New Opportunities for Color

Xerox believes that digital color documents are infiltrating the corporate office in a big way. To back up this conviction, Xerox is spending $715 million of this year's R&D budget on digital color projects. If Xerox is right, demand for the digital products that result from this investment will rise dramatically over the next few years.

For distributors, the projected demand for color could mean an opportunity for new or increased markets. Digital color printing capabilities can provide new types of products that most distributors do not currently list in their portfolios. These can include items such as: employee handbooks individualized to the employee; marketing programs tailored to the recipient; and financial documents with special offers advertised along with a customer's statement.

While all of these things are possible now, higher printing costs for digital color and complex design issues, which require special software, have held up mass implementation. However, the next generation of digital printers will be less expensive to own and operate. They will also include built-in software that will automatically allow the inclusion of special offers, color charts and colorful highlights on currently existing statements, based upon the information included in those statements.

Who better to take advantage of digital color printing than distributors who can design these types of complex programs for clients? Whether the customer runs a program in-house on its own equipment or wants to outsource, distributors can handle everything from pulling together stock, designing a program, including a premium and mailing the whole thing economically.

If Xerox cashes in on its $715 million investment, a whole new area of printed products will become available for distributors to sell.

Bill Drennan, Editorial Director