Fresh as Spring?

Even in the relatively colder climate of New England, flowers are springing up and trees are turning green or beginning to bloom. Apple blossoms, dogwoods?and magnolia trees all provide colors worthy of a high fidelity inkjet print. But all that growth is supported by the spreading of a lot of mulch and “organic fertilizer.”? When manure is being spread liberally in your area, “fresh” is not likely the term that comes to mind.?

In any season, our business thrives when we can find something fresh despite the manure placed in our path.

For example, many printing segments are suffering due to a lack of printing paper as mills continue to convert to producing packaging substrates (which “stinks” for everyone else.) One particularly hard-hit industry is photo printing. Despite continued demand, the market for the silver halide paper necessary for photo development has dwindled to a single, global manufacturer. At the same time, inkjet technology has achieved suitable quality levels for photo printing within magazines, catalogs?and other graphic arts applications. However, it is challenging to deliver the weight, feel and appearance of developed photos without specialty papers as well as high-quality printing. Kyocera has entered the photo printing market with just such a paper and printer combination dubbed Belharra.?David Zwang shares the details.

Finding?your own strategy to overcome market challenges can be tricky. Customer research is the place to start but, with labor shortages and their own internal challenges, it can be difficult to get customers to participate. When you do get them to talk, sometimes they can’t think about anything but the way they do things now. If you want to help them, and yourself, generate fresh ideas,?check out two minutes of advice from Dan Adams.

If you are going to drupa, or just following along from home, there are a lot of new inkjet offerings coming to market that OEMs are hoping will be seen as a breath of fresh air. Ralf Schl?zer is rounding them all up so you can give them the sniff test. Check out the first of his?summaries for production print here.?

Happy spring.

Elizabeth