Paper Strategy is Business Strategy
Posted on Thu, Sep 16, 2010 @ 08:00 AM
by Don Burns
One thing that’s become very clear over the last couple of years is that the digital inkjet revolution won’t be going anywhere without the right paper options.
Paper is simply too critical to be left as an afterthought.
For me, it’s almost an obsession. Because I’ve known for a long time that the Prosper 5000XL is the most important new printing press for many years. And I’ve also known that its revolutionary potential could easily be blunted if we failed to support it with a well-thought-out paper strategy.
For most printing businesses, paper strategy is business strategy.
If you use just a few papers, that points directly to a business model based on high volumes, high productivity, aggressive pricing, and operational efficiency. If you use dozens of different paper types, it will be because you are tackling many different types of work, probably for a wide range of customers. It will likely be your flexibility, your good customer service, your willingness to handle short runs, and your ability to offer buyers a choice of cost/quality trade-offs that will keep them coming back for more.
Most successful printers these days are committed to one or other of these business models – we could call the alternatives “throughput-based” and “service-based”. The middle ground between the two is an increasingly uncomfortable place to be, as you get squeezed from both ends. But what’s really exciting for me is the way the Prosper 5000XL offers new scope for both throughput experts and service specialists, plus a real opportunity for those who are stuck in the middle to make their strategic shifts towards more clearly defined business models.
It’s very fast. You can’t argue with 650 feet per minute. It produces offset-quality color images (up to 175lpi). Yet it has the built-in advantages of digital, too – the variable data capability, the low running costs and the potential to handle short runs without cost penalties. All that makes it the first real all-round printing press based on digital inkjet technology. It’s the first inkjet that offers a genuine opportunity to migrate offset jobs to digital without compromising speed, quality or economy.
With Kodak’s paper strategy providing great new optimized papers, a clear and practical four-diamond rating scheme to help in choosing the right stock, and the new in-line optimization module to allow printing on almost any paper, today’s printing revolutionaries have all the ammunition they need. What happens next is up to the individual company and the path it chooses to follow. But there won’t be many cases where “business as usual” is the recipe for success.