In Part 2 of ‘Managing the Crisis’, we discuss how we can meet the challenges of marketing for companies in the Print Industry with the postponement of key exhibitions and conferences like FESPA and DRUPA? And with a view to the future, we ask how the industry can work together in a more collaborative way to help us kick start business?

We are pleased to have spoken to Peter Saunders at Sun Chemical, Simon Roberts at Integration Technology, Neil Cook at GIS, Arnaud Linquette at Memjet , Graham Kennedy of Ricoh and Stephen Tunnicliffe-Wilson at Inca Digital.

With the postponement of many large exhibitions and conferences, the usual route to new business is now not so clear. Are you looking more to social media as a route to market? How can the inkjet industry use other marketing mediums to generate interest?

“From a marketing standpoint, our plan is healthy and remains intact. We are working with a variety of partners to produce relevant and informative content that can educate the market and help us to get through his difficult time by leveraging our influence in digital/social media channels.

We are looking forward to the future, hopefully in the fall, when we will once again be engaging at tradeshows and demonstrating new Powered by Memjet solutions.”

“Yes, we will be utilising social media more often to keep in touch with our audience. The inkjet industry is progressing fast and our community genuinely looks forward to exhibitions and conferences as a way of keeping in touch and honing our ideas for the future.

Online forums, webinars etc will need to be utilised more across our industry for everyone to be kept up to speed with latest developments and to network effectively.”

“Like many vendors, Inca is taking the opportunity to directly target customers during the gap created following the DRUPA move to 2021. We will also use social media to cast the net wider for unknown potential customers – those who you might otherwise only meet on an exhibition stand.

Once we’ve finished adjusting to the lock-down, hopefully, we’ll have more time to generate content and work our social media networks! It’s easy to communicate with existing customers during the crisis, but meeting new ones is more challenging.”

“The postponement of many large exhibitions may be a useful driver for companies to embrace new forms of customer interaction. Social Media is definitely one alternative communication channel and is the ideal medium to share information that we would normally have done through conference and event speaking.

The FM Future Virtual Summit is a prime example of what the alternative could look like. By embracing technology we will be able to still get our messages in front of many potential partners and customers and create an engaging forum for discussion.”

“The short answer is ‘yes’. Online has facilitated extraordinary growth in collaborative platforms ranging from video-conferencing to virtual events.

While we already utilise the medium for sharing marketing intelligence, we shall be upscaling activity and embracing these and emergent opportunities for the foreseeable future. I’d urge the industry overall to join us. That said I shall look forward to meeting our friends and colleagues at those events when the pandemic is safely dissipated.”

Simon at Integration Technology

Graham at Ricoh : We are increasingly looking outside of the traditional events space anyway and using our Inkjet Generation site and our Strategic partnership with FuturePrint to generate content that is useful and informative. Additionally, the FuturePrint Summit offers another focal point for the market to connect, learn and collaborate. We as an industry need to come together as we have all had a shock over the past few weeks and to some extent, I sense we are all assembling our thoughts to understand what this means going forward. The FuturePrint Virtual Summit initiative, will provide us with a really useful platform to connect, to hear the latest thinking but to also share some of the projects and innovations that are being worked on. We look forward to the positive outcome it will have.

How can ‘we’ as an industry work together in a more collaborative way to kick start the interest in Inkjet in the next few months? Will there be some positives from this crisis?

Arnaud from Memjet: Globally, we are facing significant economic and health challenges. But Memjet remains confident that innovation will help kick start inkjet relevance and lead the industry forward. Innovation is and will be more critical than ever. That's because, as we recover, print providers will need access to affordable printing solutions to expand their business and revenue streams. Powered by Memjet printing technology, solutions are poised to capture the expected spike in opportunities.

The new breed of inkjet printers are precisely the type of solutions that printers need at this time. They offer a low-cost alternative to large production press systems and a profitable alternative to the smaller desktop toner base digital colour printers. Meeting these market needs requires our industry and, specifically our OEMs to take an innovative approach to develop new solutions. And they need to do it quickly.

That's why Memjet technology is so important right now. The modularity of our technology – combined with support from Memjet's global engineering team – speeds up development time and gives OEMs more time to focus on getting their solution to market. With Memjet's modular printing platforms, OEMs achieve faster time to market, save on development costs, and expand into more markets; which will help kick start or ensure inkjet relevancy and importance worldwide.

Also, as a technology partner, our job is to assure continuity of supply for all our modules. And that is what we are doing.

Memjet's passion for innovation, and the desire to change the printing industry, is unwavering as we will continue to empower our partners to grow and succeed in new markets well into the future – ensuring the collaboration and top of mind for inkjet technology.

Peter at Sun Chemical: Online forums, webinars and social media through shared platforms and groups. However, we will need to ensure it is policed to prevent it just becoming a sales pitch dump arena, which will switch people off. We look forward to an interactive experience with customers and prospects.

Stephen at Inca Digital: As an industry, I think it’s worth having an open, unprejudiced debate on the future of inkjet and how all the players can work together to increase the whole opportunity by combining our skills and knowledge. It’s rare that we manage to cut through all the marketing messages to have a meaningful conversation – we should find the time during the crisis to do this.

Neil at GIS: Identifying partners to complement your product could be key going forward – we need to be open to more collaboration. Companies are going to be looking to invest in projects that can be implemented and show results quickly. So, being able to work with companies who make the complete investment work, and with as little fuss as possible, will be key in getting the inkjet industry back up to speed. Understanding how one piece of equipment connects to, complements, or passes information to another - from image data to drops on the substrate - will minimise installation and maximise the end-users productivity.

Simon at Integration Technology: By having an aim of sharing, by remembering that we are a community and as such need information, care and even a little love from time to time to remain mutually sustainable. To achieve that aim, attend events such as this, the shows and seminars, and support our business media. That way we are far more likely to be ready for the upturn in the market that will most certainly come, post-pandemic. Inkjet has a way to go; don’t get left behind.

Graham at Ricoh: At Ricoh, we already work collaboratively with customers and partners to create the best possible solution with the core objective of delivering success. With Hymmen, Olbrich, Coloreel and other partnerships, we have succeeded in getting the right solution for the application and business model.

Bt with the current COVID-19 crisis we will see some interesting changes that will be positive too.

For example, I believe that we will see an acceleration of decentralised manufacturing. This crisis has revealed that the old model of centralised production, particularly for textile and decor isn’t fit for purpose. Shipping goods from China is not efficient particularly so when borders are restricted or closed in some cases. Re-shoring I think is a mega-trend that will continue to develop in certain markets more I also wonder if more localised production of PCB (printed circuit boards) will start to be produced more in Europe. AM has come to the fore as we have mentioned already, and in this field, we may see more localised production. We are increasingly working with partners rather than alone to solve applications problems, and we will continue to do this.”
Contributors - Arnaud Linquette - Memjet, Neil Cook - GIS, Peter Saunders at Sun Chemical, Simon Roberts - Integration Technology , Stephen Tunnicliffe-Wilson at Inca Digital and Graham Kennedy from Ricoh.

If you would like to register for the free webinar on 30th April - The Future of Print after COVID 19 then register here.