By Marybeth Gilbert, Vice President General Manager Production Business at Xerox
It is an old maxim that the best defense is a good offense. Emerging from the pandemic, print service providers can grow by creating more value per page and market new applications with Xerox digital print enhancement technology. We partner with our customers to attack new opportunities rather than just defend their current customer base and market share.
Business expansion, productivity/automation and investment protection are the three pillars of our customer support strategy. We drive growth for our customers with our technology, support, training, and end-to-end solutions that expand applications and capabilities needed to access new markets with differentiated products.
The Beyond CMYK Opportunity
Beyond CMYK is a $25 billion market and growing—and for a good reason—it works. Market research shows that Beyond CMYK print applications increase visibility, influence what gets looked at first, boost dwell time, encourage repeat engagement, and differentiate a print product.
Xerox offers the broadest portfolio of Beyond CMYK solutions, giving our customers opportunities for digital print enhancements from the large volume print shop to light production and into the office space. This gives print providers of different sizes and means access to the Beyond CMYK market with a solution or device that best fits their needs.
We are adding more colors to our flagship Beyond CMYK presses, such as the Xerox® iGen® 5 Press and the Xerox® Iridesse® Production Press. Last Fall, we added fluorescent pink to the Iridesse, expanding the color gamut and possibilities when blended with mixed metallic, gold, silver, white and clear.
Eleven Toners—A Million Colors
Printing eye-catching digital enhancements no longer requires a large capital investment. Last year, we announced the Xerox® Adaptive CMYK+ Kits for Xerox® Versant® 280 Press and the Xerox® PrimeLink® C9065/C9070. The kits are cost effective and a simple field upgrade. The Vivid Kit prints gold, silver, white and clear, and the Fluorescent Kit prints fluorescent yellow, magenta and cyan.
The Adaptive Kits turn an existing four-color press into one that prints more than a million colors and hues by simply swapping out toners. Now print service providers can print digital enhancements for their customers that increase profitability and deliver higher margins with their existing press.
Keypoint Intelligence recognized the Xerox PrimeLink C9070 with the Adaptive CMYK+ technology with the BLI 2021 PRO Award for Outstanding Light CMYK+ Production Device. This award acknowledges products that have given the best performances in production field testing over the previous year.
Increasing the Margins for Customers
Print2Go is a successful print service chain looking to expand and differentiate its application offerings in the Canadian province of Ontario. The company produces quality products but wanted to stand out by increasing the value of their applications and expanding their offerings to capture new business.
They added both the Vivid and Fluorescent Adaptive CMYK+ Kits to their Xerox Versant press.
Print2Go called it a “game-changer” and reported increased margins from 35%–150% on its digital print enhancement work. The company now offers a wide range of Beyond CMYK products to stay ahead of the competition.
Business Expansion a Team Effort
Print service providers face headwinds to access Beyond CMYK opportunities because of the lack of a ready market, the need to educate their customers on the value proposition, and uncertainty about marketing, pricing, and selling digital enhancements.
Vendors must do more than provide technology—they must address customer pain points with additional resources to help them incorporate Beyond CMYK offerings into their businesses. That’s why we launched our Genesis Initiative.
In a previous WhatTheyThink article, my colleague Andrew Gunn, global director of Production Marketing & Product Life Cycle, talked about the Xerox Genesis Initiative. It’s important enough to re-cap. The Genesis Initiative teaches designers and creatives how to design for Beyond CMYK and trains print service providers to create, market, price, and sell digital enhancements.
We do this with webinars, how-to videos, event planning kits, designer training, print samples, pricing guides and a growing user community to share best-practices. We help customers expand their businesses, hunt for Beyond CMYK opportunities, and sell to target accounts. No other vendor provides this type of strategic program to its customers.
One of our early participants in the Genesis Initiative was Print2Go. Not only did the company take advantage of the Genesis trainings and resources, they used their prominent placement in Xerox’s Versant Colorful Heroes webpage to market their new Beyond CMYK capabilities.
The Genesis Initiative captured the 2021 BLI PaceSetter Production Print Applications Award: Market Expansion,recognizing OEMs that best support their customers on reducing costs and/or increasing business based on different printing applications.
Print2Go understood that standing still is falling behind. Together, we chose to attack new business opportunities rather than defend existing market share. Xerox can help other businesses differentiate and grow with our broad portfolio of solutions, workflow automation, presses, Beyond CMYK technology, training, and support. Join us at Xerox.com/Creatives.
Marybeth Gilbert is Vice President General Manager Production Business at Xerox.
