Clive Stringer joined Ricoh this month as director for continuous feed and high end software at its Commercial & Industrial Printing division.
He takes over from Taylor, who has been promoted to the new global position of director, Inkjet Production Solutions. Taylor will take up the new role on 1 April following a handover period, and will be responsible for the “preparation and global launch of key strategic high-speed inkjet solutions focused on the graphic arts market”.
He will also be involved with Ricoh Europe’s planning and development teams in gathering customer requirements – in Europe and worldwide – that will shape future products.
Stringer joins the Japan-headquartered manufacturer from BlueCrest, the former Pitney Bowes business, where he worked for a decade in a number of senior roles, most recently as vice president of global pre-sales.
Prior to that he worked at the IBM printing unit that became the InfoPrint Solutions joint venture with Ricoh, and which was subsequently taken over entirely by Ricoh in 2010 as the foundation of its high-volume print offering.
Stringer said he was excited about the new opportunity. His focus will be on Ricoh’s ‘Pro’ range of continuous feed high-speed inkjet printers for the direct mail and transactional markets – encompassing the Pro VC70000, Pro VC40000, Pro VC20000 and Pro V20000 – as well as modular workflow software suite ProcessDirector.
He commented: “The high-speed inkjet team has grown very quickly under Tim’s watch and I am excited to be able to continue that momentum as clients increasingly recognise the many tangible business benefits this technology consistently brings.
“Following extensive research and development Ricoh has created benchmark setting high speed inkjet solutions. As a result, clients can be confident that when they adopt the technology it will elevate their quality, capacity and productivity to expand capabilities and profitability, and address new opportunities.”
Stringer is the latest in a number of significant hires across Ricoh’s commercial printing business, with Mark Hinder and Juergen Freier joining the group last autumn.
Eef de Ridder, vice president at Ricoh Europe’s Commercial & Industrial Printing Group, said high-speed inkjet was “capturing the imagination” of forward-thinking companies.
“With Clive, who will be supporting businesses who specialise in direct mail and transactional print joining Juergen Freier, recently appointed to guide more graphic arts oriented print service providers who are on their analogue to digital journey, Ricoh has the high speed inkjet expertise and portfolio to add strategic value across the market,” he stated.
