TRYING TO STOP JEFF Hayzlett extolling the virtues of print is as effective as the strategy adopted by the government of Lilliput to restrain Gulliver – it’s a complete waste of time and effort. Hayzlett lives and breathes print; he blogs it, he Tweets it and most of all he talks about it. He has already described himself as the biggest evangelist for print since Gutenberg, and with print under increasing pressure to prove that it is a powerful medium for communications and marketing, the need for evangelism is greater now than at any time since Gutenberg.

The need is there because received wisdom is that other media promise to supplant print.

Hayzlett is a great believer in these tools too, constantly checking his Twitter feed and monitoring what is being said about Kodak on blogs, forums, videos, Tweets or anywhere else on the web. He can then swoop to correct any misimpressions about the company.

When a financial journalist wrongly suggested that Kodak’s commitment to digital printing was flagging, Hayzlett and other Kodak board members stepped in to correct the comments using the same range of tools, including appearances on YouTube. It’s not always a business message. He has just Tweeted about a live turkey that was found strutting around Kodak office in Rochester, having crashed through a window the previous weekend. There are pictures too. The event has been recorded.

Hayzlett is one of the best-connected men on the planet. As chief marketing officer of Kodak he can command the attention of just about any major company in the world, access that he uses to press home the power of printing. The message is that Kodak is changing and that print is changing because of this. Kodak’s change is from a consumer-facing business to one where the majority of its income comes from business customers, from a business making analogue film to one that is wholly digital.

“This is the biggest corporate restructure of all time,” he says, never one to underplay his hand. The ethos of making technology simple to use, which started with George Eastman’s point-and-click Box Brownie, is being carried over into the stupendously complex workflows that are possible in print applications.

With work migrating to digital printing and to personalisation, the need to make the complex simple is greater than ever. The next step in this journey is with the promise of high-speed digital web printing. Kodak has been here for many years, with its continuous inkjet Versamark technology. This has never been effective at colour printing, hence a decision to partner with an oem supplier to offer a piezo inkjet solution for colour printing. The Versamark VL series machines are now being installed at customers, in the main for transactional and transpromo applications. Around the corner, however, lies Stream, the product on which Kodak’s place at print’s top table rests.

Hayzlett is in evangelising mode, preparing the way for what is intended as game-changing technology.

“We have a programme now with Stream for those customers who are coming to buy that technology. We go to build their business so by the time they have the machine they have the business. That’s an important development for us,” he starts.

The first beta users are working either with individual heads on mailing lines, or even – it is rumoured, somewhere in the US – with a full-colour version. Reports from the first beta user in Europe compare the quality favourably with the quality achieved through laser printing, but with better quality, lower cost and higher speed. This confirms the impression from Drupa, where a single mono head was part of a Muller Martini press set-up while most of the attention was drawn to the huge concept press employing the four-colour version of the Stream technology.

Since the show, this machine has undergone a comprehensive overhaul and will come to market under a still to be disclosed name, says Hayzlett. “We have gone back and changed the way the product will look. It is smaller and more streamlined in terms of what it looks like, though the print width is unchanged. The 1,000 feet a minute speed is the same, but there is greater reliability on the print heads and it delivers offset-class quality. What we have with Versamark at present is business class colour which is suitable for transpromo or some direct mail work, but it does not provide offset-class colour. Stream brings that offset-class quality.

“When we come to market we will have a full range of substrates available including coated and uncoated papers. This means that the last piece of the puzzle to challenge offset is in cost – it has to be cost-comparable to offset.

“We hope that in 5-10 years time, this machine will take 1% of what is now printed by litho. If we do that our shareholders will be extremely excited.

“Offset will continue to produce most pages, so we can’t be a threat to that; but if you want to produce customised catalogues and brochures at offset quality, cost and speed, the answer is inkjet.”

It is not enough to show inkjet in a prototype configuration. There has been a flurry of announcements which point to inkjet being the technology of the future, from the heavyweight examples like Kodak and HP, through Screen and Agfa to companies like Efi, Atlantic Zeiser and Nilpeter on label printing. “There will be companies that back off because their solutions are not as robust as they need to be. In order to be successful we believe you need fundamental expertise in digital imaging and materials science, which we have been building up for more than 100 years.”

That century of business has put Kodak in a position where its products have a presence in around half the world’s printers. The acquisitions over the last decade have gelled and the workflow to link every product area and every printer to his customers is under constant development. “Nobody else has our presence in both offset and digital markets,” says Hayzlett. That may not be a claim he can make much longer, as Fuji flexes its technological and financial muscles.

“We are going to see some major brands drop out of the market,” he continues. It means customers will have to choose partners to help grow their business with care. The serious volume printer will need to understand data and workflow and will be handling reels and reels of paper at massive speeds.

“There will still be a place for the artisan printer and we will continue to sell him litho plates, but we are seeing the smaller printers go out of business across the world.
“The answer is not about slashing prices. You can never cut your way to prosperity, especially in a crisis.”

The shift to digital production has had its impact on Kodak’s presence in its home town of Rochester. Here the company has had miles and miles of factories producing all types of film that are now redundant. Many are being pulled down and trees planted in their place. It’s a commitment to the environment that shows through in the sustainable ethos built into product development. And it’s one that the wildlife in New York State appreciates, as birds and animals return to land where the factories once stood, even if it means the occasional misguided turkey comes visiting.