I often hear people in the industry proclaiming their love to print and sometimes even for Inkjet or any other technology. That's, of course, totally OK, but for most of the thousands of people working in the industry, the quality, the speed, and the productivity is a question of generating enough profit to sustain a business. It's intriguing to love technology or print, but the technology and the investments are merely tools to develop business and become profitable.
When a PSP invests in a new device, you will never invest in technology that can't deliver the expected and required quality. If the speed isn't as fast as promised, the investment can be challenging to justify. The number of sheets you produce per hour pays for the machine. You can easily understand that when, i.e., a Landa machine is changed from 13,000 sheets per hour to 6,500 sheets per hour - the machine will need to run for a longer time to be as profitable, or cost and acquisition needs to be reduced accordingly. The same goes for the cost and time around a machine. The more uptime a machine has, the more profitable it will be.
Quality, on the other side, does not directly influence the profitability of an investment, or at least not in the first place. Your customers may accept if you buy a machine that produces good enough print. But I know many printers carefully compare samples when they invest in new machines. They will look for banding, consistency, color accuracy, and a list of other KPIs before investing. All these measures ensure that the investment adds value to the portfolio of products and services that will make you a better supplier to your customers.
So inconsistency in colors, in quality, in whatever of the above measures plays an enormous role, and you can only consider why it is in 2022 still possible to deliver machines that objectively do not provide quality on par with competitive machines in the market? I don't understand it, and I still don't understand why criticism of colors and consistency by specialists are considered harmful?
All machines in the market have different strengths and weaknesses, and PSPs know this, the media and specialists know this, and when a PSP invests, he will know whether a particular machine can deliver what he needs. Sometimes, PSPs invest in technology that isn't matured, and they know this - so all good. But what if the technology never will?
If you invest in a multi-million-euros product and it fails, the consequences can be enormous. Worst case scenario is that it can take you out of business, and I know of companies where wrong decisions have taken them out of business.
If you invest in technology that isn't 100% mature, you take a risk, and you have to balance that risk against the potential gains of being a first mover against the financial risk that potentially can take you out of business. Some years ago, I visited a small company that wanted to take its business to the 'next level.' They invested in brand new technology and have so far made it, but to finance the investments, they had to offer security in all their assets. We have all tried buying something where we add a specific personal risk to the equation, but imagine doing this on equipment with little or no street credit - well, that requires something.
We can love technology for technology's sake, but we need to make money with it when the day is over. Investing in companies and technologies that can provide a competitive advantage on paper is always interesting, but sometimes investing in companies and products with a history can be the more solid path.
From my perspective, technology is an enabler. Your business is not based on what technology you have but on how your investments support your business objectives. I have been with printing companies running OLD offset presses with no color management, still producing some of the most stunning art books I've ever seen. Whether you invest in a new offset, toner, or inkjet-based printing device or not, it will not change your business if you are not using it to support a plan that will give you that edge your competition doesn't have!
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Does that mean I shouldn't buy equipment from startups? Of course not. But I advise investing with your eyes open and laser-focused on what you invest in. Buying from established companies is, of course, safer, but even the large and established companies develop products that don't deliver.
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