Putting the “Custom” in Customer

Bernier: It happens constantly. Companies vertically integrate and then they spin off their various little pieces and concentrate on their core business. There are a number of printers who view their core competency as putting ink on the substrate. They buy the substrate, the ink, the prepress, and the image carrier, and they focus on printing. Others feel they can add more value to their customers if they handle all that; prepress is a business they believe helps them get business to the press. That said, there are some who do try and sell it, and those who have added prepress capabilities and gone out into the marketplace to sell those services to other printers. SGS migrated upstream because we had a really good value proposition for CPCs to help them manage their brand across multiple substrates and multiple print processes. Printers don’t like us calling on “their” customers; but we’re not selling print. We’re selling workflow solutions, digital asset management, and graphic services.