Bill Muir, new EFI CEO
Las Vegas—As Electronics for Imaging (EFI) ushered in a new era during its 20th annual Connect conference in front of 900 guests at the Wynn Hotel here in Sin City, a familiar face in the industry was conspicuously absent from the presenting stage. Last summer, company CEO Guy Gecht announced he was stepping down to pursue another opportunity, and he was replaced by Bill Muir, a longtime executive with product solutions provider Jabil.
While Gecht is no longer at the helm, he was spotted chatting with longtime friends during the event. But the mantle fell to Muir, who addressed the Connect throng for the first time during last week’s conference, held Jan. 22-25.
Actually, Muir’s opening keynote represented his 99th day on the job. And while he has extensive experience in dealing with large-scale organizations, Muir recognized the many small, family-run printing businesses that populated the audience, some of whom have endured two world wars and economic turmoil, all in the face of a violently evolving technology landscape.
The rookie executive walked the audience through EFI’s history, a 30-year journey that has witnessed some of the great technological upheavals. He annotated 10-year intervals with the greatest breakthroughs, from the company’s 1989 inception (corresponding with Microsoft’s Windows suite and the onset of the internet revolution); 1999’s Y2K scare and the birth of Google a year earlier; Apple’s first iPhone in 2007, the Great Recession and the onset of social media; culminating with today’s world that is dominated by a population that is 100 percent connected socially and mobile.
“The intersection of big data and cloud computing makes us think we’re better informed, better educated, and understand marketplaces better than ever before,” Muir said. “So does our customer and their customers. We’re also better consumers. The change in technology is occurring at a dizzying speed.”
Pace of Change
Product showcase floor at EFI Connect 2019
Change management can be challenging not only for the printing industry but all businesses. Citing Martec’s Law, an idea coined by Scott Brinker, Muir noted that technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically. The slow rate of changes in behavior and culture, from a business standpoint, can produce a drag in contrast to the fast rate of technological change.
Muir noted that the commercial printing space has dwindled from 30,000 providers in 2007 to only 23,000 today, with acquisitions fueling the contraction. Still, he said, the printing industry has grown at a 10 percent rate during the past seven years, a bump fueled by the movement toward more value-added services (web-to-print, fulfillment, shipping and leveraging data). Lithography has dropped roughly 50 percent in the past 12 years, while digital printing has doubled and value-added services have grown 40 percent.
“The onus for us is making sure we’re doing an exceptionally good job at making sure the folks in this audience and the people who continue to bet on EFI, to be the winners in this industry as the industry continues to develop,” he said. “My responsibility as CEO is to keep EFI’s innovation machine going and help enable your business to thrive in this new, digital age.”
Seizing Opportunity
Later, Muir reinforced the change management mantra by accounting the tales of two markets that have suffered to a terminal end or are on the bleeding edge of elimination, most notably Blockbuster Video and the taxicab industry. Blockbuster, he noted, missed out on a golden opportunity to reinvent itself by purchasing Netflix at a then-bargain basement price of $50 million (it’s valued at $150 billion now). The taxi space, now severely pinched by ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft, failed to provide consumers with the quality experience and price point they demanded.
These failed models illustrate the “reluctance to shift the business model to where the customer wanted to be,” Muir cautioned. By pivoting and taking on lines of new business, EFI partners can benefit by taking advantage of the many digital innovations that are available.
Cirque Du Soleil performers added an artist twist at Connect 2019
What attracted Muir to EFI was the company’s managerial courage, going from the Fiery business to a productivity software suite and then industrial inkjet equipment. He admired EFI for its foresight and courage to continue to grow the business across the printing continuum.
“I do think we need to do a better job of innovation and execution,” he added. “We need to keep that innovation engine alive and well, while at the same time doing a better job of helping (customers) execute for the needs of your end customers. That’s how we’ll evolve the company.”
Product Update: CFO Marc Olin walked the Connect audience through some of the company’s biggest accomplishments of 2018. On the display graphics end, EFI expanded its wide-format portfolio for entry to mid-level roll-to-roll production environments with the Pro 24f, Pro 16h and the H1625 LED models. One of the biggest accomplishments was certainly the VUTEk h5, its newest high-speed, premium-quality hybrid flatbed/roll-to-roll superwide-format LED printer. For roll-to-roll, EFI launched the 3r+ and 5r+ models.
On the packaging end, Olin outlined how the successful Nozomi printers are running on four different continents. He also gave an update on the Nozomi C18000 single-pass LED inkjet press, along with the launch of a new white ink and gave a review of the company’s textile offerings.
One of the major focal points for EFI was the release of its new, advanced FS350 platform for EFI Fiery digital front ends that can drive sheetfed and rollfed digital production presses from EFI partners, along with high-speed single-pass inkjet offerings from EFI. Another new release, the Fiery proServer Premium DFE, offers significantly faster processing on individual jobs for EFI superwide-format printers.
Software Update: Gaby Matsliach, senior vice president and general manager, detailed EFI’s software initiatives during 2018, a focus that included stronger partner investments, a revamped implementation process and dialogs with customers regarding their roadmap success. He also discussed investments that the company has made in driving effective change.
Matsliach also gave a preview of Productivity Suite 7.0, which is due for release in the second quarter. It will include an enhanced Productivity Workbench, HTML5 Dot Experience and BPM-eFlow automation, among other elements. He also gave an update on the success of the Market Direct Platform, which was released a year ago, to enhance organizations’ multi-channel marketing campaigns. Its latest capabilities include Facebook publishing tools and a streamlined inventory management system.
Solutions Center: EFI partners participating in Connect’s solutions center included: 3M Commercial Solutions; Aberdeen Fabrics, Berger Textiles, Duplo, Enfocus, Esko, Highcon, Kodak, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Lubrizol, MBM Corporation, OneVision, The Print and Graphics Scholarship Foundation, Print Speak, Printing United, Progress Software Corp., Ricoh Americas Corp., RISO, SpencerMetrics, Xerox and Zünd.
Industry journalist Cary Sherburne (far left) interviews teen designer Ariel Swedroe
Future of Print: While it has little to do with our little corner of the printing ecosystem, the sweetest and most hopeful sign of the future at EFI Connect came in the form of Ariel Swedroe, a 15-year-old fashion designer from Miami who has used her grandfather’s collage art to print onto fabrics. The colorful designs play really well in the Sunshine State, particularly for resort wear.
Art to Wear by Ariel is already a feather in the cap of the high school sophomore, who has run her own fashion design business since the age of eight, and will be applying to fashion schools upon graduating. Suffice to say, her portfolio is already quite impressive.
