/PPML-module for Joomla. With that in place, AFAIK it would then compete with industry leading systems like Hiflex.
Conclusion (Edit 2)
My conclusion is that while these issues would probably be OK in a normal situation and solved as the market matures, the competition from new media is pressing on and I believe that the only way to fight back is by cooperating.
Thoughts?
Four of my major issues with the suppliers (equipment providers) are:
1. The prices
It's hard to find information on who pays what (especially click costs). The secrecy lends me to believe that there is a large difference. And if there isn't, then why aren't they published? Born in the 80's I'm used to getting information about products BEFORE I buy them WITHOUT having to listen to sales people. (Yes, I bought my Volkswagen Polo by surfing on the net and without test-driving it, and I love it!)
Edit 2: What I'm really trying to say is that while I understand that the click-model is a good way of measuring the need for service, I think that the difference in price between monochrome and full color is too steep. It "forces" us to sell black & white while roughly 95% of our customers want color.
I'd like to see is a simple service like Pricerunner where we (anonymously) could fill in the details of what and to who we pay for software, hardware and service.
2. The competition
First they sell their services and machines to inhouse printing, second they come to us PSPs selling the same machines. Result? They've taken away the most profitable client segments and left us with scraps. And the print buyers are locked to them. With us PSPs as the middle hand, we could make sure that the print buyers are getting most out of their money by letting us choose on what equipment to print and where. I'm not saying that it's such a huge problem yet, but for example we're getting more and more clients that only want to buy covers for their presentations that they'll print and finish inhouse.
While HP recently has changed their strategy and is morfing marketsplash.com from a competing service to a assistive service, Canon has even announced that they are focusing their strategy to inhouse printing (according to an industry news site). If there was a healthy supply & demand on the market, then companies wouldn't have to resort to inhouse printing because with JDF the printing could be done outside the house.
3. Compatibility
While they all claim to have full support for JDF, it's absurd how hard it is to find information to evaluate compatibility issues. I haven't made extensive research, but the machines I've tried to find information about has made me sceptical to say at least;
EFI Fiery - When I tried to find information about the JDF Connector I was constantly made aware of the fact that I'm now on dangerous water and that I have to buy this and that product to make sure that everything works (or really; that they can squeeze a little more money out of me to make sure I don't have any resources to educate my personnel in using the software).
HP Indigo - They have SDKs, but I still feel like an intruder when I'm trying to find information. The only thing that makes me push onwards trough the "WARNING"-signs is that if I'm paying 300 000-500 000€ I do have to know EVERYTHING about potential issues.
Duplo 645 - Though they have no information whatsoever on software on their site (which I find quite strange since the software to control it is so incredibly simple), they have been very communicative and I have high hopes that I will eventually be able to send JDF straight to the machine.
4. Software (Edit 1)
With a background in web development I fear that the printing industry is in for a similar ride as the dotcom-boom. I haven't had time yet to really go through exactly how JDF is handled by different equipment, but my gut feeling is that the coding required to create a W2P/MIS/PPM is not very complex compared to the open source CMSs like Joomla.
So the only missing link is a coder writing a JDF/JMF/PPML-module for Joomla. With that in place, AFAIK it would then compete with industry leading systems like Hiflex.
Conclusion (Edit 2)
My conclusion is that while these issues would probably be OK in a normal situation and solved as the market matures, the competition from new media is pressing on and I believe that the only way to fight back is by cooperating.
Thoughts?
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