US Patent number 5,963,641 is for a "Device and method for examining, verifying, correcting and approving electronic documents prior to printing, transmission or recording." It’s not just a great idea, it’s a money and time saving secret that your competitors are using to gain quality control and increase their margins.

Markzware is the leader in preflight and prepress solutions. The company owns this patent and has the products to back it up. There’s also a very nice success story behind the founders of the company: Patrick Marchese and Ron Crandall.

In this interview, we speak with Patrick Marchese. Topics include the company’s overall marketshare, postflight versus preflight, teaming with ASPs and trends in the print and graphic arts industry.

Patrick Marchese’s background in printing started at the Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado California. At the Hotel, he was an apprenticed printer learning on the multi-1250. To further his education Marchese moved to Orange County and attended Fullerton College and at the same time started to learn typesetting. Says Marchese, “This was an interesting profession which I then eventually took this on full-time and eventually took a 'long break' from college.”

When the Macintosh was introduced in 1984 Marchese says he was astonished and amazed. For the next year, he saved enough money to purchase a Mac Plus and Laserwriter. In 1995 he quit a position at the Orange County Register Newspaper as well as an ICIB, an insurance company marking up ads and typesetting to start his own typesetting business via the new Macintosh.

After working solo for about 5 years, Marchese ventured to find another job as the economy tanked in the late '80s. The job he found was at a horse racing newspaper entitled FIGS Form, a newly formed company set out to compete against the mighty Daily Racing Form. This is the place where he met his partner, Ron Crandall. Ron and Patrick became friends and both realized that they had a lot of the same goals and ambitions. Marchese always wanted to become a software publisher and Crandall as the technology expert helped allow this to happen.

The production environment was high-tech, using PageMaker 2.0 and Varityper 600W's for output. The duo produced a 40-80 page daily in this manner which was unheard of at the time. This publication was eventually sold to The Sporting News.



Patrick, we touched on your background, but tell us what happened after FIGS Form was sold to The Sporting News.

Ron and I continued to collaborate and create Quark XTensions for my freelance business, however I soon received a position at Foote, Cone and Belding (FCB) advertising. At FCB, my job was to create ads on the Macintosh. Eventually the comps created on the Macintosh became full-fledged produced ads that were sent to multiple newspapers and publications for print. As I was responsible for the outcome of the ads proofing the digital components was crucial. This was a laborious and time-consuming process and lead to the idea which became FlightCheck.  In 1999, Markzware was granted US Patent number 5,963,641 for a "Device and method for examining, verifying, correcting and approving electronic documents prior to printing, transmission or recording."

Today, what is Markzware’s overall mission as a company?

Our mission is to be the very best preflighting and quality control software on any operating system platform. This is a mission that we identified shortly after we released our flagship product, FlightCheck and it has not changed very much. Markzware's challenge has been educating the printing industry that preflighting means quality control. We try our best to listen to our customers needs and create products for those needs.

What’s the difference between preflighting and post-flighting?

The term preflight was coined by Chuck Weger about 10 years ago and although it referred to postscript checking (Lasercheck) the term stuck. What Markzware products do in terms of checking the native QuarkXPress, PageMaker and InDesign, etc. files is what we really believe is true preflighting. That is, before they are generated into pdf's or postscript the file should have a quality control check performed even though Markzware's products check pdf and postscript. This preliminary check and alterations to the native file in many cases may even eliminate problems associated with pdf files. However, this is not to infer that a second check on pdf files is not necessary. Products that check pdf or postscript files are in my opinion 'postflighting' products. So I think the industry seems a bit confused about what really preflighting is. There should be a concerted effort to properly educate the industry and delineate between these terms.

Overall, how big is the market in terms of users of preflight software and your own share of that segment?

There have been a few studies on this and from what we understand there is only 5% of the print/publishing industry actually using a preflighting type software product or solution. Of that 5%, Markzware is said to have about 60% of that share. We released FlightCheck in 1995 and have several thousands of products sold. However, we are a small company and many people have not even heard of Markzware let alone FlightCheck or our other solutions such as MarkzScout or MarkzNet.

Our products save customers money and time. Companies quantify this differently, in any event Markzware provides solutions that increase productivity so that more work can be done in an automated fashion in a shorter amount of time. Our solutions allow companies to do more work or take off earlier and enjoy the day. It used to be that people checked documents item by item, now there is software that in some cases may replace humans.

What improvements and upgrades do you envision for future releases of Markznet?

We are constantly improving our products to comply with the latest version of all the major native desktop applications like QuarkXPress and InDesign as well as pdf. This is job number one and can be quite a challenge for us and frankly would be easier if 'preflighting' was built into the operating systems.

What's more, there are often unique and specific preflighting checks that people need. Markzware is a company that tries very hard to accommodate these needs. So we are happy to help even the small customer by incorporating their needs into our product. We try our best to feel their pain and provide solutions.

Tell us about your deal with AdF@st. Does a partnership like this expose your other products to potential clients?

We are trying to create as many partnerships as possible, hopefully this will help spread the 'preflighting' word as it is. I think the goal of The English Newspaper Society is to get adverts into their subscribing newspapers in a 'ready to print' fashion. Thus the need to encourage desktop preflighting with standard, proven, readily available applications such as our own FlightCheck or FlightCheck Collect. This is becoming more and more important.

Before MarkzNet, printers and publishers would give-away FlightCheck or FlightCheck Collect to their customers, train them on it and ask them to use it. The end result can be summed in with this analogy, "You can lead a horse to water but you can not make them drink it." Until MarkzNet, that is.

Lastly, by offering or using MarkzNet, you are actually educating your clients to try to do things correctly thus, inspiring interest in adopting other desktop preflight and help applications/Xtensions.

Tell us about your relationships with print based ASP solutions. Is it important to integrate with companies like Printable and FujiFilm versus going directly to the end user?

Markzware is a channel-centric company and reseller channels play a critical role in our strategy for MarkzNet as well as our other products. The Application Service Providers are uniquely positioned to deploy and deliver preflight quality control to a very wide audience at a very affordable price. Our MarkzNet technology is ideal in these applications because it not only provides for custom preflight rules and branding for individual subscribers, it can be seamlessly integrated with other solutions offered such as job ticketing and tracking, CRM, DAM and many other data base management solutions.

The other side of our MarkzNet channel are the Markzware Authorized Solution Providers (MASP) who are professional integrators with specific focus on the printing, publishing and graphic arts industry. Our MASPs provide custom preflight automation solutions that include MarkzNet, MarkzScout and our other products. Their mission is to consult with the customer and clearly understand their prepress workflow, requirements and problems. In this way they are able to develop an effective quality control solution that spans their workflow from the creators' desk tops through to error-free, print ready files for production.

MarkzNet is the only solution of it's kind that checks all forms of native documents, PS and PDFs, collects all the job elements, transfers the compressed archive and can be owned by the ASP or end-user free of third party involvement.

The dealer channel in the graphic arts industry has and will change ever more. One clear trend is the importance on prepress workflow products. Will you expand your own channel?

Markzware is very fortunate to have a diverse and robust reseller channel which includes major name catalogs, resellers, integrators, schools, OEMs, ASPs and even print shops. The Markzware dealers are seeing high demand and excellent profit margins not only on sales of our products but service, integration and training associated with the sale.

Markzware is expanding its channel and recent events in the reseller and distribution community adding more software solution focus to their line cards as well as the emergence of new players is very timely to our expansion effort.

What trends do you see going forward into 2002?

I certainly cannot predict the future, however there are a few trends that I see. I think that products like MarkzNet help provide customer service, loyalty and value. Combining the internet with quality control of digital documents is a natural and we see more and more interest in these types of (quality control) services.

Trends like pdf, variable data/personalized printing, limited runs, computer to plate to direct to press, rip once/output many and quicker time to market will only heighten the importance of quality control. After all, we are in the imaging business and as they say, "image is everything." Whenever there are mistakes in this business, credibility is greatly tarnished.