Late last week, HP provided WhatTheyThink with an official statement indicating that it would not be participating in Ipex 2014 in London. This was a bit surprising, following HP’s report of record results at drupa 2012. The official IPEX statement, also received by WhatTheyThink last week, stated that the show company was thrilled that more than 70% of space for the exhibition was already committed, with many vendors increasing the size of their stands as compared to the previous year. With respect to HP, Trevor Crawford, Event Director stated, “We are naturally disappointed in HP’s current decision not to participate and to focus on national and vertical market events moving forward, rather than global events like Ipex. We have always enjoyed a long and successful relationship with HP – in fact, the Indigo press was first launched at Ipex ’93.” He adds: “With 20 months until Ipex 2014 opens its doors, a lot can happen in this rapidly changing industry, and we will continue to conduct an open dialogue with HP.”

With HP in the news with its significant restructuring, including layoffs, speculation was that this was a financial decision related to corporate initiatives. However, on several occasions, HP executives have assured WhatTheyThink that the Graphics Solutions Business (GSB) is doing well and not highly impacted by the corporate restructuring. In a conversation yesterday, Sumeer Chandra, GSB vice president of worldwide strategy and market development at HP, reaffirmed this position, saying, “The decision not to participate in Ipex 2012 was a GSB decision and was not influenced by the things happening around us in HP.”

Chandra explained that the decision was part of a strategic prioritization, not related to any budget cuts. He adds, “This is an industry where every vendor cannot afford to be at every show. Each company has to make choices, and we have made ours. We see an emergence of strong regional events, especially in Asia and Latin America, and those venues offer us an opportunity to meet a very targeted set of customers. This is where we want to invest some of our dollars. We also want to go beyond that by helping our customers with knowledge sharing and business development support. Dscoop is very important to us in helping meet those objectives. And you will also have seen that we are investing in efforts to educate the entire ecosystem about how print fits in today’s media mix and what digital printing brings to the table in terms of opportunities for marketers, agencies and designers. An example was the sold-out DSee Conference we held in conjunction with Dscoop 7 in Washington last spring.”