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Kodak, Xerox Increasingly Saying ‘NO’ to Trade Shows
Kodak, Xerox joins trend to skipWritten by Matthew Daneman
The International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition, held every four years in England, is a huge deal in the commercial printing world.Eastman Kodak Co. used IPEX 2010 to debut its Prosper 5000XL digital inkjet printing press — a key to the company’s successful turnaround. And Xerox Corp.’s Barnes & Noble store-sized display area at IPEX 2010 was packed with some of the company’s latest gear, including a Webster-made iGen4 digital printing press, a DocuColor 8002 digital printing press and a demo of Xerox’s own production inkjet technology being developed.
But when IPEX 2014 rolls around in a little over a year, Kodak won’t be there. Nor will it be at Print 13, to be held this fall in Chicago. Also not attending IPEX 2014 are such companies as Xerox, Hewlett-Packard Corp. and Heidelberg Printing Machines AG.
A growing number of companies in the commercial printing world are dialing down their use of trade shows as part of their marketing efforts.
“We’re in a world of information,” said Jon Levine, Xerox vice president of global experiential marketing. “The customer has all the control right now. What were trying to do is build advocates for our brand. The idea is, we have to reach our customers in different ways. The efficient way to do that might not be trade shows.”
Like auto shows for prospective car buyers, trade shows have long been one of the few places where buyers of big expensive printing presses or other big-ticket industry offerings could compare different products side by side.
And today information is easily accessible online.
“We’re moving from events where we showed lots and lots of discrete products to where we’re having more and more events where we share knowledge to improve the overall value chain of our customers,” said Christopher Payne, Kodak vice president of business-to-business marketing.
“(Printers) don’t just print today, they help their customers communicate, whether that be in printed form, online, with databases, etc. So the future is less about looking at individual pieces of equipment and more about, ‘How is my business opportunity going to be solved by the vendor?’ ”
And that means less emphasis on taking mountains of equipment to trade shows around the globe and more emphasis on bringing customers to one of Kodak’s demonstration centers in Rochester, Vancouver, or Dayton, Ohio, Payne said.
That switch comes as Kodak is leaving behind photography for a business model that revolves around various aspects of printing, such as packaging printing and commercial inkjet printers.
And the move far predates the company’s current bankruptcy. As far back as the 2008 Print show in Chicago, Kodak left its equipment at home and instead showed its gear virtually, Payne said.
“Typically at Drupa we’d take lots and lots of equipment. Last year, we only took the future products and technologies that demonstrate our vision. We didn’t take every piece of the portfolio. This is just a logical extension of the overall direction we’ve been on for some time.”
The print show moves seem to go against the grain of the exhibition, convention and trade show industry as a whole. The most-recent data and projections from the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, a convention and trade show industry group, indicated that while exhibitions took a nosedive in 2009 and 2010 in terms of such metrics as attendance and size of events, those numbers have since been regaining lost ground, though slowly.
While Kodak and Xerox are cutting back on their traditional trade show plans, both companies — as well as many of their rivals — will be in Switzerland next week for Hunkeler Innovationdays. And Kodak will continue to attend such major trade shows as Drupa — held in Germany every four years, the most recent being in 2012.
“We still intend to go to trade shows and events,” Payne said. “What we’ve really said .. is we wouldn’t focus on taking equipment and on classic show floorspace.”
Xerox’s Levine pointed to a recent deal with the Women’s Tennis Association, in which Xerox will be the association’s sole provider of business services and office document technology, as an example of how it is trying to demonstrate its offerings to customers.
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