Świat DRUKU: You are a new man in X-Rite company. Can you tell what your previous career path looked like?

Golo Schiffmann: My profession is business management, so I am a business person by education. I spent many years in DuPont playing various different sales roles, next I moved to Heidelberg where I built consumer business on the area of Austria and supported the same activity at the area of Eastern Europe. For several years in Felix Schoeller Group, German producer of special photo paper, I was responsible for Japanese manufacturers selling to Epson, Canon, Sony. Next I moved to Sony where I was in charge of B2B photo section. Since 1 December 2010 I’ve worked for X-Rite.

ŚD: How do you assess the current position and achievements of X-Rite on the market?

GS: I can say, without being arrogant, that we are leader in color communication: instruments, software, and concepts. We have problems with comparing our sales with others, because there is no other supplier who has such a wide product portfolio and operates in so many applications. We have competitors only in certain vertical markets and with certain product lines. That’s why we believe that we are a leading company on the world market and on the Polish market too.

ŚD: In June 2010 the representatives of the X-Rite company visited Poland: Francesco Tomasello, Vice President of Sales EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), Stanislav Sulla, Sales Director Eastern Europe, Małgorzata Lososová Ungrádová, Paula Rosales Danuser, X-Rite Europe GmbH. We had an opportunity to ask them about the economical situation of that time. We thought then that the world economy was recovering from the crisis. Today we can see that it does not mean that the economic situation is favorable and some economists even talk about the time of the Great Crisis. What do you think about that?

GS: What you are talking about is the global economy crisis. That makes your question extremely difficult to answer. If we take the printing market, which is basicly the key area of interest for your readers, we can see that small and mid-sized companies struggle to stay competitive against some of the bigger printing houses with lower pricing and more financial stability. This trend affects Europe, both Western and Eastern. In result of consolidation more and more printing houses are closing and that in turn has an effect on the whole chain of supply. Less printing houses mean less distributors and dealers, as well as the smaller versity on the manufacturers’ side. The process of consolidation in graphic arts is negative and has few reasons: the request for lower prices of printing products and transfer of printing jobs to Far East.

ŚD: What is the significance of the Polish market for the entire X-Rite business in the European context?

GS: In Poland there are many offset, packaging, label and flexographic printing houses with established repro prepress area and well-educated staff. That is why this market is extremely important for X-Rite. I think we are well-established in Poland.

ŚD: We – as the organizer of the conference cycle Color Management Academy (our last fifth conference in November 2011 attracted over one hundred guests) – can see that the color management still meets with great interest. Is the knowledge of people working on the field of CMS solutions, color measurement and management at the same level in all European countries?

GS: After years of intensive workshops, interviews, conferences, thanks to the useful tool, Internet, knowledge about the color management among printers from Europe is equal. Poland is represented by many highly skilled and educated printers and professionals in the graphic arts area. If you talk about photo enthusiasts – I think there is some boom for educational development, not only in Poland but also in other countries. Some of them are already further advanced but in the professional graphic arts industry I would say it is rather equal.

ŚD: You came to Poland to present X-Rite's trading partners your new conception of cooperation. Could you make us familiar with this idea?

GS: X-Rite has always had a partner program which we enriched with some new ideas. Some things stay the same: we offer prices and promotions, training and education to our partners as well as we try to promote them whenever it’s possible (eg. we inform who is authorized X-Rite partner). But there are certain things we view differently: we introduce value-based discounting model. To close the business deal, to convince the customer for product, you need to perform certain tasks – we pay more attention to it. We appreciate the added-values our partners deliver to us and to the customers. If our partners from different countries are the same then our discounts for these partners can be the same. If the partner performs less added-value activities the discount is lower, because in that case we as X-Rite have to do bigger job. Thanks to this model end-users have guaranteed fair prices in all various ways of purchasing; partners can be sure that they get discount proportional to what they offer and manufacturers – that they are treated equally in relation to what they do. Everyone is satisfied.

ŚD: Which factor is the most important when you’re choosing your partners?

Małgorzata Lososová Ungrádová: We have different partners related with certain industrial areas, like: imaging (photo), printing, industrial and Pantone products. We look at the partner and check on which area of the industry are our partner’s interests and competence. Then we activate certain products lines in cooperation with them. For instance, Kamado is a highly professional partner for verticals such as plastic or textile industry. But on the printing market we prefer different partners who are well-established and have a strong network on that field: Grafikus, Perfekt-Mercor, Reprograf.

ŚD: Do you have any message to our readers?

GS: I would like to appeal to printers: please go back to your core competence which is quality. Development of digital printing in some cases deprived the printing creation of quality, beacuse at the very begining it was difficult to achieve for technical reasons. Printing is artistic. Although I percieve myself as a person belonging to this younger generation I still prefere print to screen. Whenever I read, I pay attention to two aspects: the content and the visual value. And I think that this is what a lot of people still do.

ŚD: Thank you for the conversation.