EFI CEO Guy Gecht is saying that the rapid move to an online world is good for printers, as long as they recognise the opportunity and move with the times.
Gecht is the boss of what is one of the fastest growing businesses in print, with EFI on track to crash through the US$1bn sales market this year as it continues to achieve growth at around 13 per cent a year, every year since the GFC.
Speaking to Australian Printer Gecht says, “The rapid move to the online world means printers’ customers are demanding short run, personalised, on demand work with no waste and no lead time. Digital print is perfectly positioned to capitalise on this, especially in fast growing areas such as signage, packaging, textiles and decoration, along with more traditional but still growing print areas such as direct mail.
“The world is moving forward, and for print businesses standing still is simply not an option. Our mission is to provide our customers with the best tools to enable them to move forwards in the most efficient and effective way.
“Customers of printers are in the online world one way or another, and they are all demanding, because of the demands placed on them. Printers need to be able to meet those needs of instant turnaround, personalisation through the use of data, high quality, no waste, and EFI is committed to developing the means, the tools for printers to digitise their businesses and place themselves in the optimum position to exploit the opportunities.”
Gecht says that print business owners need to look for markets where they can deliver value. He says, “For instance I was at an election rally in Silicon Valley – the home of the internet and email – where direct mail was the primary means of communication for the candidates. Using data and print is incredibly strong.”
According to Gecht the demand for digital print is increasing, that is certainly the case if his own company’s numbers are anything to go by. Just two weeks ago he told his quarterly investors meeting that growth for the next quarter would be at 15 per cent.
The new generation of inkjet presses from the likes of Landa, Canon and Fuji Xerox all have Fiery rips. Along with commercial print the four key areas of growth for printers according to Gecht are in signage, packaging, textile and decoration.
Gecht was speaking from experience, describing the ‘near death’ that EFI went through at the turn of the century as office copier developers began manufacturing their own rips, leaving EFI with the prospect of no customers. He says, “We had ten customers and all of them were developing their own rips. Colour was not mission critical as office copiers are not used for commercial print, but the rips they were developing were good enough. So we had to move, and we moved into the high end colour rips for the commercial print market, and have not looked back since.”
A decade and a half later and EFI had its biggest drupa presence to date at the show two months ago, launching a slew of new products across wide format, digital carton, inks, workflow, textiles, labels, MIS and web to print. There is barely an area of digital printing where EFI is not strongly placed, either with its own print solutions such as those for labels, textiles, wide format, décor, ceramics and non corrugated, or through virtually all cut sheet and webfed toner and inkjet printers now offering Fiery rips.
For the past six or seven years EFI has been on a major acquisition trail, and in that time has bought in more than a dozen distinct businesses in a myriad of sectors including MIS, wide format, ceramics and latterly textiles. EFI takes the knowledge, integrates it with its own, and re-presents the technology to the market, often as major innovation.
Among the self developed products Gecht revealed that at least one Australian business will be amongst the first dozen customers for the new Nozomi 100 feet long inkjet digital corrugated carton printer that was launched at drupa and will be coming out of beta test next year.
He claims that a huge 15-20 per cent of EFI’s burgeoning revenue is being ploughed into R+D, with 40 per cent of its global workforce in its R+D department. He says, “We seek the brightest and the best, and if we find the right person we will find the budget.” The company has ink development as its primary focus, and next year will launch its AquaEndure, its proprietary ink, that Gecht says marries the ability of UV to adhere to virtually any substrate and stay there with the environmental and cost benefits of water based inks.
Gecht says, “EFI is committed to developing solutions that will enable our customers to exploit emerging opportunities and develop their businesses
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