Still Standing

Premedia provider HudsonYards, New York City, is a survivor. While many firms in its market have vanished due to the dramatic reduction in demand for high-end scanning, page composition and film imaging, the $40-million company is thriving—growing 25% last year alone by acquiring premedia services provider NEC, Nashville, in October 2006 and launching a West Coast unit in January. Another acquisition is planned in the coming months.

HudsonYards—which was purchased last year by The Caps Group, Chicago, from Schawk—has had many names on its door. Publishers Phototype Inc., Applied Graphics Technologies, AGT/Seven, Seven Worldwide and Schawk were all former iterations of the re-launched, year-old company.

The Caps Group, $85 million in sales, also operates premedia firms Black Dot Group, Superior Digital Graphics and CPE, along with packaging prototype producer Caps 57 and design firm Paragraphs. Caps Group acquired HudsonYards and Black Dot Group for $29 million in cash in March 2006.

“We've survived by embracing new technologies, addressing market realties and reinventing ourselves every year,” says Diane Romano, president and COO. Her door features an ad campaign that says, “The future belongs to those that adapt most skillfully to their challenges.”

Romano began her career in drafting and ascended to be one of the industry's top executives. She and two members of her current management team—Steve Finnerty, exec. VP sales, and Neil O'Callaghan, exec. VP of technology and operations—have run the company in its various forms for 25 years.

Romano says when competitors were folding, her firm was focusing on adapting technology to meet changed client needs, not making customers adapt to the firm's needs. As a result, says Romano, the company had little client turnover during turbulent times.

“Success hinges on developing strategic, one-to-one relationships with clients and maintaining a talented workforce,” she says. “We are growing our business by understanding client needs and utilizing our internal talent. It is all about the talent, not about the equipment.”

HudsonYards offers creative retouching, studio services, soft/remote proofing, color management, print management, asset management and workflow solutions for corporate marketers, retailers, publishers, designers and advertising agencies.

Clients include: Grey Worldwide, JWT, Ogilvy, Martha Stewart Living, Hearst Magazines, Meredith Publishing, Newsweek, Coty, Elizabeth Arden and Showtime Network. The company produces more than 20,000 jobs each year.

Romano says creative retouching, studio and publishing services are growing, while traditional prepress services—still a significant part of its business—are shrinking.

A new offering is “Studio Services”, which provides electronic mechanicals to clients by working from their creative concept.

“Some premedia companies are moving to printing, but we are moving upstream to be closer to the client,” says Romano. “Our focus is on making the first copy of whatever we are producing as perfect as possible.”

To that end, she says, the company made the move into studio services, helping clients with tactical creative execution of their brands and managing workflow through final distribution to a printer or other media.

HudsonYards operates three production facilities totaling 64,000 sq.ft. in New York City, Nashville and San Francisco that create millions of files each year for every media application. The sites are connected via high-speed Internet connections and so can share workloads during peak periods.

Clients are offered a variety of workflow and digital asset management options based on their unique requirements.

HudsonYards provides production management services to its publishing clients and developed a software suite called Publisher's Management Tools (PMT) to support the offering. The password-protected system is accessible through standard Internet browsers. It coordinates incoming ad workflow from start to finish, compares files received against space booked, preflights and verifies file formats, checks all routing/approvals and releases final advertising files to numerous printers across the country.

The system also places ads in a searchable archive to expedite “pick up” ads running in future issues.

The company is running Xinet Fullpress, WebNative and Venture on an SGI server for OPI and file serving. FlashNet is integrated for archiving and retrieval purposes with WebNative, a dynamic digital asset management system that allows real-time updating and on-the-fly conversion for different file types and media via the Internet. The system combines asset management capabilities with the Xinet's FullPress OPI engine and print spoolers.

Another asset management solution is Agile Enterprise's Teambase. Agile Enterprise—a division of HudsonYards—is a software development company that was acquired by AGT in 1997 and operates as a standalone business. Teambase is a media-neutral database that integrates standard industry applications, including QuarkXPress, Microsoft Word and Adobe Creative Suite 2. It allows for mixing Macs and PCs, and supports groups that collaborate over the Web. It provides controls and tracks production, managing the content created by writers, graphic artists and page designers.

In a templated workflow, Teambase automatically assembles publications when components are ready, shortening production cycles and allowing for the latest possible closing. The database publishes content to print, to the Web and even to wireless media at any predetermined time.

Newsweek magazine has 400 users accessing the Teambase database.

Workflow automation is powered by DALiM TWiST in a Dell Linux environment. TWiST is an “open” premedia job processing system that is not determined by output devices and is capable of interfacing to any print engine, platesetter, imagesetter or proofer. It supports many native formats and production tools. The TWiST workflow is equipped with 16 terabytes of RAID storage.

HudsonYards manages color on its output devices with ORIS Certified Proof. The system matches contract proofs to on-screen “virtual” proofs and to final press output, providing trackable results for proofs produced.

The system includes test targets and color characterization data for TR001 (SWOP) and FOGRA. A target strip containing critical color patches is printed in the margin of the proof, regardless of what system is used. Staff members read the target with a spectrophotometer, and the system prints a label with both L*a*b* and Delta-E values.

Three Fuji FinalProofs and two Kodak Approval XP4s produce high-end digital contract proofs. ORIS Color Tuner RIPs drive four Canon inkjets for SWOP-certified inkjet proofing, and an ICS Remote Director monitor proofing system produces SWOP-certified soft proofs. Proofing devices are continuously calibrated.

The company was recently asked by a major magazine publisher to calibrate its monitors to SWOP standards. “The client was considering using new SWOP 3 and SWOP 5 data characterization sets and ICC profiles,” says Neil O'Callaghan, HudsonYards, exec. VP of technology and operations.

SWOP ICC profiles were downloaded from the IDEAlliance Website for the company's inkjet and monitor systems. Output results were compared to results of the SWOP characterization data set.

“We achieved a good numerical match on the inkjet proof to the data set, and monitor to hard proof,” he says.

Consequently, GRaCoL, SWOP 3 and SWOP are new shop standards at HudsonYards. “We've long geared our publication work towards SWOP and TR001, but this was our first time using the new SWOP profiles,” says O'Callaghan.

www.hudson-yards.com, thecapsgroup.com, agileenterprise.com, dalim.com, xinet.com, cgsusa.com, icscolor.com, graphics.kodak.com, usa.canon.com, fujifilmgs.com, idealiance.org, swop.org, gracol.org, fogra.org and color.org