Prepress
Alwan Color Expertise Announces Record Growth – 200 New Installs in 2007 –
Friday 09. May 2008 - Alwan Color Expertise today announces its best financial results ever in 2007, with total sales value increasing by more than 50% compared to 2006, and over 200 new sites installed.
Says Elie Khoury, company founder and president, “By any standard, 2007 is Alwan’s best to date. Sales, both in Euro and in units, have never been higher. The growth is even more spectacular when you consider that even with the drop in the dollar, more than 20% of our revenue came from the US market!”
In January 2007, the company added new personnel to the company including Patrick Van Dam as new Sales Director. Under Van Dam’s guidance, Alwan has tripled its distribution channel over the last year.
Khoury remarks that the surge in Alwan sales has been an international phenomenon. Sales peaked in 14 countries and were spearheaded by major distributors in all locations including the US, the Benelux, Italy, Scandinavia and others. The company points to growing sales across its product range with CMYK Optimizer Print & Publish as its top selling product.
Alwan Successes Worldwide
In North America, where sales rose 500% in 2007, Khoury credits Pilot Marketing’s David Hunter, Alwan Color’s primary distributor in the US during 2007, for the marked increase in sales.
Hunter comments, “I’ve been involved with color in graphic arts since the 80s, and as a color consultant I can attest to the many attempts so many have made to make color management a feasible and efficient process for our industry. Alwan Color Expertise is one of the very few that has truly broken ground with solutions that comprehensively address real world color issues from design through printing. It’s very exciting to bring Alwan into resellers and shops, because the results, and the reaction, are immediate and significant.”
In addition to identifying and assisting resellers in implementing the latest advances in color management and imaging, Hunter has served as a trainer/lecturer for many conferences and organizations, including PIA/GATF, where he has taught the five-day Implementing Color Management course. Over 1000 participants since 1999 have attended Hunter’s training sessions there.
Among the major installations that Hunter points to in North America is at Sandy Alexander, Inc., one of the most respected, full service graphic communication companies in the U.S. Alwan’s CMYK Optimizer is functioning as the proverbial “glue” that brings the heretofore art and science of color together in the prepress department, to standardize CMYK files from all sources and deliver output files that are compliant with specific printing press requirements. This means improved printability, faster make-readies, and a better match with proof…on a consistent basis, and automatically.
In the Benelux sales took a further jump, with more than 30 installations including the largest sheet-fed offset group Thieme, RSDB web offset printers at different sites; and leading prepress companies like Neroc’ VGM and Edge Premedia.
According to Menno Mooij of ISI publishing innovators, “Alwan CMYK Optimizer is the right product at the right moment. All printers in the Benelux are in the process of standardization and automation. CMYK Optimizer offers unique features that no other solutions, including major prepress systems, perform; like color/TAC analyzing stage, dynamic TAC and dynamic DeviceLink profiling. These capabilities are the reason why, in the Benelux, large and small printers and prepress houses choose to integrate CMYK Optimizer in their prepress and preprint workflows.”
In Italy, distributor Col.net is having widespread success with Alwan solutions in all segments of the print industry; from newspapers, commercial printers large and small, to gravure, offset, web-offset, and more. Roberto Galbado, director, says, We’re having great success with Alwan technology and among the chief reasons is ease of integration. There’s no print ink on paper device or system that Alwan can not fit with perfectly.” Col.net’s success in implementing Alwan technology is evidenced by the fact that it has been installed in most all of the major newspapers throughout Italy.
One of the hallmark achievements for Col.net recently was the implementation of Alwan CMYK Optimizer by Mondadori Printing, one of the largest publishers in Europe. Alwan’s software proved to be the essential technology to ensure exceptional print quality for the renowned Pirelli Calendar book. Mondadori depended on CMYK Optimizer to handle the color management on this world-renowned, 639-page compilation of the annual Pirelli Calendars, published from 1964 through 2007. The high-end publication was printed in offset with a very high print run and contained both color and black-and-white images.
Mondadori, like most of Col.net’s customers, was instantly sold on Alwan once company executives and staff witnessed how easy it is to achieve optimal color management almost immediately. “It’s so easy it’s almost unbelievable,” Galdbaldo adds.
Discerning Partners Key to Sales Momentum
“Our criteria for choosing technically astute sales representation is quite strict, and Dave exemplifies the reasons why we are so discerning about our partners.” Khoury is looking forward to similar success with Alwan Color’s newest US reseller partner, Color Management Group.
“With 2008 as a DRUPA year, our expectations are high that we’ll continue our sales momentum and are confident in doing even better this year,” Khoury says.
The success of 2007 for Alwan is marked by the release of CMYK Optimizer version 3, which uses the Adobe library and features an array of new features and Alwan’s unique Dynamic DeviceLinks color technology innovation.