Gavin Jordan-Smith takes on his new position as Senior Vice President of Commercial and Industrial Printing Business, Ricoh Americas at an exciting time. Ricoh is a recognized leader in print production technologies and solutions. It is also a time when the production inkjet revolution is getting past its infancy position to a place where it can, and is, providing many new print manufacturing solutions and opportunities.

David Zwang: Hi Gavin, thanks for taking the time to speak with me about you, your new position and Ricoh. So, let’s start with your background.

Gavin Jordan-Smith: It’s been an exciting journey; I entered the printing business over 20 years ago when I came to the United States. I’ve never looked back, following my passion: print and communications. I’ve worked in an on-demand print shop, a transactional print shop and then Toppan Printing Company America, where I was a director and corporate officer running operations. From there I went to “OEM school” at Xerox, where I learned the equipment manufacturing side of the business and, importantly, the focus on the customer’s perspective. I went on to run the graphic communications business for commercial print and the premier partner program for customers until I left to join Konica Minolta. There I learned about their verticals, initially focusing on their office business lines. I took the same philosophy focusing on the customer perspective to build a very customer-focused approach inside the business. Every company has a “customer first” approach but my passion was to go beyond that aspect to drive value and to deliver the outcomes. We used that to build applications, solutions and professional services that are meaningful and tangible to the office life.