Guy Gecht: ‘much bigger markets than we’ve ever addressed before’
Opening EFI Connect 2018 in Las Vegas, CEO Guy Gecht said that the fourth industrial revolution ‘brings a lot more personalisation with very frequent design changes’ and that print will play an essential role in it.
Speaking to customers and OEM partners at the company’s annual conference, Mr Gecht said that the industry is currently experiencing the ‘calm before the digital storm’ that the fourth industrial revolution will bring but that ‘print is far from over’ and, far from disappearing, will only get stronger.
Touching on market sectors, Mr Gecht pointed to a strong preference for printed books even in the 18 to 24 age group (though with worrying figures for the proportion of those who don’t read books at all, particularly males). He also pointed to the strong growth in direct mail spend in the US from $41 billion to $76 billion between the two election years of 2012 and 2016.
Mr Gecht revealed that EFI is now experimenting with virtual reality to allow customer demonstrations of the Nozomi corrugated digital press and explained that further applications of the technology would support maintenance and troubleshooting.
Describing the fourth industrial revolution as ‘where the virtual world meets the physical one’, he stated that the key enablers for building print applications in areas as diverse as apparel, building materials and packaging are inkjet and smart automation, the former because it is non-contact print technology and the latter because ‘there’s no time for human touches’.
‘Print is no longer just documents or publishing, it’s everything in the world that needs images. These are much bigger markets than we’ve ever addressed before,’ he said.
