CHICAGO, Sept. 6 - Scitex Digital Printing today launched Business Color(TM), its newest innovation designed to deliver optimal print speed, image quality, and affordability in full process digital color printing. In introducing the concept of Business Color, Scitex also unveiled several new printing systems designed to offer customers the benefits of digital printing combined now with the full process color of offset printing. Initial markets for Business Color include commercial printers, direct mail, data center printers, book printing, and the ticket, tag, and label markets. Business Color is the latest development from Scitex Digital Printing's nearly 40-year history of innovation and invention in inks, printhead development, and printer design. "Business Color extends our innovation platform and launches a new print category in which we see significant, rapid growth,'' said Gary Smith, vice president of marketing and strategic management for Scitex Digital Printing. "What is equally exciting is the way customers are applying Business Color and creating value in their own businesses. We've seen compelling examples. This truly is technology that can help our customers succeed and expand their product offerings.'' Smith pointed to research that indicates color printing is 55 percent more likely to be read first compared to black and white printing, in part because color grabs attention and conveys a sense of importance and urgency. Studies also have shown that color on invoices improves response time by as much as 30 percent and color increases the likelihood of buying a product by more than 80 percent. For customized direct mail, the use of color improves response rates on average by more than 20 percent. "Yet to deliver color printing to the market traditionally has required trade offs for the customer,'' Smith explained. "Either printing speeds are too slow, per unit costs are too high, or quality simply misses the mark for the particular printing applications. Business Color changes all of that. It offers customers a way to optimize the relationship between printer speed, unit cost, image quality and the personalization that comes from being able to handle one hundred percent variable data on every page, in color, from text to graphics. These are business solutions that previously had been out of reach for a large segment of the market.'' Smith noted the Scitex brand name already has a strong presence with monochrome and spot color applications for commercial printers, direct mail, and the addressing and lottery markets. "All of these markets can be extended logically into Business Color markets,'' Smith said. "At the same time, we can bring into reach the possibility of using color for a much larger number of customers in a variety of markets with an equally large variety of printing applications.'' Smith pointed to direct mail markets where Business Color offers the opportunity to reduce per-unit cost while delivering to the direct mail customer improved response rates from those who receive it. "Business Color adds a new dimension for direct mail markets: personalization, plus color, which is a highly effective combination to use in communicating with customersthat reflects a one-to-one relationship.'' A related market is data center applications. "This is a growth segment of the printing market,'' Smith said. "Bills and financial statements are fundamentally personalized, variable-data documents that offer opportunities to add color. Today, the printing of statements and account summaries is a cost of doing business. With Business Color, a financial institution can take that cost of doing business and turn it into an effective outreach to its customers and deliver a compelling message of its own, or that of a business partner, in color. Suddenly, a cost center now has the tools to add business value, even generate revenue.'' Finally, Smith noted the opportunity to personalize textbooks. "With our new print systems, we can produce very short runs of high-quality books in color, and do so economically. This is a big competitive advantage for publishers of those textbooks and manuals that need to be updated frequently or that carry time-sensitive information. The opportunity for full process color and variable data brings to reality the day a printer can literally mass-produce books with specific, individualized, and timely information. "All of these are meaningful markets for Business Color and all require the dynamic balance of print speed, economics, and color image quality that is appropriate to the particular market and the particular business application,'' Smith said. The Scitex Business Color printing systems shown at PRINT 01 also feature innovation in paper transport options. "We partner with world-class companies that continue to improve technology and apply innovation that complements our own,'' Smith said, referring to the paper transport technology in the Scitex printing systems. "We know our customers expect continual technological advancement and innovation. We look for the same advancement and innovation from our partners. The new Business Color Printing Systems deliver that technological advancement in printhead capability, image quality, and transport systems.'' At the PRINT 01 show held in Chicago, September 6-13, Scitex demonstrated Business Color and variable data printing with a variety of applications produced on products that reached across its entire product family: Personalized direct mail with variable text and graphics, billing statements with personalized messaging, books with spot color, and mailings with spot color messaging were all demonstrated at the show to illustrate the potential of digital color printing. On display at PRINT 01 were new configurations from the VersaMark(TM) product family, the new Scitex 3700 Printing System that features multi-rails to mix-and-match printheads, multiple printheads from the Dijitseries and Composer(TM), the latest release of data preparation software for the Scitex family of products.