Andy Tribute:  Hello, this is part 2 of the continuing interview with Benny Landa in which case he outlines strategy for how he’s going to go to market and where he sees the potential for the new Landa nanographic printing technology.  

Can I just go into your distribution strategy because you’ve been announcing for the last few days, agreements with three of the major offset suppliers.  

Benny Landa:  Yes.  

Andy Tribute:  With Komori, with manroland and then with Heidelberg.  

Benny Landa:  Correct.  

Andy Tribute:  The structure for that is, they will basically take this technology and build their own presses…

Benny Landa:  Yes.  

Andy Tribute:  … using that approach which should be allowing them to sort of capture the middle market rather than doing the high volume market do you know what I mean, which will still go for high volume offset.  

Benny Landa:  Yes.  

Andy Tribute:  But as, I think, as you asked before, this is not going to get you competing with them; you’re going to be partnering with them.  

Benny Landa:  Well, our strategy has three legs.  One, we will have our own Landa branded products, number two, our partners will have co-branded Heidelberg/Landa, Murray/Landa, etcetera, their products, and we will supply the consumables to our customers and to our partners to supply to their customers.  

Now, the reason we did this unusual strategy is we have unique technology, we will have very strong platforms, we could have had a monopoly.  But, monopolies don’t change industries.  Industries are changed when many vendors embrace the same technology.  Because, and I would say, especially in the printing industry, there’s a tremendous loyalty that the customers have to their vendors.  These are usually small family-owned businesses, and over the years they’ve developed this amazing trust and loyalty to their vendors.  They want to buy, Komori customers want to buy from Komori, Heidelberg customers want to buy from Heidelberg, and what we do is enable the customers to have the comfort of A) buying their Landa Nanographic presses from a supplier, a vendor or manufacturer they really trust, B) having a technology that now enables them to be profitable from businesses they already have, the shorter end of the high end printing, they still need offset for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of run lengths, but this enables them to go for that huge gap between offset and digital where nobody can play for big profitably.  

And the last thing is that enables the market to grow because by all the vendors or an industry-wide adoption of a single technology, now the customers are no longer afraid they’re going to make a mistake by listening to one vendor or another.  Hey, if they all said the same thing, everybody’s doing it; this must be the right thing.  We expect this to have a jump start back to the industry.  

Andy Tribute:  Now, we also have to wait from those other vendors as to what their plans are, but you were saying you anticipate that this should come to market within the next year to year-and-a-half?  

Benny Landa:  We expect for ourselves, we cannot speak for the them.  For ourselves, our first products will be in customer’s hands, the first shipments, in customer’s hands only at the end of next year.  

Andy Tribute:  And if any of our listeners want to be one of those customers, they’d better get over here quickly and sign up, pay a deposit and put it on the queue.  

Benny Landa:  Yes.  Yes.  We are taking Letters of Intent with customers today.  Every Letter of Intent comes with a deposit, of course it’s refundable because we can’t guarantee the performance, we can’t guarantee the delivery date.  But it enables us to separate the serious interest from the, the Sunday, you know, the people who are just curious and enables the customers to guarantee their place in line.  

Andy Tribute:  And if you want to know the price, you’ve got – you’ll tell them when they sign up with the deposit.  

Benny Landa:  That’s right.  And even then the price is only a range because we can’t be precise, but many, many customers have expressed the desire to get a place in line and therefore, we see a lot of interest in signing on the line and placing their deposits.  

Andy Tribute:  And, can I say, thank you very much, indeed.  It’s been an honor to talk to you about this and I think, as I said in the article a couple of days ago, I think this is not the inkjet drupa, it’s going to be the Landa drupa.  Thank you again.  

Benny Landa:  Andy, thank you so much.  

Andy Tribute:  I thank you.  

Benny Landa:  Thank you, thank you very much.