"We are really bringing the Drupa experience to North America with the roll out of several new digital presses, most of which we had launched and announced at Drupa," HP marketing director David Murphy told PrintWeek.
Murphy noted that beta tests of the Indigo 10000 at facilities such as Sandy Alexander and Consolidated Graphics were attracting plenty of attention.
"That rollout is generating a lot of attention in the Americas and right behind it is the North American launch of the HP 7600 and the 5600 digital presses, both of which have significant new features including the enhanced productivity mode (EPM) which enables a 33% increase in productivity," he said.
"The HP 7600 is now the fastest two page sheetfed press on the market, while the 5600 is follow-on to the HP5500 and has a top speed of 90 pages per minute."
Murphy added that print business owners were coming to shows in the mood to buy, adding: "We actually sold quite a bit at Drupa and Graph Expo is not really that different from a selling perspective.
"Our customers and prospects come there to make decisions and to accelerate their position in the buying cycle by moving from the awareness and consideration stage to the customize planning stage where we sit down with them and look over the volume and shifts and we show them what their costs will be."
He added that HP graphics sales have been steady despite the economic downturn. "We have had 10 consecutive strong quarters in our graphics business in the Americas," Murphy stressed.
"Strong sales are not a new phenomenon for us - we’ve been on an upward trajectory since 2009 [and] we have created a leadership position in the digital and the wide format space."
Responding to market speculation about HP's plans long-term, he said: "What has changed in the last couple of years is that the market has come to understand that HP is committed to this market and that we are going to continue to invest and innovate in it.
"Our customers have done their research on the front end and know that they can trust us and that when we make the installation it’s the beginning of a multi-year partnership."
Murphy cited the role of Dscoop (Digital Solutions Cooperative) the community of graphic arts business owners and technical professionals who use HP Indigo and Scitex equipment and related solutions.
"Most of the print providers in business today are pretty savvy and attuned to the dynamics for the market, and they know that in order to serve their customers’ needs they can’t sell print as simply a commodity and they have to provide additional value through digital marketing service and cross-media campaigns," he explained.
"We work with our commercial printing partners to teach them how to sell digital and Dscoop helps spread the message of what digital print can do and what HP can do from a support and investment perspective."
There were a number of other GraphExpo highlights as well, including San Diego-based inkjet manufacturer Memjet showcasing its core waterfall printhead technology, which can jet more than 700m drops of ink a second.
"Drupa was a big success for us as we announced two leading OEM partnerships with Toshiba TEC and Océ, a Canon company. We also distributed more than 3,000 leads to our OEM partners and reinforced the adoption of Memjet technology already implemented by Xanté, Colordyne, Delphax Astro, Rapid, Lomond, OWN-X, LG and Lenovo," said Memjet VP of brand and communications Jeff Bean.
"And now with the recent announcements of SuperWeb and PrintWare and additional news coming from our existing OEMs at Graph, it’s safe to say, we are officially scaling the business. We’re now past the "startup" phase. We’re in growth mode."
One GraphExpo attendee, Matt Giandonato, digital print manager with Chicago-area commercial printer/marketing services production company Tukaiz, said: "People seemed to like the technology and where things are going, especially in digital."
"As far as standing out we looked at the HP 10000—nice technology, great quality, larger format so we’re looking at that. We have one of three Scodix 1200 digital presses in the country so we spent a lot of time at their booth, talking about the technology."
Giandonato said that one highlight for him was seeing Benny Landa’s presentation, adding: "That new technology he’s looking to come out with is going to be a game changer. There was a lot of talk at the show wondering where this technology will go in terms of affecting offset printing."
