Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink and I’m here with Steven Reny whose president of Standard Finishing. Welcome.

Steven Reny: Thank you.

Cary Sherburne: So you have quite a long history in the industry. We were talking earlier about going back to those purple ditto machines.

Steven Reny: That’s right.

Cary Sherburne: But for the last 40 years or so you’ve been focusing on feeding and finishing.

Steven Reny: Absolutely, yes.

Cary Sherburne: You, personally.

Steven Reny: Me, personally and a few others in the organization.

Cary Sherburne: And you’re the exclusive distributor for Hunkeler products in North America.

Steven Reny: Yes, we’ve had a nice long affiliation with Hunkeler. I’m proud of that. It’s been over 15 years that we’ve represented their products here in North America and really working very seamlessly with them to represent their interests both on the, sort of, marketing and sales of the product as well as the service here in the North American market.
Cary Sherburne: Okay, terrific. And, you know, personally I’m looking forward to – even though it’s February – I’m looking forward to another visit to Switzerland for Hunkeler Innovation Days.

Steven Reny: Absolutely.

Cary Sherburne: The middle of – the eleventh through fifteenth of February.

Steven Reny: Yes, before we know it, it’ll be here.

Cary Sherburne: It’ll be here in Lucerne. And so for North Americans who may be interested in attending that, how do they go about – I mean, what happens?

Steven Reny: Well, it’s – this is the tenth Innovation Days that Hunkeler’s had.

Cary Sherburne: And they do it every other year.

Steven Reny: Every other year. And it’s a wonderful event. I think one of the unique things about it is it brings together so many different vendors. Solutions for the continuous feed world, the continuous print and feed world. And it’s a wonderful environment, I think, if you have a chance to participate in it, it’s a really unique show. It has a very European feeling to it. I think it’s an intimate scale so you get a lot of hands-on ability to really see equipment from, really if you will, from start to finish and the whole process side-by-side. And it’s definitely a worthwhile venture. Historically it’s been a little bit by invitation.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Steven Reny: And in this instance I think it’s grown from that. There’s over 5000 people that have attended the most recent Innovation Days a few years ago and we anticipate probably a larger crowd. So in terms of coming there’s the ability to get in touch with us for more sort of scheduled visits. There’s also the ability to register and to show up in Lucerne and to enjoy all that it has to offer.

Cary Sherburne: And all you have to do is Google Hunkeler Innovation Days and you can find it. I’ve done that.

Steven Reny: I think you can do that and that’ll work just fine.

Cary Sherburne: And I had the pleasure of attending last time in 2011 and when I was reminded that there were 5000 people there I was amazed because it doesn’t feel crowded. I mean it’s a very nice facility, very spread out, lots of different things for people to do, the conferences, the demo, the exhibit center.

Steven Reny: Yes.

Cary Sherburne: And then I learned about plow folding. I never knew about that before.

Steven Reny: Right, a very important area especially in the on-demand book publishing area.

Cary Sherburne: Right, exactly.

Steven Reny: Yes.

Cary Sherburne: So and what I really also liked about it was the fact that you’ve got a multi-vendor fully integrated line – well they had 20 of them but you know – so that you bring all the vendors together and it’s not just vendor A – I’m showing you my stuff. It’s how do I interact with the whole workflow. And that’s so important.

Steven Reny: Yes, both in the sort of trans promo space as well as sort of the on-demand book publishing space.

Cary Sherburne: Newspaper.

Steven Reny: Newspapers and direct mail. So it’s really – it has a wide variety of, I think, solutions that appeal to a lot of people in the industry.

Cary Sherburne: Well, WhatTheyThink is looking forward to partnering with both Hunkeler and Standard and doing some more video there in 2013.

Steven Reny: Thank you.

Cary Sherburne: So we’ll see you there.

Steven Reny: Look forward to seeing you there.