Steffen Haaga, formerly EFI director, sales productivity SW EMEA, left the company after 15 years, on 31 May and started on Taopix’s Drupa stand on 1 June.

“It’s going really well so far. It’s crazy in a good way to see how busy we are here. It’s a growing market and a nice challenge,” he told PrintWeek at the Düsseldorf show.

“I was 15 years at EFI and I decided I wanted a new challenge in business. I’m looking forward to the opportunity the company and the platform gives us for the future.”

He said it was too early to speak much about his plans for the role, or if he will move from current home Munich to Newcastle, UK, where Taopix employs 30 staff. It also has the three sales people in the US, Hong Kong and Mexico.

He added: “I like Newcastle, it’s very friendly and a nice city.”

Taopix chief executive James Gray said: “I knew Steffen and I knew he handed his notice in at EFI. At the same time, we were looking to reorganise our sales team and sales management. It started with a very open conversation and ended with us offering him the position of commercial director.

“We’re looking to expand our sales operation; we're looking for growth over the next two or three years and we wanted to bring someone in with serious sales management and strategic sales experience.

“I knew Steffen had done great work at EFI and I was very impressed with what I’d seen. We’ve got high expectations of what he can do to help us.”

In the time he was there, Haaga said that EFI had changed radically, from a post start-up of 600 people to a global corporation and although he continued to enjoy working at EFI he is also enjoying being with a smaller company again. 

Taopix has been growing steadily since it was formed in 2007 by Gray and chief technology officer Kevin Gale and expanded into new £1m offices last year.

It has partnered with Canon, Imaging Solutions and HP. Its products are integrated with HP’s through HP PrintOS which was also on show at Drupa in the HP hall.