eXpansys
Manchester, UK
“We chose Xerox because of its pedigree — the print
and color quality are superb! With CREO Spire, we can link the solution
to our back-end system, and integrate it seamlessly with our finishing
equipment.”
— Ian Harrison, Content and Design Manager
eXpansys is the largest online specialist and catalogue retailer of
wireless technology in Europe and North America. The company’s products
include personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and laptop PCs,
as well as storage and networking accessories.
eXpansys was established in 1998 to promote a single make of PDA via the Web.
It soon snowballed from a software-development business to a highly successful
retail business with outlets in France, Hong Kong, Australia, and the United
States, with its head office in Manchester, England. eXpansys produces numerous
marketing materials printed in English, French, and simplified Chinese. A 12-page
catalogue, flyers, and various other promotional pieces are delivered with
every product purchased from the company’s Web site to facilitate additional
sales. The company also sends regular mailers to its extensive customer base.
In the past, the production work for this material was handled by a design
agency, which outsourced the printing. However, due to rapid pricing changes—sometimes
weekly—the catalogue and other items were often outdated by the time
they were ready for print.
“We needed to retain control over the production of our marketing materials
so that we could ensure that the right information was being issued at the
right time,” says Ian Harrison, Content and Design Manager at eXpansys. “We
decided to bring production in-house and wanted a solution that could link
into our back-end system so that we could rapidly update new pricing and marketing
information.”
After a thorough research process, Ian and his team chose a XEROX DocuColor
6060 digital color press driven by a CREO Spire CXP6000 color server that is
complemented with a Horizon Bookletmaker. Since installation, the company has
printed in excess of 1.3 million full-color A3 pages.
“We chose Xerox because of its pedigree and the fact that it could integrate
seamlessly with our finishing equipment. We are very pleased with the results—the
print and color quality are superb,” continues Ian Harrison.
In addition to gaining greater control over the production of its marketing
materials, eXpansys is also benefiting from the value-added business features
of the CREO Spire color server. At the top of this list are the server’s
accounting capabilities, which track all products that have been issued and
keeps a record of items in stock. “This feature is especially useful
if we have a breakdown in communication between the head office and the warehouse,
and means we have a reliable record of what exactly has been done. The ability
of the DocuColor and Spire solution to integrate both upstream and downstream
to our business and finishing systems, makes it much more than a high-quality
printing system,” concludes Ian Harrison.
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Act+/Palmer Printing
Chicago, Illinois
“The CREO PODS Spire color server is the best. Creo Print
On-Demand Solutions has the most experience in digital prepress. They're
the choice for any front end that you want to drive a digital press or
digital platesetter. Since they're also the leaders in variable, the Spire
color server seems like a logical choice.”
— Ed Rossini, President
Act+/Palmer Printing is a commercial printer that has recently introduced
digital printing into its service offering. With its two XEROX IGEN3 110
Digital Production Presses driven by CREO PODS Spire for IGEN3 color servers
and its KODAK offset workflow, comprised of the KODAK Lotem Quantum platesetter
and the KODAK Brisque workflow solution, Act+/Palmer Printing produces collateral
and direct mail pieces for Chicago financial institutions and agencies.
Act+/Palmer Printing first turned to digital printing to “give customers
a better product and a larger range of services.” The printer has not
been disappointed. “When you’re talking variable, and you're talking
quick turnaround times, and you're talking cost per page on the lower quantity,
it's a very easy decision to go digital,” says Ed Rossini, President
of Act+/Palmer Printing.
“Creo PODS and Xerox have helped us become more competitive,” explains
Rossini. “We can do more services in-house as opposed to sending those
items out or refusing to do those jobs.”
Rossini estimates that anywhere between 900,000 to 1.5 million pages are printed
per month on the XEROX printer’s IGEN3 110 Digital Production Presses. “The
XEROX IGEN3 press was a good choice because it does give us commercial-quality
color,” says Rossini.
The CREO PODS Spire for IGEN3 color server was initially chosen for its variable
data printing capabilities. “We had two choices of front ends,” recalls
Rossini. “The Spire color server seemed to handle variable data better,
and that is where I see the future of this business running—100% variable
work.”
Rossini sees the benefit of unifying its offset and digital operations. “Saving
time and sharing server space would be the advantages of a unified workflow.
If I have someone that's out of the plant I can have someone from the other
department fill in, because the workflow is the same.”
Act+/Palmer Printing is on its way to achieving a unified workflow. “We've
integrated our prepress on the commercial side of things with our prepress
on our digital side of things,” describes Rossini. “Currently we're
upgrading our server to make that happen. I'd like to be able to move jobs
seamlessly between the two departments and share resources.”
“I have heard people say that digital will consume commercial printing,” reflects
Rossini. “Offset printing will become a dinosaur that's been put out
to pasture. I think that that is not the case. There's always going to be a
market for commercial printing. But I think that an integrated approach, a
company that has both digital and commercial, is the right approach. There's
a lot of work that will use both technologies and integrate them to add a lot
of value to the customer’s dollar. The demand for digital printing will
increase as it becomes less costly to produce. It will grow. And I'm excited
about that.”
Rossini sums up his experience with the CREO PODS Spire for IGEN3 color server: “It
is the best. Creo PODS has the most experience in digital prepress. They're
the choice for any front end that you want to drive a digital press or digital
platesetter. Since they're also the leaders in variable, the Spire digital
color server seems like a logical choice. The Creo PODS Spire color servers
will be the choice for us for the future because I know that the size of the
company behind them will keep the product updated and cutting edge.”
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Act+/Palmer Printing
Chicago, Illinois
“DARWIN will help digital printers streamline their workflow.
It's easier than other methods of creating VI jobs, so in the big picture,
it will make them more efficient, it will make them more money, and it
will give more value to their clients.”
— Peter Wagner, PrePress Operator
Act+/Palmer Printing is a commercial printer that introduced digital
printing into its service offering a couple of years ago with the addition
of two XEROX IGEN3 110 Digital Production Presses driven by CREO PODS Spire
digital color servers. Combined with the CREO DARWIN VI authoring tool, the
Spire color server allows Act+/Palmer Printing to produce variable data printing
jobs for Chicago financial institutions and agencies.
Variable Data Printing (VDP) was one of the reasons Act+/Palmer Printing first
incorporated digital printing into its plant. “That is where I feel the
most profit-margin-laden work will lie, is in the variable market,” says
Ed Rossini, President of Act+/Palmer Printing.
The CREO Spire color server was chosen for its VDP capabilities. “We
had two choices of front ends,” recalls Rossini. “The Spire server
seemed to handle variable data better, and that is where I see the future of
this business running—100 percent variable work.”
“The Spire color server is probably without a doubt, the most versatile
RIP for the IGEN3,” says Peter Wagner, Prepress Operator at Act+/Palmer
Printing. “It handles all the VI file types—CREO VPS, XEROX VIPP,
and a few others—that most other RIPs just aren't capable of handling.
It's probably the most powerful tool that I've been able to use for doing variable
printing.”
Wagner initially chose the DARWIN VI authoring tool because it was a QUARKXPRESS
plug-in. “Being a QUARK user for many years, I definitely wanted something
that worked invisibly with QUARK and didn't do too many out-of-the-ordinary
processes.”
“I've been a DARWIN user for approximately two and a half years,” says
Wagner. “I like it. I like the ease of use, I like the flexibility, and
I like how seamlessly it integrates with QUARK and ADOBE INDESIGN.” Act+/Palmer
Printing is currently using DARWIN 6.5.
The DARWIN VI authoring tool, a plug-in to both QUARKXPRESS and ADOBE INDESIGN,
now operates on both MACINTOSH and WINDOWS platforms allowing more users to
enjoy its robust VDP capabilities. With DARWIN, designers can create full-color
personalized communications and produce complex variable data campaigns—text,
graphics, charts, colors, layouts, backgrounds, and even entire pages can be
dynamic.
“DARWIN enables us to accomplish variable programming a lot faster because
we have a visual, more comfortable interface,” continues Wagner. “It's
very straightforward and that, by itself, definitely streamlines the workflow.”
Since introducing digital printing and DARWIN, Act+/Palmer Printing has been
producing increasingly more VDP jobs for its customers. “We're doing
more and more variable programming as more people become aware of how powerful
a tool the VI jobs are. I would approximate that 50 percent of my workflow
consists, to some degree or another, of VI jobs,” says Wagner.
“We do direct mail programs every month or every other month for financial
institutions, sending out everything from ‘save the date’ invites
to special event notifications, to progress reports on projects that they have
with their clients. We also do a lot of personalized invitations.”
Wagner highly recommends the DARWIN VI authoring tool to any digital printer. “It
will help streamline their workflow. It's easier than other methods of creating
VI jobs, so in the big picture, it will make them more efficient, it will make
them more money, and it will give more value to their clients."
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Foxfire Printing and Packaging, Inc.
Upper Marlboro, Maryland
“With the Spire running the IGEN3, we can send tens of thousands
of pages with variable data and lots of color to the printer. Creo’s
VPS makes it possible for us to do jobs that are not feasible with any
other solution.”
— John Ferretti, CEO
Foxfire Printing and Packaging, provides comprehensive graphic design,
printing, website development, fulfillment, warehousing, POP advertising,
and cost benefit analysis services. The company’s printing business
has traditionally been dominated by offset production, but, over the past
three years, Foxfire has dramatically expanded its capabilities, placing
it at the leading edge of digital printing.
Foxfire took its first step into color digital printing with the XEROX DocuColor
2060, driven by the CREO Spire color server. Within two weeks, Foxfire’s
operators were successfully using the Spire and DocuColor 2060 on VI production
jobs. “The Creo- Xerox solution was easy to understand and easy to use,” recalled
Foxfire CTO, Bob Hill, noting that they were very pleased with how quickly
their operation became “very efficient, very controlled, with excellent
results”.
This experience gave Foxfire the confidence to become one of the first to
use XEROX DocuColor IGEN3 Digital Production Press driven by a CREO Spire color
server. Since installing a beta version in October 2002, the Company has not
looked back. “We are delighted with it. Within six months of getting
it, any problems we had are gone, and the Spire server and IGEN3 are humming
along, giving us really good color, and reliability” said Mr. Hill.
The Spire-IGEN3 solution enables Foxfire to take on for the first time complex
color VI jobs and short-run full-color printing jobs. A major part of Foxfire’s
business is producing signs for grocery chains, and they have now moved much
of that work from offset to digital, enabling them to offer new capabilities
to their customers. It is common for them to create unique sets of color signs
for each store in a chain of thousands of stores.
“The major benefit of Spire color server and IGEN3 for these jobs is
pure throughput,” said Mr. Hill. “We can use a variety of heavy
and coated stocks, running at 100 pages per minute. Since the Spire server
has been integrated with the IGEN3 regarding handling stocks and creating a
stock library, we can predefine stocks and use them without any other setup
other than loading the trays. That is a true step above.”
CEO, John Ferretti added: “The Spire server for the IGEN3 is powerful,
with a large disk. The Spire color server can RIP 50,000 pages of color variable
information, and to keep up with the iGen3’s production speed. This is
a key benefit.”
The IGEN3 and Spire solution has enabled Foxfire to fulfill a dream for one
long-time grocery chain client that wished for blackboard-style signs for the
chain’s 200 stores. This requires Foxfire to produce up to 90,000 pages
weekly, made up of 200 unique sign sets, with variable information and varied
page sizes. “Without the Spire server and IGEN3, we couldn’t meet
the volume or schedule. The total solution makes it feasible, and the consistent
quality of the solid blacks is really amazing,” said Mr. Hill.
Foxfire has every intention of staying with Creo and Xerox. Bob Hill summed
it up: “We are very happy to have gone the IGEN3 and Spire route. There’s
no way we’re going to change a winning solution.”
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Hunter Lodge
Hertfordshire, UK
“To deliver clever communication solutions we select the
best technology. As such, Spire is fast, reliable and especially easy to
use. Show someone once and they begin to run it.”
— Andrew Wells, Production Director
Hunter Lodge, based in Hertfordshire, UK, is a marketing and design
agency offering strategic expertise, brand development, direct marketing,
advertising, design, multimedia, and print. Established in 1987, the company
has a reputation for excellence and professional service. ustomers include
health, local government and education authorities as well as blue chip internationals
such as Compaq, Microsoft and MacDonald.
“Our quality results from combining commercially relevant thinking,
creative design, strong project management and print expertise. We invest in
the best technology to deliver clever, outstanding communication solutions,” says
Andrew Wells, Production Director at Hunter Lodge.
Before the summer of 2002, Hunter Lodge outsourced its printing to local suppliers
of offset or digital depending on the job. When developing a digital printing
solution for Quadriga, the European market leader in providing in-room entertainment
to hotels, Hunter Lodge recognized that digital variable information printing
(VIP) was the best solution for Quadriga – less costly than offset, with
faster turnaround times and comparable quality.
“The complexity of the job was staggering but we knew we could handle
it with the right technology partners,” said Andrew Wells. “After
thorough research, the combination of Xerox’s customer support and the
clever way Spire handles variable data printing, won the day.” Hunter
Lodge now boasts three XEROX DocuColor 2060 digital presses each driven by
a CREO Spire CSX2000 color server.
Quadriga provides films, music videos and internet connection to rooms in
2,500 hotels based across 26 regions in Europe, Printed menu cards for each
room detail the available films and show times, so each hotel has different
data requirements like language and number of television channels.
Since a core competence of Hunter Lodge is data management, the company developed
a database to handle the source data files from Quadriga and prepare them for
print output. Andrew Wells explains: “Every month we receive two files
from Quadriga: one lists the films, and one lists the hotel requirements like
the number of menu cards needed and the design format. Our proprietary database
queries the files to match the fixed information to each hotel. We then output
records, with raw tagged data and definitions of each menu card, to CREO’s
DARWIN Desktop variable information authoring application. Darwin pulls in
the correct physical print data from its library of language and image templates,
and creates a print-ready file. The Spire servers and DocuColor 2060 presses
do the rest, producing excellent quality colour menu cards ready for finishing
and shipping.”
The Spire/DocuColor digital variable printing solution has enabled Hunter
Lodge to succeed with Quadriga, and market its digital capability. They envision
an exciting future.
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NW Coughlin, Inc.
Livonia, Michigan
“The CREO Spire and XEROX DocuColor 2060 solution fills
an important niche in higher end, full color printing. We can now provide
our customers with a total digital printing service that is fast and cost
effective. For example, on one variable information job, we have cut turnaround
time to one-third of what it was, with a 20% lower cost.”
— John Kepshire, President
NW Coughlin, a full-service printing services supplier, provides data
management, high-speed digital laser printing, offset printing, and complete
lettershop and fulfillment services to manufacturers, agencies and institutions.
The Company prints a broad range of applications, with variable information
color jobs forming a growing portion of its business.
When NW Coughlin acquired a XEROX DocuColor 2060 printer in late 2000, the
CREO Spire digital front-end was recommended as the server most suited for
handling large amounts of variable color printing along with various other
color applications. Since then, NW Coughlin has seen its color digital printing
business grow – through the ability to produce high-quality jobs with
a higher percentage of color variable information, faster and more cost effectively.
For example, NW Coughlin is now producing a quarterly marketing document for
one of its major automotive company customers in significantly less time, while
offering its customer a lower overall cost and a higher degree of flexibility.
The job was originally set up on the DocuColor 40, but ran slowly due to the
amount of variable information. Now, NW Coughlin is printing the job with 100%
variable information, featuring an average of six different charts or graphs,
in onethird the time and at 20 percent lower cost. “When it comes to
graphically intense documents, it all boils down to speed,” said John
Kepshire, president of NW Coughlin. “The Spire and DocuColor 2060 is
much faster than our older systems. I can safely estimate that we have cut
production times by around 50 percent.” Brian Sciatto, NW Coughlin’s
network operations manager, added: “My overall impression of the Spire
is that it is very reliable, quick and versatile. The RIP speed is a significant
factor – we’re able to RIP even complex, variable information-heavy
documents in about half the time we were able to before.”
When working with the Spire and the DocuColor 2060, increased speed has not
come at the expense of quality. “Another advantage of the Spire, and
the tools it comes with, is that it is much easier to match colors,” noted
Mr. Sciatto. For NW Coughlin, this is an important marketing benefit because
convincing color-conscious customers to move to a digital process can be a
challenge. But, according to Mr. Kepshire, once companies recognize that the
vast majority of their audience won’t be able to tell the difference
between digital output off the DocuColor 2060 and offset output, they are more
open to using a digital solution. “More and more of our customers are
realizing that they can enjoy the speed benefits of digital printing without
compromising on color in a meaningful way,” commented Mr. Kepshire.
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PrePart B.V.
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
“Because of the RIP speed of the CREO Spire Color Server,
I can now take on high-volume variable data jobs that I used to let go
because they would take too long to RIP.”
— Wim Helms, Manager
PrePart is a well-established full service digital printing bureau
in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Offering everything from pre-press through to
mailing services, from small format through to super wide printing, PrePart
focuses on serving a demanding market of advertising agencies and marketing
campaign bureaus that need perfect color brochures, banners, folders, and
leaflets. Most jobs are characterized by a demand for high quality in low
volume. Since its inception, PrePart has printed only in color, building
a solid knowledge base of color that continues to serve it well as it begins
to take on more variable printing and higher volume jobs.
PrePart has been working with XEROX digital printers and CREO heritage front
ends since 1997, when they acquired their first DocuColor 40 and 70 machines,
both with Scitex (now Creo) front ends. Most recently, the firm acquired a
Xerox DocuColor 2045 digital color printer, originally running it with a Fiery
front-end. In December 2001, the firm upgraded to a CREO Spire Color Server
for the printer.
“We tested the CREO solutions at the XEROX demo site and were very impressed
with the high-speed RIPping, particularly of variable data jobs that have a
lot of images,” said Wim Helms, PrePart’s manager. “We decided
to upgrade to the CREO Spire because it gave us competitive speed, with more
quality advantages. Also it’s very stable, which is very important to
us.”
Mr. Helms also praised the Spire for its ease of use and color management. “Making
color corrections is simple, particularly because you can work with your own
profiles,” he noted. “Our customers pay close attention to color
quality and often they need small runs of digital printing that must have the
same radiation and tone, and be parallel to their offset printing. The Spire
can handle this kind of quality.”
Another benefit of the Spire is its ease of use. “It’s very easy
to understand the structure of the RIP and the interface is quite easy to navigate.
That’s important because the operators can get up to speed very quickly,” Mr.
Helms said.
Beyond the immediate color quality and ease of use considerations, moving
over to the Spire color servers was also a strategic decision, providing PrePart
with the necessary capabilities to further develop its variable information
business. Mr. Helm explained: “Variable data printing is a small percentage
of our total business now, but we have made it a major point in our marketing
strategy and it will grow. We work with the CREO DARWIN variable data application,
and, combined with the Spire, we now have a very good, high-speed solution
for this expanding area.”
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Progressive Impressions International
Bloomington, Illinois
“The big factors are speed and color accuracy. Using the
CREO Spire server, we can manipulate the files better and easier, we get
consistent color, and we can turn the jobs around in a lot less time.”
— Jeanette Kavanaugh, Digital Printing Supervisor
Progressive Impressions International (PII) is the world’s largest
full-service direct marketing solutions provider. It serves some of the largest
national and multinational computer companies, financial institutions, insurance
firms and other major companies. At its Bloomington, IL corporate headquarters,
PII is constantly breaking new ground in the production of direct marketing
collateral.
For the past five years, PII has walked hand in hand with Creo and Xerox for
digital color production, starting off with a DocuColor 40, and acquiring more
advanced systems as they became available, and using Creo (or its Scitex forerunner)
servers to drive them.
With its latest acquisition of four XEROX DocuColor 2060s, each driven by
a Spire color server, PII has been able to push the digital printing envelope
far further than ever before. PII uses CREO’s DARWIN Desktop variable
information authoring tool for some VI jobs and hand codes CREO Variable Print
Specifications (VPS) for others.
Using the Spire and DocuColor 2060 solution, PII consistently turns around
complex, highly personalized, high-quality, high-volume jobs. “The jobs
we do are often too challenging for most other companies,” says Jeanette
Kavanaugh, digital printing supervisor at PII.
One of PII’s most challenging jobs is for a company that photographs
individual participants at sports events. PII integrates each photo with personalized
text and sends out the completed documents. Depending on the size of the event,
PII turns around anything from 20,000 to 50,000 unique pieces, each with individual
images, all within one to four days from the time they get the data and images
from their customer. “The Spire is one of the main reasons that we could
take on the sports events job. What makes it possible is the high degree of
color accuracy, and the ability to break the file down into small segments
and run them on all four of our DocuColor 2060s at the same time,” explains
Ms. Kavanaugh.
To produce this job cost effectively and on time, PII makes the most of the
exceptional ease of use and reliability of the Spire/DocuColor solution. Just
two operators are needed to manage the four machines, and all the machines
are kept running two shifts every day.
The business impact of the Spire/DocuColor 2060 solution has been immense.
Fourteen months after getting the first one, PII’s color business has
quadrupled. To help maintain that phenomenal rate of growth, the firm intends
to purchase two more systems this year. “We will have no trouble keeping
them busy,” concludes Ms. Kavanaugh.
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Prontaprint
London, UK
“By investing in Creo and Xerox, we are positioning ourselves
for future growth in variable data printing. I am convinced that this is
the future for print-on-demand.”
— Peter Donaldson, Managing Director
Prontaprint operates Europe’s largest print-on-demand network
with approximately 185 centres across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Founded
in 1971, Prontaprint strives to offer readily accessible, high-quality digital
design, print, and copy services to businesses at affordable prices and rapid
turnaround.
The Prontaprint center on Crawford Street in London, is one of the most technically
advanced in the country, servicing the central London area and also some overseas
customers. In such a large, office-based district, Prontaprint is kept busy
producing reports and presentations, as well as leaflets, invitations, badges,
and menus for local event companies. Much of this work is straightforward color
printing, but handling large digital files, for example POWERPOINT presentations,
and the substantial print volumes required by customers, were causing the franchise’s
management headaches.
“Many of the jobs required by our customers were very time-consuming
to produce in terms of processing and were also labour intensive if hand collating
was required,” says Peter Donaldson, Managing Director at Prontaprint. “A
successful Prontaprint franchise must offer fast turnaround times, so we decided
to invest in the equipment required to improve our ability in handling large
files.”
Prontaprint invested in two XEROX DocuColor 3535 printer/copiers driven by
CREO Spire CXP3535 color servers. The decision was based not only on the current
need to shorten turnaround times, but also on a long-term view, which sees
an increased demand for variable data printing.
Peter Donaldson explains: “We already do a degree of personalization
work that has me convinced that in the future, customers will want more. By
investing in CREO Spire now, we are positioning ourselves to reap the benefits
of future growth in this area. As customers improve their ability to collect
the information required for variable data printing, we will be ready to deliver
fully personalized documents when they are needed.”
The Prontaprint centre has already begun to see the results of their Xerox-Creo
investment. Following training, described by Peter Donaldson as “straightforward—we
find the devices very user-friendly,” Prontaprint is enjoying greatly
increased processing speeds, the choice of a wider range of stocks, and the
ability to build jobs using the DocuColor collating capabilities.
“We are delighted with the XEROX DocuColor 3535 printers. We bought
them for their quality and speed, which has jumped from 12 pages per minute
to 35 per minute on each machine. This gives us the ability to produce 70 pages
per minute on both printers and is greatly enhanced by the Spire’s ability
to crunch large files. Jobs that were previously time-consuming and slow are
now flying through.”
“This installation has provided us with an all-round better system,
and because Spire is a really smart device with impressive variable data handling
abilities, we are well positioned to meet the growth of personalization in
the future,” concludes Peter Donaldson.
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Aspen Marketing Services
Chicago, Illinois
“When it comes to our biggest challenge of maintaining a
color, typically a corporate color for one of our clients, we’ve
found that the CREO Spire has been very beneficial in quickly matching
the type of color that our client expects to get.”
— Bobby Kennedy, director of letter shop operations
Aspen Marketing Services is a full-service production company with
seven locations across the United States and revenue, currently at $180 million,
that is constantly on the rise. Aspen creates, prints, folds, cuts, inserts,
and posts direct mailers for its prominent clients, which include General
Motors, Ford, Chrysler, SBC Communications, Qwest Communications, and the
American Cancer Society.
Bobby Kennedy, director of letter shop operations, credits the CREO PODS Spire
color server and XEROX IGEN3 110 Digital Production Press combination with
making Aspen Marketing Services more competitive.
“We do a real good job producing millions of print pieces for our larger
customers," he explains, "but the niche is really in the 50,000 to
100,000 range. There we really didn't have a solution in the past until we
got the Creo-Xerox solution.”
Aspen Marketing Services has two XEROX IGEN3 110 Digital Production Presses,
both driven by CREO PODS Spire color servers for IGEN3.
“We've been dabbling in the digital print arena for a number of years,” Kennedy
continues. “We really found that the most cost-effective solution for
us was to go with the Creo-Xerox solution. “We have done anywhere up
to 200,000 pages a day. On our IGEN3 presses, we're probably averaging about
40 to 50 jobs a week.”
“When it comes to our biggest challenge of maintaining a color, typically
a corporate color for one of our clients, we’ve found that the CREO PODS
Spire color server has been very beneficial in quickly matching the type of
color that our client expects to get,” reports Kennedy.
“Most of our customers and our internal folks are very surprised at
the quality we're getting with digital. They're used to getting something that
just doesn't have litho-type quality. They're now seeing spectacular graphics,
particularly on the glossy postcards that we produce,” he adds. “We’re
very pleased with what the digital arena has brought to the table for us.”
Kennedy is equally pleased with the training he and his staff received after
installing the Spire color servers and IGEN3 Digital Production Presses. “Creo
and Xerox were really holding our hands from the onset,” he recalls. “When
we installed the equipment in late June of 2004, we had probably two weeks
of very intense training. They helped us through to the point where we were
producing live work in less than two weeks.
“Our learning curve, although very steep initially in the color arena,
really plateaued. We became almost experts here within a few months of installing
the equipment.” According to Kennedy, Creo and Xerox work very well together. “I'm
very confident in the future with the Spire RIPs,” he says. “The
enhancements that we've seen over the last year have been very beneficial for
us.
“I think digital printing is really going to grow,” concludes
Kennedy. “Our customers in particular are just really starting to grasp
what they can do and the power of changing up variable data on the fly in very
high quantities. The future is wide open.”
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QuantumMail.com Inc.
Austin, TX, USA
“Since getting the new Spire and IGEN3 two months ago, volume
has grown by about 20%. We expect to add another 15-20% by the end of the
year.”
— Freddie Baird, Executive Vice President
Since 1986, QuantumMail.com, the Austin based company has been providing
a nationwide client base with the full range of direct mail and variable
messaging services. One way it differentiates itself is by promising - and
delivering - a 24-hour print and mail turnaround.
In 2000, after purchasing a XEROX DocuColor 2060 printer, QuantumMail.com
turned to Creo to drive its digital printers. “We chose the Spire because
we wanted more control over color and workflow issues,” recalls Freddie
Baird, executive vice president, QuantumMail.com. This was the beginning of
a strong relationship between Creo and QuantumMail.com. In 2002, they replaced
all printers with XEROX DocuColor 6060s and new Spire color servers. “Once
we received the Spire CXP6000, we built our workflow around it. We’re
a PDF workflow shop and Spire helped us to enhance and speed up some of the
things we do with PDFs,” says Baird.
The latest addition to their CREO pre-press equipment is a Spire color server
for the XEROX DocuColor iGen3 digital production press. Says Baird: “With
the Spire, we were in production the day it was installed.” Since then,
they have moved two-thirds of the workload to the iGen3 and Spire solution,
increasing volume – by about 20%. “We expect to add another 15-20%
by the end of the year,” says Baird.
“Over three years, volume has grown 200%. We’re 60% ahead of the
print volume we achieved this time last year. The Spire is essentially the
same, with all the functionality we utilized with the DocuColor 6060, but the
combination of a Spire and Xerox’s new equipment, enables us to handle
growth without adding staff or sacrificing turnaround times.”
QuantumMail.com produces personalized direct mail pieces for many customers,
who design and submit jobs via a special Web application. "Customers can
create a color variable, customized piece. The information goes from the web
to the printer. Our Spire color servers allow us to process complex files in
seconds – most servers can only do this in minutes or even hours,” says
Baird. With the Spire and IGEN3 solution “the speed enhancement is incredible.
Every 2-3 days we execute 200-300 pieces, 80% variable data. We’ve cut
processing and print time by one-third. Most of the speed gain is due to the
print engine. It’s hard to quantify the improvement that is due to the
color server alone, because it was already so fast with the Spire CXP6000,
but it’s definitely faster,” adds Baird.
“Spire produces great color with the IGEN3 engine,” says Baird. “It
looks like offset printing. We’re able to handle the color more effectively,
and you can’t beat the control of the Spire and IGEN3. “It’s
so easy to define - we can now handle a wide variety of mixed stocks.”
According to Baird, customers are delighted. “The prints they get off
this system are simply better,” he says. “They get more flexibility,
more stock choices and we can offer complex variable data because we have more
processing horse power.”
QuantumMail.com is planning more purchases. “We’ll probably add
another Spire and IGEN3 later this year. Long-term, whatever equipment upgrade
path Xerox has on their equipment, we plan to keep Spire a part of it. I have
looked at other servers and I haven’t seen anything as good as the Creo
Spire,” says Baird.
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Relationship Marketing, Inc.
Des Moines, IA
“With the Spire, the benefits are not only related to production.
We now have more flexibility in design and we can offer our clients things
that are much more creative, more variable.”
— Al StofferVice President, Solutions Development
Relationship Marketing specializes in providing highly effective,
comprehensive one-to-one marketing solutions to a growing national customer
base. Founded in 1993 in Des Moines, Relationship Marketing started out as
a one office outfit staffed by two, providing personalized black and white
print solutions on color shells. Today, the company has grown considerably,
and with two additional sales offices, has a staff exceeding 30, and now
services a nation-wide customer base, offering full-color print, and both
online and email personalized marketing solutions.
In mid-2000, the Company bought a XEROX DocuColor 2045 digital color press. “When
we originally installed the press, the Spire wasn’t available, so we
went with a competitor’s digital front end,” said Al Stoffer, Vice
President, Solutions Development, at Relationship Marketing. “Our goal
was always to be able to run the DocuColor 2045 at engine speed, and not to
have the speed restricted by the front end. But, once we started dealing with
a lot of variable data, we just couldn’t reach the speeds we wanted.”
Two years later, Relationship Marketing upgraded to a Spire Color Server. “Now
that we’re working with the Spire and with Darwin, we’re a lot
closer to running at engine speed,” noted Mr. Stoffer. “And, we
haven’t had to turn down any jobs or redesign them to be less variable,
as we did with the former competitor server.”
With the new, optimized Darwin and Spire workflow for the XEROX DocuColor
2045 press, Relationship Marketing now has all the power and flexibility to
produce the designs it wants. According to Mr. Stoffer, the Company is “doing
jobs that we just couldn’t do before. To process hundreds of fields of
data and tens of graphics areas, with the library of graphics potentially in
the hundreds, we need a lot of flexibility in the design tool and a lot of
power in the processing. Now, that we have the right workflow, we’re
easily running multi-page spreads where anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of the
document is variable.”
With the Spire Color Server running the DocuColor 2045, Relationship Marketing
has cut production time on highly variable jobs by 30 to 40 percent. Moreover,
the impact on design has been even more dramatic. “Having this new workflow
has not just increased our production capabilities,” commented Mr. Stoffer,
it has opened up more creative avenues for our designers. It’s still
early in the process, but we probably have doubled our creative freedom and
capabilities; we’ve expanded the ideas we can take out to the market
by 100%.”
In terms of real-life projects, this enables more cost-effective, more highly
variable marketing solutions. Using Darwin and the CREO Spire Color Server,
Relationship Marketing has transformed the product catalog of a long-time client
from a weighty generic catalog of 100 or more pages into a customized three
or four-page catalog precisely targeted to each individual customer. For the
client, this translates to tremendous savings on production and mailing costs,
and it also provides a more effective, customized marketing solution.
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S.Print, R. Sporr GmbH & Co.
Vienna, Austria
“Changing to the Spire color server after we acquired a
DocuColor 2060, was the best thing we did. When performance and colour
control are concerned, the Spire is superior to all other solutions.”
— Rudi Sporr, Managing Director.
A classic offset print shop, S. Print, R. Sporr GmbH & Co. in
Vienna, recognised the potential of digital printing, and today is a reputable
full service provider in digital printing, offering print-on-demand as well
as customised and personalised jobs in large format applications.
Founded in 1992 as a four-colour offset print shop, S. Print was dedicated
to high quality and top service. Rudi Sporr, managing director of S.Print quickly
identified the growing interest in digital printing and began steering his
company towards it. “The systems available then did not meet our productivity
or quality requirements, but it was an important learning process,” he
confirms. Drupa 2000 marked the company’s transition to digital colour
printing, with installation of a Xerox DocuColor 2060.
“To match the quality of our digital printing to that of offset printing,
and improve performance, we replaced the original server with a Spire color
server, which was the right solution for S. Print. We significantly reduced
our RIP times to less than 10 minutes for a 4 GB job with imposition," Rudi
Sporr recalls. "This speed allows us to insert an urgent job into the
normal schedule at any time. For fast processing of repeat jobs, we save data
as Ready-to-Print (RTP), and output without effort." Since 2000, digital
print volume has grown 30 percent every year and today is 180,000 A4 pages
monthly.
S. Print digitally prints mostly short runs up to 3000 copies. Recently, the
company produced 50 copies of a magazine, “Lust & Leben,” in
record speed. The client, a Viennese advertising agency, wanted to present
the new magazine at a press conference, and gave S. Print three hours for printing
and finishing. “Three hours was really tight, even for us. Yet at the
press conference, every journalist received a personal copy of the magazine," Rudi
Sporr proudly recounts.
Another demanding project was a 92-page catalogue for Doll, a company that
designs folkloric decorations for hotels and exhibit organisers. The catalogue
is their primary marketing tool, so quality demands are high, but the print-run
of 200 copies was not economical by offset. S. Print transposed the colour
tints in various shades, a key feature in the catalogue, into digital printing,
aware that solids in digital printing often show stripes or other defects.
The Spire function ’Target Calibration’ allows definition of optimal
density values, and the Spot-Colour-Editor converts spot colours into process
colours. “After extensive testing and calibration we printed the solid
colours evenly and in full harmony,” Rudi Sporr confirms. “Today
we achieve about 90 percent of all Pantone colours with the DocuColor 2060
and the Spire," he notes.
Rudi Sporr is confident that with a solid establishment of digital printing
capabilities, his company's path for the future is set and they are excellently
equipped to take on any competition.
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SACHS-DRUCK
Darmstadt, Germany
“Although the Spire color server is a new product and we
are still exploring its potential, it is already clear that the server’s
capabilities show us the possibilities for the future of high-end, production-level,
digital printing.”
— Andreas Mayer, Managing Director
Established in 1881, SACHS-DRUCK, a digital and offset printing shop
in Darmstadt, Germany, has undergone many changes to meet the demands of
its customers. In 2000, current owner and managing director, Mr. Andreas
Mayer, decided to take the initiative of creating a digital service unit
within the larger company structure. Today, the digital printing unit is
an integral part of the organization.
SACHS-DRUCK’s purchase of a XEROX DocuColor digital color press, driven
by a CREO Spire color server, has propelled the company further into the rapidly
growing on-demand, personalized, color printing market. This high-quality,
high performance system for the printing of on-demand color documents rapidly
resulted in very fast processing, for higher productivity and faster turnaround.
Whereas until now, the average monthly print run at SACHS-DRUCK has been approximately
10,000 prints in B&W and 60,000 in color, with the purchase of the DocuColor
2060 and Spire color server, the company expects to reach a run rate of 100,000
color prints per month.
Printing a wide variety of color products, including flyers, brochures and
direct mailings, variable information printing is now essential to the company.
It is here that the power and flexibility of the Spire color server add unique
value. According to Mr. Mayer, “We have great plans for our digital printing
unit, and in order to achieve them, we need the highest productivity, flexibility
and quality available for producing variable information documents. We are
now successfully printing a variety of variable information documents; this
is a vast improvement over anything we’ve had in the past.”
The Spire server’s ease of use greatly impressed both the company’s
management and its employees. The user-friendly interface enables a very short
learning curve for the operators, who do not need special skills in order to
operate the machine. Its full automation has helped as well, cutting processing
time by approximately 25%.
Mr. Mayer is particularly pleased by the image and color quality achieved
using the DocuColor 2060 digital printer and Spire color server. “The
results look similar to offset in terms of printing quality. And we are now
able to control our color gradation the same way we do with offset.” He
also noted the superior screening quality achieved by the system.
The management of SACHS-DRUCK is aiming to make digital printing deliver 50
percent of the company’s net sales in 2002. With the high productivity
and unique features of the CREO Spire color server, driving the XEROX DocuColor
2060, this goal is increasingly attainable.
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Vicindo Inter-Mailing
Kontich, Belgium
“The CREO Spire is very fast. It handles jobs that are bigger
and more complicated, at the same speed at which we used to do smaller,
simpler jobs. It allows us to keep up with our customers’ increasingly
complex demands and still meet their tight deadlines.”
— Philippe Massin, General Manager
Vicindo Inter-Mailing, one of the largest full service direct mail
houses in Kontich, was formed in December 2001 through the merger of Inter-Mailing
and Ketels. With many decades of collective experience in printing and mailing
services, and a staff of about 200, the firm’s business is today based
almost entirely on production and mailing of complex personalized documents.
A key reason Vicindo Inter-Mailing dominates this field is that the firm constantly
invests in new technologies. In 2000, Inter-Mailing was the first European
company to install the DocuColor 100 with the CREO Spire colour server, taking
a giant step forward in its colour variable printing capabilities. Then, in
September 2002, Vicindo Inter-Mailing moved up to two DocuColor 2060, also
driven by a Spire colour server. “We needed a strong application that
could support a lot of variable information work,” said Philippe Massin,
general manager at Vicindo Inter-Mailing. “Xerox advised us that the
Spire was the best solution for our needs, and we have indeed found that it
is very fast and very reliable. We use the Spire every day, and we hardly think
about it. We just rely on it to work without any problems.”
Magazine publishers form the backbone of Vicindo Inter-Mailing’s customer
base. In addition to printing address labels and mailing the weekly and monthly
magazines, the firm also produces personalised subscription renewal reminders
that are mailed with the magazines. “This is a big part of our printing
work,” noted Mr. Massin. “The renewal letters are text based, but
they also include about four full-colour variable images, including the title
of the magazine, the latest covers, and a picture of the gift the customer
will receive if he renews the subscription. We print all the letters for all
the various magazines in a single run. Overall, we handle about 100,000 such
letters each month.”
The typical turnaround time for preparing and printing a run of 3,000 - 8,000
A3 duplex pages with variable text and images is about 36 hours from the time
the addresses arrive at Vicindo Inter-Mailing until the finished letters are
ready for mailing. While the company was able to achieve the same turnaround
with the DocuColor 100, the new CREO Spire/DocuColor 2060 system allows them
to handle a larger number of jobs in a single week, with the same number of
operators.
Asked what he likes most about the Spire, Mr. Massin is quick to mention its
ease of use. “The interface is very good. It’s very easy to learn
for every application. You can change all the parameters on the RIP, which
means we can send the job from the Mac without too much concern about how it
will be printed. The printer operator takes care of all the parameters, such
as orientation, paper size, colours, etc. A major productivity benefit is that
we can do multiple jobs and actions, such as RIP, print, and adjust parameters,
all at the same time.”
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Kingswood-Steele
London, UK
“The combination of XEROX DocuColor digital presses and
CREO Spire colour servers deliver the stability, speed and quality I need
to provide a reliable, fast turnaround digital print service.”
— Andy Steele, Managing Director
Kingswood-Steele is a multi-discipline creative and digital production
facility based in the heart of the city of London that provides a broad range
of print-on-demand services.
With an annual turnover of £850,000, Kingswood-Steele provides a rapid
response, print-on-demand service producing a range of printed materials including
reports, newsletters, invitations, flyers and business cards. Their clients
include some of the largest blue chip companies, city firms and local government
authorities. With a XEROX DocuColor 6060 and DocuColor 5252 both driven by
CREO Spire colour servers, Kingswood-Steele’s tight-knit team uses its
knowledge of repro and colour management to produce high quality digital print.
This cutting edge technology ensures their customers communicate effectively
with their target audience. “Key to our success is our ability to produce
high quality print, fast. The reliability of our digital presses is crucial – when
we have only one hour to produce a set of reports for a customer’s important
meeting – we can’t afford to be let down by the technology,” says
Managing Director, Andy Steele. Kingswood-Steele switched to using Spire colour
servers from a competitive front end RIP over a year ago, and has never regretted
the change. “We used to be wary of the old server as it was temperamental
and would often crash. In contrast, we find the Spire very user-friendly and
stable. We are also pleased with both XEROX DocuColor devices as they give
us the versatility we require. Additionally, if we send document files for
output via our network to one of our partner printing companies around the
world, we know that the quality will be consistent,” continues Andy Steele.
Document personalisation is a significant growth area with customers now recognising
the benefits of its application for marketing materials. With a newly established
mailing facility, Kingswood-Steele is enhancing the experience of the shortrun
personalised direct mail market for its customers.
“We use CREO’s DARWIN software on the Spire colour servers to
handle the personalisation of data,” says Andy Steele. “Customer’s
needs are evolving and we find ourselves using it more and more, especially
for pre-paid response forms on their promotional mail-outs. We anticipate that
personalisation will become a very important part of our product offering and
believe that, in combination with our new mailing house, located just around
the corner, we have a complete solution for our clients.” Kingswood-Steele
has been helping customers achieve their marketing objectives in and around
central London for over a decade. With in-house digital print, scanning, design
and typesetting combined with a full range of finishing services and convenient
location, the company is able to keep production and delivery times to an absolute
minimum.
“Fast turnaround combined with quality are our main objectives. Our
creative team regularly designs brochures to publicise how good digital printing
is compared to litho. For personalised, short-run requirements, the digital
route can’t be beaten for cost-effectiveness,” concludes Andy Steele.
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Miami Systems Corporation
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
"It is critical for us to have a reliable color server that
runs at the printer's rated speed. The CREO Spire can do that and fu | 
