Skinny Technologies Inc. announced on September 25, 2001 the launch of their proprietary technology, SkinnyScript. SkinnyScript is an encoding process that significantly reduces the size of graphic image files used in publishing, “without compromising image quality.”

The SkinnyScript name was developed by newly appointed CEO, Daniel Walters. It was originally supposed to be called Skinny Postscript, but Adobe didn't allow this because Postscript is one of their trademarks. Executives say that Adobe is fully aware of the technology and supports it’s use. SkinnyScript is a method of filtering the PostScript stream from applications and en-coding the PostScript before it is distilled by a standard PDF distiller to reduce file size. It reduces prepress quality PDF files small enough to be e-mailed by the pages or easily download a full 8up imposition in minutes. This process would normally take hours and eat up the bandwidth.

Daniel C. Walters is a co-founder, CEO and the inventor of SkinnyScript. He also serves a President and CTO. He has over twenty years of developing PostScript based publishing systems.

Q:  You changed your name recently from Consolidated Magna Ventures to Skinny Technologies Inc. Describe your business goals, revenue expectations and market opportunities from a financial perspective.

Walters: From a disclosure perspective I can tell you about our business goals and market opportunities. I would like to defer our revenue expectations and financial perspective to a future press release at our (shareholder meeting) in March.

As for our business goal, it’s simple: To put a Skinny product into every business and on every desktop.


Q:  Update us on CopyDot Prepress. What role do they play and have you completed the acquisition of this company?

Walters: CopyDot will become an operation subsidiary, a model for the publishing client to prepress to print service workflow based upon our SkinnyPDF Workflow. We are very close to finalizing this acquisition.


Q:  You have already reported on a few beta tests with publishers. As time has passed, how have the results been and what is the status of your deployment?

Walters: Our product development is complete. We now have the PhotoShop Plug-Ins developed for the Mac and PC. We also have the PostScript to PDF converter with a server application completed. We can deploy these products to the client’s site right now. This will enable the client to skinny the files on their site. What’s really exciting is the Skinny WebPortal that allows designers, publishers and printers to upload and download Skinny files and share them with others involved in the publishing and approval process through a secure web interface.

So far we have identified three major vertical service markets to deploy our SkinnyScript technology, Print On Demand, Prepress workflows and Digital Asset Management.


Q: One downside of PDF workflows is that most current preflight tools can't give all the information you need. How does SkinnyPDF help these professionals?

Walters: That’s the whole point of the SkinnyScript Server. There are so many ways to configure and make PDF files. We never know if the client is configuring everything correctly. You can’t change the settings of the SkinnyScript Server. We also clean up a few other things that complicate the process like fonts, RGB conversions, line weights, blends and many others. It doesn’t matter who is using what program - we know exactly what’s in the PDF file and what’s not in them.

A one source PDF file that can be viewed from the web, printed on just about any printing device or digital press and it can be four color plus spot separated for conventional print processing. The SkinnyPDF is small enough that it can be e-mailed back and forth for approval or quickly uploaded or downloaded from a web server for final delivery. Every element can be extracted in its native file format and repurposed in another publication providing an economical and robust alternative to conventional archival and retrieval systems.


Q: What parts of the workflow process will Skinny be a part of? (DAM, PDF, File Transfer. etc.)

Walters: Skinny is the Parent company with the core technology, SkinnyScript. Skinny will license OEMs like digital camera and scanner manufacturers. Also software developers like Ultimate Technographics and Where?Media. They in turn will distribute through their dealer channels. Skinny envisions several revenue-generating subsidiaries, P.A.M., PODbook and soon CopyDot; each of these subsidiaries will use the core technology as a goods and services exchange model with their client base. The subsidiaries will expand through franchising.


Q: Ultimate Technographics has created a special version of their OPI server software that uses Skinny technology. Tell us about your agreement with this company.

Walters: Ultimate develops all of our prepress products, the Skinny PhotoShop Plug-Ins and the PostScript to PDF converter. In addition, Ultimate has made a Skinny version of most of their products for Skinny Technologies Inc. This gives Skinny Technologies an end-to-end prepress and digital print workflow software platforms. We buy custom versions of these applications and provide them to our subsidiaries on hardware platforms in a workflow.

Ultimate will sell Skinny versions of their products through their dealer channels. David Watson, the CEO and founder of Ultimate Technographics, is the father of electronic imposition and he was first to market. Electronic and manual imposition has been just for the big prepress houses. Over the last few years the power of the desktop computers as been increasing at an accelerated rate and the prices have been coming down. This fulfills David’s vision of the possibility of having Impostrip on every publisher’s desktop. Skinny adds to that by reducing the file size of the pages. Combined with ease of use that Impostrip affords a user, it will be the next must have for the Desktop Publisher. Publishers want to bring their publications to print with the very best of quality at the very best price; Ultimate Skinny products will enable publishers to do just that.


Q: How will you distribute your products to end-users? What progress has been made in developing sales channels?

Walters: We are well past developing sales and distribution channels, we are now preparing for marketing. Ultimate and Where?Media already have customer support, sales reps and dealer channels so all we have to do is support their marketing efforts.


Q: What other companies have you spoken with about Skinny? Are prepress manufacturers interested in integrating this product?

Walters: There has been a great deal of interest from a number of software developers and various types of OEM manufactures. Not all of them are related to the print industry. I can’t comment on pie in the sky conversations or deals in development. I will talk about signed, sealed and delivered deals.

Where?Media: We have completed a co-development and co-branding deal with Where?Media of Newfoundland. Similar in nature to the Ultimate transaction, we will use custom developed versions of their ImagePortal web server applications for our subsidiaries and their client base. Where?Media will also market Skinny versions of their product to their markets in combination with Skinny Plug-Ins and SkinnyScript Servers.


Q: Technology advances move quickly. What improvements will you make to this product and are you worried that competitors may go around your patent to do what you have done, only better?

Walters: That’s what I live for, the next technology. Skinny Technologies Inc. has a very strong mandate to constantly develop something better. Of all the jobs I have, the CTO is my favorite one.