Heidelberg, Fuji Film, Screen USA, Oce and KPG provide the best after-sale service. Heidelberg, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Xerox and Agfa have largest brand share. February 26, 2002 - WhatTheyThink.com and CAP Ventures have released results from a survey taken in February with 198 U.S. printing firms. We asked printers about the brands of equipment they have and also asked them to rate those brands in terms of service and after-sale support. The 22 companies included in this survey were: AB Dick, AGFA, BARCO, Canon, Creo, Epson, Fuji Film, General Binding Corp, Heidelberg, *Hewlett Packard, Indigo, Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG), Komori, MAN Roland, Mitsubishi, Oce, Pitney Bowes, Presstek, Ricoh, RISO, Screen USA and Xerox. (*HP and Indigo plan to become one, but for this survey we kept them separate.) Most Brand Share: Heidelberg has the largest brand share with 55.2% of companies indicating they currently have or have used this brand in the last two years. Among general commercial printers, 67.8% of the respondents indicated they have Heidelberg equipment. Heidelberg is also very strong with medium to large printers (70%+ brand share among printers with $3 million in revenue). In fact, among companies that have a 4-color or 5+ color offset press, over 80% indicated they have Heidelberg equipment. Heidelberg, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Xerox and Agfa round out the top five brand share leaders. One surprise was the widespread presence of Hewlett-Packard. 51.0% of the print providers indicated they have or have recently used HP brand equipment. CAP Ventures believes HP’s high brand share among commercial printers is from its dominant position in black & white office laser printers, color desktop printers (inkjet and laser), and wide format digital printers. Epson has done well with its high resolution ink jet printers (both narrow and wide format) in the prepress, design and commercial printing industry. Xerox has had a focused effort on the graphic arts industry for over 10 years with its production digital printing systems. and Agfa has been a perennial leader in prepress systems and supplies. Who Has the Best Service? CAP Ventures asked respondents to rate on a 1 to 5 scale (5 = outstanding) the service and support capabilities of the brands they currently have or have used in the last two years. Perhaps it is no coincidence that brand share leader Heidelberg also had the highest rating for service and support. Heidelberg had a mean rating of 3.88 out a possible 5.0. 17.9% of Heidelberg customers rated its service as outstanding, with another 43.3% rating it as above average. Several prepress equipment vendors were among the top 5 in service and support: Fuji Film (3.63), Screen USA (3.60) and Kodak Polychrome Graphics (3.48). Oce was also among the service and support industry leaders with a rating of 3.57. Although Oce has a relatively small presence in the commercial printing industry today, its reputation appears to be carrying over. Premium Access Members at WhatTheyThink.com can view the complete results with more analysis, charts, demographics, rankings and additional factors printers consider before buying equipment. About WhatTheyThink.com: WhatTheyThink.com is the industry’s leading online community. The company offers a mixture of free and subscription-based content for industry executives. Additionally, WhatTheyThink.com provides a robust syndication program serving related web sites with print and publishing content. For more information, visit www.whattheythink.com About CAP Ventures CAP Ventures is a strategic consulting firm for providers and users of business communication technologies and services. We deliver key research, analysis, forecasting, benchmarking, and strategy recommendations to make a competitive difference in our clients’ businesses. www.capv.com