Cary Sherburne: Hi, I'm Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm here with Chris Petro who is the president and CEO of GlobalSoft Digital Solutions and it is truly global.
Chris Petro: We are truly global and it’s ever expanding.
Cary Sherburne: You know we’ve talked a lot in the past and I’d just like to maybe have you give us an update over the last couple of years of what’s happened with your business and how digital has really—well you’re digital, so, but how that’s really helped you to differentiate yourself globally.
Chris Petro: Well there you go. Thanks. So about three and a half, almost four years now we opened a facility in France to actually it was a different approach for us. It was to service our US based clients that had a desire or a need to distribute marketing materials in the European Union and it was a frontier for them and often a challenge and very disparate and the brand and as you start to look at digital technology’s advancement it was a natural win for our clients to do that, so GlobalSoft International as we call it incorporated in France and we do business in 23 countries in 18 languages now, but all for US based clients, so it’s really a unique proposition as opposed to say knocking on doors or establishing relationships in Europe and that’s ever expanding for us and that was a result of really our clients screaming for that.
Cary Sherburne: And so have you kind of duplicated your production platform here in the New York metro area.
Chris Petro: That’s a great question. So the way we decided to handle it, we have no back office operations in France, so using technology, using some of the interfaces that are out there you know Page Flex and some of the other tools we actually have mirror teams here in the United States, a general manager in EU and a general manager here in the US and this team gets in earlier to compensate a little bit for the time difference, but all of the files are dropped directly into the press for manufacturing. All the inventory levels are managed here in the United States. All of the requirements and the communications are here because the brand owners are here in the United States, so it’s a natural marriage for us and it has opened up some opportunities for our internal staff to take a look at what their future could be like and it’s really interesting for them.
Cary Sherburne: And what do you see going forward in the future?
Chris Petro: So using D-Scoop and some connections that I have there we were about unfortunately right before the tsunami about the launch in the Tokyo area to start to expand to our APJ clients because it’s you know. It’s a natural progression for us. We’re actually distributing for those clients now out of France and we’re running into the same problems you know, border controls, time to market and everything that the European operation gave us an advantage for initially. So the next frontier for GlobalSoft International is to get into AP&J.
Cary Sherburne: That’s great and do you think you’ll do that in the next--? I mean obviously that was a big setback sadly, a tragic setback.
Chris Petro: Yeah, we were pretty close to making a deal two days before it happened, so our goal or our marketing plan for this year calls for a third quarter close in AP&J, so keeping my fingers crossed.
Cary Sherburne: That’s great. Well what a great success story.
Chris Petro: Thank you.
Cary Sherburne: Thank you for sharing that with us.
Chris Petro: Anytime.