Keith Cox
Editor’s Note: Keith Cox has been involved with the reprographics industry since the early 1990s. This first-person article, based on an interview with IRgA Managing Director Ed Avis, discusses his work and the many people he has met along the way. This is the second of four installments. When we left off in the previous segment, Keith was starting with Image Machines (click here to read the previous installment).
From 1996 to 1998 I worked with Image Machines in Herndon VA. The Image Machines software enabled you to use their software and integrate a scanner and printer to have a fully digital system. This was all prior to the Océ 9800. We had a lot of success with that concept because it just made so much sense. Economical scan to print solutions did not yet exist. Inkjet or LED printer, it made no difference. Image Machines also wrote controller software for Xerox, Regma (in Europe) and Shacoh (KIP) to name a few. After they developed a controller for the Xerox 8845, they then wrote a driver for the 8830, which was Xerox Engineering's big bestseller back in the mid '90s. That development was huge. We were then able to work with all the 8830 resellers.
The 8830 driver led me to more repro shops than ever. The Xerox relationship helped guide the way. For example, as a result I was introduced to the O'Keefe's from RS Knapp. We were coming into New York City to do a trade show, and the Xerox rep asked Michael O’Keefe Sr. to arrange for the use of an 8030 at the show. Mr. O’Keefe did not even know me but trusted me with a $35,000 printer! I mean, that was just incredible. I thought, well, if this is how they do business, I would love to work with these guys.
Early in 1998 I was contacted by old friends from Océ and PLP, Scott Pember and Jayson Jones, who were from PageMasters. Jayson Jones came from PLP, and he had partnered with Thomas Dmitri. Thomas had worked for Microsoft and was considered a very sharp software guy. Jayson and Thomas had formed a company and started an OEM relationship with Océ. You remember of course that PLP was in an OEM relationship with Xerox exclusively. So, the only way to go was to work with Océ. They started out with a product called Apprentice. Apprentice (renamed ReproDesk for Océ) offered the kind of print management capability found in PLP, as well as providing speed enhancements to the printing equipment.
The Océ 9800 was relatively new and certainly a fast-printing device in its own right. Thomas and Jayson worked with Océ in Venlo to create a board that would run it even faster, resulting in even greater production from the device. We split the country four ways, and I was responsible for working with Océ and their resellers in the southeast, from Texas to the Carolinas. We spent most of our time in reprographic shops. From Miller Blueprint in Austin, TX to ReproProducts in Atlanta, GA. It was during this time there was a lot of growth in those areas, especially the explosive growth in Florida where you could measure the building construction progress week to week instead of year to year. It was incredible! The Océ rep that covered the area was Andrew Gross and he did very well.
I was responsible for the software. And therefore the flea on the tail of the dog. I travelled weekly and went everywhere with the Océ guys. Think about all the shops around in the southeast in the late '90s, and I was in almost all of them.
There was a time when I could walk into a shop and tell if it was successful. Just by the way the vibe it gave off, the people at the front desk and what you observed. The noise inside the shop, the walk-in traffic and jobs waiting to be picked up - that kind of thing. What was interesting, without making a snap judgement, was the “feel” of the shop. Over time I could do a fast and fairly accurate appraisal of a company just by walking through the door.
I remember one day at PageMasters as we were coming out with a web-based document management system for reprographic shops. We were trying to determine the market size of the reprographics industry. If you think about the 1998 - 1999 timeframe, we felt that the U.S. market was approximately 2,000 repro shops. Compare that to market estimates today. I'm not sure if you could find 500.
Meanwhile at PageMasters, we had succeeded in printing DWG files fairly well. DWG files were a problem based on how Autodesk treated the data. The entire design including the fonts and text were processed as a graphic image. A simple design file of 140K would result in something over 6MB of data when processing it as a print file. Very cumbersome when printing full sets back in the days of the early Pentium processors. While that may not seem like an exceptionally large file today, back in the late '90s it would take a great deal of processing horsepower to print.
PageMasters was developing their Plans and Specs software and the developers created a format called an LDF (layered document format). This format solved the Autodesk file problem by taking the fonts and anything else that rode along with the DWG file and placing it on a different layer as part of the same file. By putting it on a different layer, they were able to treat this “meta” data as text as opposed to graphics, which used less space. And so that same 140K DWG file converted to an LDF might have been only 175K as opposed to 6MB.
Autodesk was actively trying to figure out how to utilize their DWG files for use on the web. They were having difficulties solving the issue when they heard about the breakthrough at PageMasters. When they learned about what we were doing, a little Autodesk-owned company called Buzzsaw.com came knocking on our door and making arrangements to purchase PageMasters.
Next Edition: Keith moves on to bigger companies.