Do we work in the Printing industry? Or is it Graphic Arts? Or something greater than these two old distinctions?

We have been taken aback by the responses to many of the articles that we’ve recently been writing and have wondered why we felt this way. “Bare Ruined Choirs”, a frank analysis of the graphic arts distribution channel, seems to have gone over the heads of some in the printing supplies industry. Seemingly, many would rather rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, rather than to figure out how they can transform their companies. Perhaps, we think, their view of themselves is too narrow and they don’t understand the opportunities being laid out in front of them for which they have significant strengths. Anybody who is relying upon platesetters and plates to grow their print related businesses seems to have missed the point, and the opportunity, entirely.

A member of the financial community wondered why such a “progressive” company as PressTek was not mentioned in our article about “A New Day for Print,” where we discussed purchasers of screen print and wide format technologies by Fuji , Kodak, Agfa and Screen. In our view of the public image of Presstek, it is heavily mired in the “old” world of print, relying on its technology base in Computer-to-Plate, while expanding its market through possibly the weakest of the graphic arts supply companies, A. B. Dick.