By Bent Brix & Morten B. Reitoft

I am 61 years old, married, and have four lovely children, as well as a fantastic grandchild. After 9th grade, I was apprenticed as a handset maker, and shortly after that, I started a business within the graphic industry with my big brothers. All my brothers were at that time involved in the graphical industry. So, since 1988 I have primarily self-employed myself. During the last 30 years, I have had various graphic companies in Denmark, all driven to develop new business opportunities and think of new solutions.

In 2019, I sold my graphic production companies to focus solely on software development and online solutions. During the years, with a breakthrough in the graphic industry with digital printing and online ordering, I was one of the pioneers in Denmark who offered solid online solutions within the industry. When the financial crisis hit the Danish market, I continued to have positive results on my balance sheet. The positive numbers resulted from the belief and investments in digital printing and online ordering, which later became further developed to web-to-print. I have never had traditional printing as a part of my business portfolio.

Morten B. Reitoft: Before talking about your current offerings, I would like you to explain how you got involved with the graphics arts industry and see IT as a "component" in print.

Bent Brix: Like many others in the graphic world, I was probably born into it. In my case, my brothers were employed in a large printing company.I was born and raised in a small town where pretty much everyone was affiliated with the city's printing house in one way or another.

In the beginning, I started as a freelancer and worked with the latest and most innovative equipment - a Purup kit system, one of the first in the country. And again, when I started working with digital printing, it was with one of the first Nexpress digital printing machines from Heidelberg.

The urge to work with the latest and most innovative products has been an expensive journey and incredibly challenging. Still, in the end, it was an excellent choice to take some considerable risk.

When we started working with digital printing, we quickly realized that we had to develop systems that made it easy for customers to order and enable custom printing on templates for customers to buy small quantities.

Morten B. Reitoft: Before web-to-print was common, you created a business-card-online ordering and production platform serving printing companies throughout Scandinavia - what happened to that business?

Bent Brix: Business card-online is still striving. I have only sold the part of the business producing business cards. The first versions of business card-online were basic websites with pictures of customers' business cards and input fields to fill in the required information.

Then, when the customer made an order, we manually copy/pasted the information into a document and generated a PDF for printing. I even had one employee proofreading to mitigate typos, as customers had to believe they had made their own business cards.
It quickly became too time-consuming, so I reached out to a group of young programmers to develop our own business cards system, built on top of an SQL server.

We have previously tried different big and fancy international systems, but with no luck, as the data was kept in a black box and not accessible.The development of the system took off when it became possible to buy InDesign as a server solution and integrate it with our SQL database.

Morten B. Reitoft: I find you a very innovative thinker and business individual - where do you find inspiration for your companies and ideas?

Bent Brix: I do not come from an academic background, but I have always been driven by creating solutions. In addition, I have been very conscious about surrounding myself with talented employees and partners. I have an inner curiosity to learn and challenge myself and my surroundings to think in quality rather than quantity.

The key to thinking about quality rather than quantity is understanding what the customer wants and not producing something you think they might like. Furthermore, "ease of use" must be considered in every step of the process.

Morten B. Reitoft: Shareworks.DK, BEMIIT, Complianty - what and why?

Bent Brix: When I carved out the IT platform from Brix Grafisk into an independent company, we needed to develop a new name. At the same time, Miki Vester became my business partner, so with the limit of our imagination, the name was BE (Bent) MI (Miki) IT = BEMIT.

Shareworks is, in its essence, the original Business-card-online system, which, of course, has been updated through time as we continued to develop our solutions.

So it has gone from Visitkort-online, Print-oline, Tryksager-online, Bestiltryksager and today Shareworks. As the focus has shifted much more to data and other products, it makes sense to change the name.

Today, Shareworks is much more than a platform where you can smoothly order products. The platform can integrate multiple systems and control complex data sheets because we build the platform with thoughts on "ease of use." It brings us to our newly developed platform called Complianty. We take all the best functionalities and integrations from Shareworks and make smaller and more flexible SaaS modules. Hence, just like lego bricks, you can customize your solution as you wish. With the power data and technology have in society today, it naturally requires high compliance standards from the supplier because you must control your data and be aware of where the data is stored. But, at the same time, customers are demanding agile and flexible solutions so they can switch systems easily if something new seems to fit better in their business. Thus, the name Complianty is a mix of the buzz words "compliance" and "agile" – we strive to make compliant solutions faster.

Morten B. Reitoft: With these offerings, you are again focusing on using IT to connect the printing industry - why?

Bent Brix: It will not only be the graphic industry, as we do not see any difference in whether the message will be delivered in print or digital format via SoMe, web, mobile, or whatever may appear.

With Complianty, we focus on helping many large and medium-sized companies maintain their brand and create a focus on preserving data compliance. So the goal is flexible solutions that tie small companies' data together with their customers and suppliers while maintaining their brand on a user-friendly platform.

One of the first things I have written down in a business vision is: I will not try to sell what I produce, but produce what someone will buy.So that's the ambition with Complianty - to shift the focus and be customer-centric.

Morten B. Reitoft: Are these offerings only for Danish clients, or how do you see your market? I read that, i.e., Shareworks have 150,000 users - is that in DK alone?

Bent Brix: It is primarily Danish users, but we also have some users abroad because our big customers have foreign departments.

Over time, we have had some minor attempts to get foreign customers without luck. With Complianty, which we expect to sell as SaaS solutions, new opportunities open.

Morten B. Reitoft: Where do you see your company and services in the future?

Bent Brix: It is a difficult question to answer, but we have big expectations for our platform Shareworks which is our backbone, but even more expectations for our new innovative platform, Complianty.

However, it is expensive to develop and exploit new solutions, so we keep an open mind if we share this journey with a potential partner or do it ourselves. We must wait and see what the future brings.

Morten B. Reitoft: And what about yourself? You are an entrepreneur - can you NOT invent?

Bent Brix: As you have concluded, I am probably just an entrepreneur. But, as I have mentioned before, I have always been good at thinking creatively without limitations and finding a solution which perhaps is a tiny invention.

Morten B. Reitoft: Is the Sky the limit?

Bent Brix: I do not have that much focus on the sky, and I do not see myself as a dreamer – I have more emphasis on the journey to get there ;0)

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