Gauging the Effects of the Ipex 2002 Show

Very few American printers will attend the Ipex 2002 exposition in the United Kingdom this month, but if past experience repeats itself, chances are quite good that they eventually will feel the effects of announcements and introductions there, whether it's about new equipment and software upgrades or vendor alliances, partnerships, and acquisitions.

By the same token, a lot of the announcements by the 1,200 or so participating companies will not mean much to printers here. Those releases mainly will have to do with availability of systems or distribution agreements in European markets, Asia, and other parts of the world. Nonetheless, the show is an important event to watch.

Ipex 2002, which is taking place April 9-17, is truly a global event. According to show organizers, half of the participating companies come from outside the U.K., representing about 30 nations. As for the turnout, about one-third of the visitors, expected to exceed 80,000, will be from overseas. This proportion is a little deceiving since, in this year when companies are economizing, a smaller total turnout from outside the U.K. probably won't mean that fewer printing companies will be represented, just fewer visitors from probably the same number of firms as in the past.

For the record, the exposition is expected to occupy 15 exhibit halls, or nearly a million square feet of space, about 10% more than the last Ipex, which took place in 1998.

Perhaps one reason for the light attendance from the U.S. is that the show is being held not in the London area, but in Birmingham, about 100 miles north of the capital, in that city's National Exhibition Centre. While there is plenty of quick, convenient transportation from London to Birmingham by air, rail, and motorcoach, this kind of "out-of-the-way" location tends to put off traveling Americans, particularly this year.

Speaking of Americans, quite a few U.S.-based companies are exhibiting at Ipex this year and most are taking advantage of the worldwide audience to introduce new products. Obviously, these products have the highest likelihood of becoming available to printers in the United States in the shortest period of time.

The Ipex show held in 1993 earned a place in history for the debut of variable-data digital color presses, which were presented by Agfa (its webfed Chromapress utilized a Xeikon engine and Agfa front-end system) and Indigo (the sheetfed E-Print 1000 system).

Such full-color systems, which were intended to serve as production units capable of imaging full-size pages containing all-new copy or images, fell far short of early expectations when it became clear how difficult it was to prepare all the changeable copy and images, to say nothing of the database information necessary for carrying out personalization.

Yet another challenge was not technical at all but simply how the customized, variable-data output—which involved potentially high value to a client but certainly high investment to the printer or supplier—could best be sold and priced. Vendors created elaborate how-to marketing kits to help users, but acceptance and profitable use of the equipment generally has been slow, albeit with flashes of success.

It's also revealing to glance through back issues of Graphic Arts Monthly, to consider the number of exhibitors that have faded from sight in the intervening years. Populating Ipex in 1993 were such vendors as Aldus, AM Graphics, ATF-Davidson, Camex, Crosfield, Digital Equipment Corporation, Horsell Anitec, Intergraph, Itek Color Graphics, Optronics, PixelCraft, and Xyvision. Many were later acquired, some were folded in to other companies, and others left the industry or closed their operations.

It will be interesting in a few years to check again which of today's exhibitors will still be serving the graphic arts business.