by WTT staff with columnist Gail Nickel-Kailing EFI-Printcafe-Creo: Three Part Series February 18, 2003 -- Based on site statistics, there is significant interest in the recent Printcafe news. Printcafe’s customers, partners and competitors are interested for obvious reasons. Other executives tell us they keep track because “its just a fascinating business story.” Using a sports example, Printcafe has their share of fans, some rooting against them and those who are just spectators enjoying an entertaining game of business. Recently, over 40 of our members (printers) told us “what they think” about Printcafe and who should acquire the company. Our hypothesis was that most would favor Creo over EFI as the new owner of Printcafe simply because the demographics of our members lean toward medium to large commercial printers. These printers are more likely to have exposure to Creo’s products. However, it also indicates why EFI wants to access this audience. Buying Printcafe would certainly help EFI expose other products to a select customer base. We would like to thank all who helped with this series. You should know that we received numerous comments that do not appear in this report for various reasons. Primarily, we tried to include only the most topical comments (Who should buy Printcafe?) and those that fairly represented all feedback we received. Remember, these comments are housed in Premium Access meaning that some opinions may not be quite ready for mass consumption. You should assume that any unfavorable opinion could be effectively refuted by the company named. Part 1 Frank Hudetz, President, Solar Communications In our opinion it would make the most sense if Creo won this bidding war. We feel they know Printcafe better and the transition to their ownership would be the least disruptive to us. Also, because we are currently being supplied by both Creo and Printcafe, we can see the synergies that might better occur using the back end of Printcafe and the front end of Creo. Ted Shaw, Information Systems Manager, Dynagraf (the following is a personal opinion and is not intended to represent the opinion of the management at Dynagraf) I'm glad to see a second bidder get in the fray. There has been a lot of speculation as to the motives of each company, as well as rationalization as to the synergies Printcafe brings to each bidder. Most seem valid, and that's a nice change from the past years of investment based solely on the greater fool theory of market valuation. As a user of a Printcafe management solution, and one of the firms that participated in the development and roll out of their web-based collaboration initiative, I'm hopeful that this will lead to further advances in the integration between the various software and hardware solutions provided by Printcafe, regardless of the winner. Ideally, the integration of the management system with Prepress workflow and the passing of more information between more systems is what we are looking for.  We are looking for as much data as possible to flow between ALL our equipment, from the Plate maker to the Pallet wrapper and it can't happen fast enough. There has been too much focus on the Web-based Customer Collaboration front end. There continues to be an effort to make it work in spite of the fact that the marketplace has obviously voted against it. Yes, we were hopeful that it would be accepted by our customers, but there just wasn't much interest. They all thought it was a neat technology but either they didn't think it fit their needs, or they still wanted the "hands on" support of a Customer Service Department, or they had another solution in mind. For whatever reason, if the customers aren't yet ready and willing to use this technology, no amount of "spoon feeding" will make the transition happen in a large enough manner to support the effort being devoted to it. In short, we built it … but no one showed up. All of this effort has severely drained resources from the continuing development of the management system that we all depend upon to keep our plants competitive. Certainly there have been some benefits derived from the shared-systems knowledge and increased efforts to tie together systems such as scheduling and Auto-count, but further development of fulfillment software, CRM modules, and an adaptation of Activity Based Costing have all been largely ignored in the continued effort to prove that there is still some value in the Web based collaboration model. I'm hopeful that whoever becomes the new owner of Printcafe, the result will be much more focus on what we, their customers, think that WE need to service OUR customers, rather than what Printcafe thinks that our customers want. Name withheld by request The Creo/EFI competition is a good thing if it produces a more efficient print marketing/communication supply chain. The future is all about the automated flow of information - digital technology. Make no mistake about it - not only does the current print marketing/communication supply chain have to shorten and automate, its flow of business information must become multidirectional. Those paying for the print will insist the ROI feedback loop be closed, with speed and precision. The bottom line will demand that change. EFI joins the fray with a valuable "outside-the-box" perspective to go along with its digital front end expertise - they have a foot firmly planted in the print industry door, but are not immersed in a traditional commercial print mindset. Printcafe has swallowed enough of its competitors over the last few years to experience painful cross-platform indigestion first hand. Both EFI and Printcafe should understand the business imperatives of open architecture and collaboration and supply chain integration. If they both act on that knowledge, and their products automate the flow of business information both within and outside the walls of their customers' businesses, then this competition will be a welcome and wonderful development for the print industry. Business management software may prove to be the survival differentiator for printers. Jeff Clark, Stevens Printing We are a relatively small commercial printer and a Printcafe customer. We owned a management system from a company purchased by Printcafe in 2000. At that time we were sold the Printcafe e-commerce concept with the branded web site. At the same time we switched management systems to one from another company that was bought by Printcafe. The e-commerce web site never worked for us. Printcafe had some good ideas but they had a product that was not ready for the marketplace. Other factors came into play as well: the dot com revolution that we thought would take over the world failed to materialize and many companies’ fascination with e-commerce disappeared as well. I know that Creo has invested a fair amount of money in Printcafe and we were a company where they did some beta testing to get the e-commerce site up and functioning. I am surprised that another company has doubled Creo's bid. I think they may see more value in Printcafe than Creo does. I think all that Printcafe has right now is market share and I don't think they have completely figured out where to go from here. Pat Berger, Vice President, Mercer Color We have an EFI rip hooked up to a Minolta copier. It does work but leaves a lot to be desired. I would not trust EFI to handle [our work flow] and integrate with our books. EFI has a history only in the copier and laser output market. If a mistake [in that process] is made you lose a 50 cent laser copy. If a mistake is made in the CTP section you lose $8.00 and up depending on plate size. Creo has the Scitex cloud hovering over them [a closed system]. I believe that this cloud will be hard to clear up. I would not like to participate in the “we can eventually get it to work” [scenario]. We are a PrintSmith user -- please don't fix what ain't broke!