Mr. Nickoloff was the co-founder, CEO and President of PlanetPrint, a web-enabled provider of POD (print on demand), Fulfillment, Outsourcing and Consulting Services that grew to almost $30M since being founded in late 1999. Standard Register Company recently acquired select operations of PlanetPrint for around $10 million.

PlanetPrint's consulting practice in Rochester, N.Y., the software-integration group in Minneapolis, and the POD operation in Dallas that were acquired by Standard Register represent approximately $17 million in combined 2001 revenues and a workforce of about 100 people.

Keith is a former Kodak Vice President and General Manager with 22 years of printing and publishing experience. He was also the founder of PathForward, Inc., a leading strategic growth and merger-and-acquisition consulting practice dedicated to the POD market. His clients have included a number of Fortune 500 companies, in addition to Heidelberg USA, IKON, IBM Printing Systems and Staples, and more than a dozen independent service providers.

Recently Mr. Nickoloff received the "POD Pioneer of the Millennium 2000" award and was named as one of the ten most influential people in digital printing. After reading both parts of this interview, we think you’ll see why. The interview also provides a snapshot of the evolution taking place at Standard Register.

WTT: Keith, you’ve been involved with PlanetPrint for the past three years, and prior to that have been an industry leader for many years. Looking back over your career, could you share with us a few of the high points that have brought you to where you are today?

Keith Nickoloff: Thank you for the kind words, Cary. I feel extremely blessed and fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to be fully invested in a market space I’m passionate about. Each of my "jobs" in the industry has provided valuable learnings that I continue to apply today.

For example, my first sales territory assignment at Kodak over 20 years ago taught me to walk in the shoes of the customer and embrace a servitude mentality.

Later, several executive sales, marketing, compensation and training roles at corporate Kodak brought a respect for discipline, the importance of brand equity, internal and external communications, a fact-based orientation and an understanding of the distinction between sales and marketing.

With Kodak, I had the privilege of being on a team responsible for acquiring and integrating IBM's copier business in the United States and in Europe, an experience that illuminated how to set the pace for an energetic, entrepreneurial environment that was agile, coordinated and fast to action. Further, the international experience helped delineate the important concept that a global enterprise must "operate independently, but compete collectively."


WTT: Take us from your days at Kodak to now.

Keith Nickoloff: A small group of us at Kodak developed the outsourcing, network printing and channel strategy that led to KIS and partnerships with IBM, Canon, Lanier and Danka. This team effort brought deeper industry and personal relationships and the understanding that market coverage was more critical than the perceived threat of channel conflict. Our investment in the On Demand Conference also helped bring clarity to the difference between a page and a dynamic document.

In late 1996 I formed PathForward as a document strategy consultancy that first began to explore the potential of an enterprise approach to print and document management within Fortune 500 companies.

PlanetPrint was an intuitive culmination of all that had been learned as we crafted a carefully targeted customer focus, together with a broad array of web-enabled Print On Demand and fulfillment services. At PlanetPrint we valued being stealth, hiring attitude, and building team chemistry and alignment around (customer) priorities over individual skills. We built a team that embodied our values. I'm proud and grateful for the tireless commitment and results our PlanetPrint team achieved.

I was always influenced by the power of the simple words Werner Kraus of Océ Printing Systems used to open his annual speeches at Xplor in the early 1990s: "We deliver what we promise!"

That commitment, along with enduring and endearing relationships, mentorships and a competitively superior "knowledge of need" and work ethic have driven me to continue pioneering the future state of print through document strategy consulting, technology and services. There is much more to do and I’m looking forward to the future as a part of Standard Register.


WTT: The recent acquisition release of PlanetPrint by Standard Register indicated they were buying "selected operations." What specifically was included in the acquisition?

Keith Nickoloff: Standard Register has a leadership team that "gets it" and is aggressively pursuing rapidly growing market segments via organic growth and acquisitions. Our Dallas-based POD, fulfillment and outsourcing business, Copy Concepts, is a perfect example of market-making participation vis-à-vis acquisition. Copy Concepts has defined how to leverage on-site, proximate and off-site outsourcing and contracted print services to provide full-service "concierge" management of a customer's print requirements. Copy Concepts has a customer base in telecom, software and retail that complements Standard Register's strongholds in banking, healthcare and insurance markets.

Standard Register also acquired the consulting and software development components of PlanetPrint with the objective of fueling new levels of organic growth, increasing "share of customer" and bolstering the current consulting and software capabilities of Standard Register. Our consulting practice develops enterprise-wide print communications strategies for companies that include analyzing, mapping and reengineering document workflow, benchmarking and improving on-site print/data center operations, and helping companies make fact-based print sourcing and technology investment decisions.

We have helped customers consistently achieve double-digit savings from their annual print expense. This kind of value creation fits perfectly with Standard Register’s vision of being the trusted advisor to its customers, helping customers improve their business results by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their print communications.


WTT: We gather that Standard Register was interested in both intellectual assets as well as physical assets. Let’s talk about the physical assets first. How do you see PlanetPrint’s printing operations in Dallas blending in with existing Standard Register operations? And what new capabilities do these operations bring to the Standard Register portfolio?

Keith Nickoloff: Copy Concepts' capabilities are complementary to Standard Register’s existing operations. Copy Concepts integrates Web-enabled software with a state-of-the-art 100% digital on-demand printing operation. Our digital workflow includes Internet-enabled software that manages each and every component of the document lifecycle. Early on PlanetPrint understood that the Internet is best leveraged when the number of transactions are very high, and the relative price of each transaction relatively low. We’ve become experts at on-demand short-run book and manual publishing and fulfillment. We produce up to 5,000 one-off, perfect-bound books every day, with a 24 to 36 hour turn commitment, because of an integrated technology and workflow approach.

Standard Register’s STANFAST® centers, located throughout the United States, serve as outsourced print operations for customers, producing primarily healthcare and financial forms, technical literature, training materials and other documents in both a digital and conventional print environment. Standard Register Fulfillment Services operations focus on database management; formatting information and producing personalized statements, bills, and marketing literature; and providing kitting and distribution services.

Copy Concepts, STANFAST and Fulfillment Services operations all have best practices. We’ll be collaborating to ensure Standard Register fully leverages this compelling suite of "output" and fulfillment options to provide full-service, integrated print management services for our customers.


WTT: Also interesting are the intellectual assets Planet Print brings to the Standard Register family. Tell us a little about the specific intellectual capital Standard Register was interested in and how you see it augmenting the company’s capabilities.

Keith Nickoloff: We spend a lot of time "walking in our customers' shoes" and have become very adept at understanding customers’ needs and business goals—acquiring knowledge of need. We provide high ROI consulting services to clients and develop software solutions to meet those needs.

We also recognize that many customers seek a fully integrated, enabling, print management solution. That initially led us to SMARTworks, the leading platform to provide a foundation for these integrated, enterprise solutions.

Several key PlanetPrint software developers have been added to the SMARTworks team so that collectively we will bring even more robust, industry-leading solutions to market and do so that much faster.


WTT: How will your consulting business integrate into Standard Register?

Keith Nickoloff: PlanetPrint’s Consulting Services are being established as PathForward, a separate, independent entity of Standard Register. PathForward will deliver thought leadership around document and print strategy, software integration and implementation, and sourcing effectiveness. It will have the freedom, objectivity and charter to develop and deliver a future desired state for customers, selecting the best-in-class technology – software and hardware – and service or alliance providers. Being agnostic in our services and solutions delivery model helps ensure we deliver the absolute best solution for each customer, whether the customer wants to outsource, insource or cosource integrated print management services.


See Part 2 of this interview.