Cary Sherburne:  Hi.  I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I’m here with Charlie Launsbach who’s Sales Director at Ariva.  And we did hear earlier from your President, Mark Ushpol about the company and the rebranding and all of the unique materials that you’re bringing to market, especially for digital printing.  And I wondered if you could just talk a little bit more specifically about some of the new applications and revenue streams that these materials, these new media are bringing to printers.

Charlie Launsbach:  Sure.  Thank you for having me.  One of the things we did at Ariva about a year ago was we launched a new product line called Fusion Digital.  And what we’ve heard from the marketplace is our print service providers are having tremendous success with this product and it’s really creating a buzz with their end-user customer and really helping them with ROI. 

So two of the products we’d like to share with you today is our Fusion Digital Postcard has really taken the direct world mail market by storm.  And one of the things our customers have told us, our print service providers, is really when they do a postcard they have to really create something unique so that they can get a response for their customers.  And as we all know, you have about three seconds when you send somebody a postcard to get a response or maybe to get them to look at your brand.

Cary Sherburne:  And keep them from putting it in the round file.

Charlie Launsbach:  Yeah, like 78 percent of the people scanned over the round file.  So what we did at Ariva to really to help our customers utilize their digital assets to the extreme, is we created this 5½ x 8½ postcard.  It’s 12 mil and it’s printable with high heat toner and Indigo devices front and back, and it looks fairly standard.  But one of the unique things about this product is on the front of the postcard is a removable 4x6 fabric.  And one of the things that this does for customers is now, since we have all this data on people—this is my favorite car, my alumni, or my favorite toy for my kid—I can give them a picture of it and a coupon on the back so that now it just doesn’t go in the garbage; maybe that’s going to go up on the refrigerator, or on my desk, or on my cabinet.

Cary Sherburne:  Oh, that’s very cool, that’s very cool.  And then the bumper stickers?

Charlie Launsbach:  Well, the same thing.  What we created with that was now a printer can call up Ariva, we stock this at one of our six locations throughout the US, we have 20 in the US and Canada, and one of our parts of our program with this was that we knew the demands of our customers, we have to have this in stock.  And this is all 12x8 format, five up.  So now a customer that wants somebody in Boston to get a sticker and somebody in New York to get this sticker can now print their own bumper stickers in house.  Traditionally, they always had to send that out and they couldn’t use what they had in house.  Now not only can they produce a sticker, but after the sticker is used the back becomes a coupon or a marketing piece.  And this product is really unique because it’s outdoor, it’s indoor, it’s waterproof, it can be removed several, several times on many different substrates.

Cary Sherburne:  Oh, that’s great, because you hate that bumper sticker that you’re having to scrape off with a razor blade, right?

Charlie Launsbach:  That’s correct.

Cary Sherburne:  So with these unique materials, obviously they’re going to probably be a little pricier than plain offset paper, right.  And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the market about how people are handling pricing strategies for these kinds of things.

Charlie Launsbach:  Well, at first glance—and one of our customers that we worked with on one of the first applications for this, traditionally always had a marketing campaign every year and they would print a letter, print a magnet, print an envelope, and stuff it all together.  And at first, this product might look a little bit like it’s expensive, but when you put all that together and now you can take from the shelf, print, cut, and now it really provides tremendous ROI for customers.

Cary Sherburne:  So maybe more frequent, more relevant, more customized mailings?

Charlie Launsbach:  That’s the exact thing we’re looking to…

Cary Sherburne:  And then they’re pricing it based more on the value to the customer than the cost-plus that they’re used to, right?

Charlie Launsbach:  That’s correct.

Cary Sherburne:  Great.  So what else do you think you’ll be bringing to us in the future?

Charlie Launsbach:  Well, we continue to develop with our customers and we have 150 sales consultants around the US and Canada.  And one of the things they do is not just the off-the-stock products that make it so convenient, but we actually work with our customers on specific applications for their end users.  And that’s how most of these get created because if they’re successful at one digital print service provider, they’re usually successful at another.  And we have some other products that are coming to market this year that we’re really excited about.

Cary Sherburne:  Great.  We’ll watch for those and I understand we can keep track of that on arivanow.com.

Charlie Launsbach:  Yes.

Cary Sherburne:  Great.  Thank you.