After a long and arduous journey that began in March 2000 and took a detour in June 2001, Printcafe (Nasdaq: PCAF) successfully launched its initial public offering yesterday. The IPO is the first in the printing industry in more than two years. While still confined within the "quiet period" required by the SEC, Marc Olin CEO generously carved out some time to speak with WhatTheyThink.com about the market, the industry, and their plans for the future.

Marc Olin is CEO of printCafe. Marc served eight years as President of Prograph Management Systems, a software company he cofounded. Prograph developed the first publisher-to-printer job specification system and co-developed all of the major buyer-to-printer transaction standards. Marc received his B.S. degree from Carnegie Mellon University.



WTT: Marc, congratulations to you and Printcafe. Your public offering has been a long time coming. How do you feel about it today, especially coming right from Las Vegas where you just held Connect 2002, your annual user’s conference?

Marc Olin: It was a milestone we have all anticipated for more than 26 months. We are now the only public company in the print management systems space and we have the right products and the right people. We are ready to execute.

Our conference was great. With about 700 attendees, it’s the largest event of its kind in the industry. This year, we focused more on our printer customers. These are people who are serious about using our systems to improve their business performance. Its really no longer optional for many printers to have a marginal ERP product. It must work and scale.


WTT: We will be reporting next week on the conference, but before we talk about other topics, what happened on the product front at Connect 2002?

We introduced and demonstrated a number of new products. Some of these new products are designed to help our customers sell more effectively, including, PrinterSite Internal a web-based tool designed for the printer’s sales person, PrintSmith Site, a catalog based web storefront integrated to PrintSmith and PrintSmith Composer for variable content.

We also introduced a number of new tools designed to drive production efficiencies as part of our CIM or computer integrated manufacturing, initiative, including, PrintFlow for dynamic scheduling, our new Prepress Connector, the first in a series of new JDF-based Connectors, and a cross platform version of Auto-Count, our shop floor data collection tool.

With these tools and enhanced versions of our print management systems, we are extending the functionality of the print management system to help our customers to both increase revenue and to reduce their costs. We proved with many of our products in Las Vegas that Printcafe is the right software partner for printers of all sizes.


WTT: Creo has invested heavily in Printcafe. Has your relationship with Creo changed as a result of the public offering?

Marc Olin: The basis of our relationship with Creo is primarily strategic. Creo is an important partner for us, just as we are for them. For example, integration between the prepress workflow and the print management system is an important component of our CIM initiative. And while the value of our relationship to our joint customers is increasing, Creo’s equity in Printcafe has actually dropped as a result of the IPO. Before June 18, Creo held about 42% of the stock, and that has dropped to a little over 30%. Our business relationship has not really changed; Creo has no day-to-day dealing with the operations of Printcafe.


WTT: Your S-1 and all its amendments highlighted your plans to move into supply chain management with a product called SupplierSite expected to be available in the fourth quarter this year. What is happening there?

Marc Olin: We are still definitely moving into connecting suppliers and other vendors to our print management systems users. The first focus is to allow printers to procure paper through their management systems by searching for vendors, placing orders, and tracking purchases through their ERP systems. Printcafe print management systems also communicate with equipment from companies like MAN Roland and Komori through JDF and connect to Creo prepress equipment.


WTT: Speaking of vendors, does your relationship with Creo preclude any relationship with companies like Heidelberg, Agfa, etc.?

Marc Olin: While that may be a perception among some in the industry, we consider the Printcafe management system to be an open system, and that means that we will connect to any vendor’s equipment or application. We do not have a relationship right now with Agfa, but we certainly would not rule it out.

And while we have good relationships with Komori and MAN Roland, if Heidelberg wants to work with us, we’d be glad to. Many of our print customers have Heidelberg presses, however most of those are legacy systems and not networked. We are able to integrate our Auto-Count equipment to provide the monitoring and tracking necessary for workflow management and analysis. And as more and more presses are networked, we look forward to offering connectors to our management systems.


WTT: As Printcafe has evolved, staffing levels have waxed and waned. What is your staffing level now?

Marc Olin: Our employee count is at about the same level it was at the end of the first quarter. We’ve concentrated staff in areas of focus. The organization is structured to improve efficiency and we have no plans to reduce or enlarge the employee base. Though we did announce at the user conference that we will boost developer resources in the PSI group.


WTT: Some companies use their initial public offering as an opportunity to look for acquisition targets. What would you look for in an acquisition?

Marc Olin: We consider ourselves open to good acquisition opportunities. While each target would be looked at on a case-by-case basis, we are looking at four things: the price of the company, the product mix, the functionality of the products/solutions/services, and the customer base.


WTT: In our monthly Printer Confidence Index, printers have been consistently optimistic about their plans for investing in print management software. Can you tell us how sales are progressing this quarter for Printcafe?

Marc Olin: I still can’t comment on this area because it relates to discussing revenue. We must stay within the requirements of the SEC quiet period. June 30 is the end of the quarter and we’re required to release our quarterly report within 45 days. You’ll see our first quarterly report sometime in early August. However, we are hopeful about the industry in general. We have seen signs in recent days of improvement in advertising spending, which is good since that is critical to the print industry.


WTT: Now that the intense “Wall Street Tour” has abated, what would you like to say to the members of WhatTheyThink and the graphic arts industry in general?

Marc Olin: With apologies to Mark Twain, the reports of Printcafe’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The announcements and forecasts about the demise of Printcafe have been made nearly since the company’s inception. We’re proud to say that we’re quite alive and well and looking forward to a successful future!