Las Vegas; Wednesday 18th Jan. 12.00
Jeff Jacobson, CEO, of the ‘new’ Xerox is less than three weeks’ into his role of running the slimmed down industry supplier. Joel Quadracci, CEO, of Quad/Graphics, the largest printing company in the world, is ten years into running his family-controlled publicly listed printer. They are both at the top of their game and they both came to Connect 2017 in Las Vegas to ‘chat’ with guy Gecht, CEO of EFI about the state of their businesses and the printing industry.
It’s a measure of the status of Connect that Jacobson made it his first public appearance since the split. Keen to reassure the industry of the commitment and capability of Xerox, he also so obviously enjoys his new position leading the business.
In his trademark down to earth style, he began by cautioning against labelling Xerox as an iconic business in the industry. Icons have a habit of being run over by events. Even though Xerox is market leader, it still has only 22 % of the overall business out there. He talks about the potential in the market rather than the threat to print. There are 50 trillion pages being printed every year of which only 3% are digital. He sees a lot of upside there.
But it can only be realised by thinking creatively. He told Gecht his latest hire is a chief strategy officer, removed from line command who’s job is to find where the company will be in the future.
His own style is frontline management as an embedded CEO close to the sales teams and customers. With a workforce of 35,000 and a management team of 150, he identified the biggest challenge as just harnessing the innovative power of Xerox.
He believes inkjet and toner will co-exist for a long time to come. There’re no plans to diminish the role of cut sheet, even as he admitted that the majority of current investment is being ploughed into inkjet.
Under the gentle interrogation from Gecht, he came across as the seasoned industry veteran he is, freely talking us through his roles in every company from Polychrome, to KPG, to Presstek before landing in Xerox. And who’d have thought he was a night school lawyer to begin with?
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First up on this Wednesday morning was Joel Quadracci, sitting beside the picture of a fireside, talking freely about the growth of the company his dad started in 1971. At the time it required a mortgage on the family home, a long journey to the $5 billion business it is today.
Along the way it traversed ground familiar to most printers but with a determination and nerve that is truly inspiring. Quadracci identified three distinct chapters in the narrative; the early years when the concept of technology life as opposed to mechanical life became the defining driver behind new investment. It doesn’t matter how long a press can last. More important is how far behind the current technology it is. Quad/Graphics was an early mover into all forms of technology
Chapter two involved the consolidation era of the early part of this century. At the time the company turned over $1.8 billion from 12 plants across the USA. The decision was made to become a consolidator and to go public on the stock exchange, while keeping family control of the stock. “We thought it was better to be doing the doing, otherwise it would be done to us,” said Quadracci.
The stark reality of consolidation became plain later when he told of closing 36 printing plants in two years, melting down the equipment rather than see it go onto the market.
Chapter three is now a new focus on servicing customers. “Follow the client’s pain,” is the way Quadracci describes it. The aims are, rather than sell print; help the client sell more of their stock. While proclaiming that Quad/Graphics remains a primarily a printer, it is one that is ideally placed to integrate marketing campaigns for clients across multiple channels, creating everything from printed pages to video, in-store marketing collateral to packaging.
Quadracci maintains that printers are well placed to solve CMOs frustration about running campaigns over so many different channels from many separate agencies and providers. “Never waste panic,” he said, claiming the marketing industry’s current disarray is a great opportunity for printers.
He told fascinating tales about how the company became to developer in so many areas, from ink production, to being a health car provider, initially for its own workforce then for its clients.
Following on from Gecht’s presentation the previous day about challenges of rapid change Quadracci has a rule of thumb. “Let the data tell you where to invest,” he said. He also believes that the CEO of any successful company is its chief salesman. Sitting atop a $5 billion printing company of 20,000 employees whose stock price went up 200% this year, he was well worth listening to.
Click here for Day 3: State of the US printing industry ahead of the Trump upturn