Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink and I’m here with Roger Gimbel of Gimbel & Associates. Welcome.

Roger Gimbel: Hi, Cary. How are you?

Cary Sherburne: Good.

Roger Gimbel: Good to see you.

Cary Sherburne: So, you are actually on the Xerox Advisory Council for Xerox Premier Partners.

Roger Gimbel: Yes, I am.

Cary Sherburne: And I was curious to have you explain to us a little bit about what Premier Partners is, what does it mean and what role does an organization like that play in helping printers be successful in the difficult environment we’ve been through?

Roger Gimbel: Well, the first thing I would say is the organization covers a number of different roles in supporting their clients. And the first piece of it is that obviously these are good Xerox customers who buy Xerox equipment as their main output devices and that’s how Xerox supports them.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Roger Gimbel: The basic three elements is one is networking where Xerox supports and brings together all the members which is about 600 or 700 worldwide.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Roger Gimbel: To specific meetings as we have done here at Drupa where we just had a big congress, Premier Partner congress on – I believe it was on Tuesday. And what happened was the people had an opportunity to network and get together and discuss challenges they all have so it’s a vehicle. The second item is that they – Xerox supports tools.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Roger Gimbel: So the members get benefits. They get discounts. They get benefits for certain kinds of products. The Xerox University. They have available – certain things are available to them that aren’t available to people who aren’t Premier Partners of Xerox.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Roger Gimbel: The third item where they support is in terms of advanced understanding of technology. Many of the members are nondisclosed on products that are gonna be launched.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Roger Gimbel: What’s coming out advanced of everybody else.

Cary Sherburne: So it helps them plan their future investments better and so on.

Roger Gimbel: Absolutely.

Cary Sherburne: So that’s great. And how long has this – this organization has been around for quite a while actually.

Roger Gimbel: Twelve years.

Cary Sherburne: Twelve years, wow. Yeah, so, you know, I really – it’s really good to see the vendors like Xerox stepping up to that kind of – it’s really business development and educational support for their customers so it’s great to see that.

Roger Gimbel: Well they have to. I mean, we don’t live in the same world anymore where vendors can just sell devices. The printers need help in developing their business. So business development and ongoing support is really important. And when you consider the fact that most of the vendors are pretty much partners of the printers anyway because all the impressions, all the maintenance is a continued revenue stream.

Cary Sherburne: Revenue stream for the vendor.

Roger Gimbel: Sure so they want to see as much of that as they can. So they want to help that printer as well as the fact that if the printer’s successful, what’s the next thing they do?

Cary Sherburne: They’re gonna buy more machines.

Roger Gimbel: They buy more machines. Right. Exactly. So – and that’s what we want.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great. And so, you know, so that introducing them not only to the forward technology that’s coming out but also to new applications and new ideas and new ways of talking to their customers and the whole schmeer.

Roger Gimbel: Well, it’s training. There are certain – and once again, in all different phases of the graphic arts industry there are people who are at different stages of growth in their companies.

Cary Sherburne: Sure.

Roger Gimbel: Companies that are smaller and companies that are larger. There isn’t a differentiation. There is not a criteria of how much business gross revenue you have to do to be a member. So a very large organization can be a member or a very small one. And that’s also good because when they network together they’re not stuck in one category.

Cary Sherburne: Right.

Roger Gimbel: So you have quick printers and you can have commercial printers and you can have…

Cary Sherburne:  printers.

Roger Gimbel: Exactly, all talking together so they share information some to such, “Yeah, I’m gonna get involved with this.” “I saw what this person’s doing and I’d like to do that too.” There’s also the resource of having printers for distribute and print.

Cary Sherburne: Right, right.

Roger Gimbel: You know, which is similar to my IPN network…

Cary Sherburne: Right, exactly.

Roger Gimbel: Where we have the ability to send jobs to different parts of the world…

Cary Sherburne: Right.

Roger Gimbel: Because the members of Premier Partner are worldwide.

Cary Sherburne: Yeah and they’re quality producers.

Roger Gimbel: Well, they’re producing enough similar equipment…

Cary Sherburne: Right, exactly. Great. You know, that’s really exciting and I really appreciate you sharing that with us and we’ll look forward to following what happens with Premier Partners over time.

Roger Gimbel: Thank you. Thank you very much.