January 28, 2002 - On the heels of Printable’s launch of Version 5.0, executives there say adoption rates are up and the company is well positioned for growth in 2002. In an interview with their top executives, Printable told WhatTheyThink.com that they may even grow further in 2002 by acquiring other companies. Printable 5.0, presented last week, is a web based platform and application suite with about 100 new features. Executives say it incorporates capabilities to handle custom RFQ-driven ordering and sophisticated media-catalog-based ordering, featuring custom-print, inventory picks and print-on-demand capabilities. Equally important to the release of Printable’s new upgrade, was their outlook for 2002. They say they’ll be around and according to their CEO, Printable will be an even larger and more important company in the next couple of years. Last week - Jim Sullivan, Coleman Kane and Chuck Gehman spoke with WhatTheyThink.com in an in-depth interview posted today at www.whattheythink.com. Jim Sullivan, Printable’s Chairman and CEO, said 2001 was tough, but Printable adjusted quickly. “Yes, we made it! With our strong revenue growth, and with profitability in sight, the great support from our investors and our customers, we have a bright future. We took a conservative approach during 2001 and really worked to get our technology right. With the strategic acquisitions we made, we are extremely well positioned for continued success this year and in the future.” Coleman Kane, President and COO, said he is pleased with the growth in their customer base and overall adoption rates among printers. Said Kane, “I think a number of factors are driving this. First, we are better at communicating the value proposition. Second, there's less competition. In 2000 and going into early 2001 before many of the "dotcom" failures, there was a lot of confusion among Printers-- and fear, uncertainty and doubt created by a lot of those now-failed companies. That's all gone today.” Kane also said the company has a few options for growth. “We think that there are opportunities out there for us to make further acquisitions this year. Both to obtain additional technologies we deem as strategic, and to increase our customer base quickly.” Also discussed in the interview was the role of CIP4 and PrintTalk. Chuck Gehman, Printable’s Executive Vice President and CTO, said Printable is actively developing software to support both initiatives. Interestingly, there has been little demand to integrate with print management systems. “We're getting requests for other types of integration more than we are being asked to interface to print management systems. For example, our Ariba and SAP interfaces have gotten to be very popular. And we have interfaced to a variety of inventory systems used by printers and fulfillment companies. Our new PrintGateway system in Printable 5.0 lets us support more than 140 different flavors of XML, and enables us to support legacy systems with flat files. Small printers and large printers alike are being asked by their corporate customers to interface with systems of all kinds-- whether it is inventory, accounting or "e-procurement" and we want to be able to satisfy those types of requests, because that is a way we can help bring more money into the till for our Printer partners.” Premium Access members can see the complete interview at www.WhatTheyThink.com. Other topics discussed: - Digesting 2 acquisitions, - Growth plans for 2002, - ROI and enhancements to Printable Version 5.0, - Adoption rates with e-commerce, - CIP4, PrintTalk and print management systems - PrintPlanet.com and serving the industry associations