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Fiery Guy

As EFI moves forward with new leadership, Frank looks back at the tenure of Guy Gecht, who stepped down as EFI CEO last summer.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Keeping up with CEO Guy Gecht of EFI is like trying to keep up with a whirlwind. It took a while, but I finally caught up with him by phone. I think he was on this continent at the time.

EFI, or Electronics For Imaging, was founded by legendary technologist Efi Arazi in 1989. The first products were color plug-ins for QuarkXPress. EFI hovered around $2 million for its first two years, but then introduced the Fiery front end for digital printing.

Guy joined EFI in 1995 as Director of Software Engineering. The Fiery came out just as digital print was growing, and today there are well over one million Fiery controllers. The company was doing well, but markets began to change after 2000. Gecht once had a presentation at one of his well-attended press conferences on EFI’s “near-death experiences” that the company faced.


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About Frank Romano

Frank Romano has spent over 60 years in the printing and publishing industries. Many know him best as the editor of the International Paper Pocket Pal or from the hundreds of articles he has written for publications from North America and Europe to the Middle East to Asia and Australia. Romano lectures extensively, having addressed virtually every club, association, group, and professional organization at one time or another. He is one of the industry's foremost keynote speakers. He continues to teach courses at RIT and other universities and works with students on unique research projects.

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