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EFI Adds Graphic Arts and Personalization Services, Providing Printers a Powerful Option for Increasing Profits and Customer Loyalty

Press release from the issuing company

On Demand - Philadelphia - May 17, 2006 - EFI, the world leader in digital controllers, superwide format printers and inks, and print management solutions, today announced new Graphic Arts and Personalization Services designed to help EFI's print MIS users meet their customers' growing need for customized solutions. EFI has assembled a team of professionals who can quickly and economically provide a wide-array of services, from basic artwork creation, image editing and VDP template creation, to enabling printers to deliver complete VDP campaigns. The company has partnered with Affinity Express, a global provider of document creation and production services, who works for over 2,000 clients daily, many of which are Fortune 500 companies. The new EFI service offerings in partnership with Affinity Express provide a complete solution that is cost effective for both small and large projects. Services can be provided via a combination of on-site, remote, and off-shore delivery to control costs and allow overnight turn-around in many cases. "In today's competitive environment, having a time to market advantage is key to enabling our customers to grow their business," said Chuck Gehman, director of product marketing at EFI. "Whether they employ graphic designers, or have an established relationship with a local creative services organization, EFI's new services can help our printer customers expand these types of offerings in a cost effective, scalable and quality way. Our relationship with Affinity Express is a big part of this, since they are highly experienced and can produce work in over 30 software packages, often in 24 hours. The combination of our web applications like PrinterSite Fulfillment and our services portfolio including Affinity Express, means EFI customers can get their end customer's ordering sites up and running with less time, effort and expense." "Affinity Express allows EFI customers to seamlessly outsource quick-turn, simple and semi-custom work so they can instead focus current staff on high-margin, complex projects and selling," said David Grant, executive chairman of Affinity Express. "By providing document creation services, printers increase customer loyalty, attract new customers, maximize ROI and achieve profit on both printing and document creation." Besides document creation, artwork layout, image editing and typesetting services, EFI's Graphic Arts and Personalization Services team expect high demand for VDP services such as template and campaign creation, along with the development of printers' customer-facing web catalogs. EFI can also provide consulting services to enable customers to provide successful VDP campaigns to their customers. A great example is a simple direct mail postcard featuring VDP. The printer receives a "static" direct mail postcard from their customer, who wishes to use it in a VDP direct response campaign. With EFI's new services, the printer is able to quote the graphic arts and template creation work from a price list, and have the item turned around and ready to be produced as a dynamic document, within a pre-established timeframe at a pre-established cost. The printer can focus on customer service, production and mailing tasks, and not worry about building business rules and specialized programming for the VDP work.

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