Dr. Iris Mangelschots is Vice President of Worldwide OEM Sales for GretagMacbeth. After Dr. Mangelschots studies in Physics at the University of Leuven (Belgium), she joined IBM Research Lab in Switzerland to pursue a Ph.D in the field of "High Temperature Superconductivity". Dr. Mangelschots left the world of fundamental research and joined Cerberus AG, the worldwide leader in electronic safety systems, as their Product Manager for worldwide Environmental Technology. In the meantime, Dr. Mangelschots studied Marketing at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Dr. Mangelschots left Cerberus after 3 years to join Rockwell Automation, which is one of the major players in Industrial Automation. Rockwell Automation offers integrated industrial automation solutions for a broad range of industries. At Rockwell Automation she was responsible for the sales organization in Switzerland. The sales activity of her team, however, went well beyond the Swiss borders due to the fact that all OEM-customers were active on a worldwide basis.

In October 2000, Dr. Mangelschots joined GretagMacbeth as the VP of Worldwide Marketing and is now Vice President of Worldwide OEM Sales. GretagMacbeth is a worldwide leader in color measurement and management solutions for the Graphic Arts markets, primarily Creative, PrePress, Pressroom and Photo Processing applications. In addition, GretagMacbeth also provides solutions in the Plastics, Paints and Coatings, and Textile Markets.

Q: GretagMacbeth has color management solutions designed to cover the digital graphic arts production workflow from design to print production. Summarize these services and how they progress to the end product.

Dr. Mangelschots: Indeed, GretagMacbeth provides a suite of integrated color management solutions, which encompasses the complete digital production chain from the creative professional (e.g. digital photographer and graphical designer) to the printer, both in the graphical art industry and the photo-processing industry.

GretagMacbeth offers tailored solution packages for the different stages of this production chain, which address the specific needs- both technologically and price-wise – of the different users. At the core of all our color management packages, from entry- level to high end, however, you will find a spectrophotometer, which allows the precise measurement and communication of color on the basis of spectral color values. This guarantees, at each phase in the production process, an accurate color prediction and color reproduction, which can be easily shared among all active players in the project: from customer to designer, from prepress to printer. The communication of color in terms of spectral values is an absolute key for increasing production effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Q: So tell us about Eye-One which is really the starting point, right?

Dr. Mangelschots: Our entry level color management solution is the multiple award winning Eye-One system, which contains 3 packages: Eye-One Monitor for calibrating and profiling CRT monitors and flat panel displays, Eye-One Pro, which allows you to measure reflective colors in addition to color managing your monitor; and Eye-One Pro with Eye-One Match, which adds the ability to profile all input and output devices. All three packages include our Eye-One Share freeware which provides added functionality for creating and sharing color palettes, as well as other unique attributes.

With the wizard based concept of the Eye-One Match profiling software, and the fact that the Eye-One measurement device is a true spectrophotometer, the Eye-One System has proven that high quality color management does not need to be complex, nor expensive. The Eye-One System is THE color management solution for the demanding creative professional. You are most welcome to join the Eye-One Color Clique and download the Eye-One Share freeware at www.i1color.com.

The middle range solution for PrePress professionals is our new iCColor-bundle, which was launched at Print 01. It provides the ability to color manage all input and output devices in a highly automated way, in addition to profiling all monitors – CRT and flat panels. The iCColor bundle contains the automated x-y spectral chart reader iCColor 210, ProfileMaker Professional software and Eye-One Monitor spectrophotometer. Given its highly competitive price-performance level, iCColor will definitely make unidirectional strip-reading obsolete in a prepress house.

Q: How do customers access these products?

Dr. Mangelschots: In general we follow a 3-tiered market access model: (1) a network of highly experienced graphic arts dealers (2) a network of OEM/VAR‘s and (3) catalog companies and their e-stores e.g. MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse, Publishing Perfection, Cancom. Presently, the latter channel is mainly selling the Eye-One system. In each geographical region, USA, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Japan, we have a separate sales organization for the dealer channel and the OEM/VAR channel.

Q: You mentioned the creative professional, is that a new target for GretagMacbeth?

Dr. Mangelschots: We have only pursued the creative and photo-processing markets since early 2001. Prior to that, the revenues were almost equally divided between the pressroom and prepress markets. The success of Eye-One in 2001 definitely adds the creative professional to our customer demographics.