Laurel Brunner, managing director of Digital Dots research agency casts her eye over the radical, and low cost, Xanté, which is developing innovative solutions specifically for small printer
Many small businesses, especially printers, can survive rough seas because they have close relationships with customers: both sides trust each other and rely on one another for support. The same applies for suppliers and developers, although many have disappeared during the wretched years of consolidation and collapse. But there are some companies that continue to survive. And Xanté, an American developer based in Mobile, Alabama, is one of them.The original intention of Xanté’s founder, Robert Ross, was to provide prepress and production technology purely for small printing companies.
He wanted the company to be a one-stop shop offering everything a small printer required, from imagers to consumables. Xanté has its own dedicated research team looking at ways of exploiting generic office printers to suit professional printing applications. Most of this work is done in the US, which is where all product re-engineering and software development also take place.
Xanté employs some 230 people. The company was founded in 1989 by a couple of ex-QMS engineers because one of the founders spotted a gap in the market. QMS had been a supplier of hardware and software controllers for the Unix market. It also produced controllers for HP and other laser printer manufacturers, including Minolta which subsequently acquired QMS. Many of the QMS end-users were small businesses that often couldn’t afford the high prices necessarily charged by companies with many layers of people to support.
Xanté started with simple filmsetters and CTP and now offers a range of products, all under A$100,000. It has maintained its focus on small printing companies, and no small part of this survival has been down to its close relationships with its customer base.
Over the years Xanté has grown steadily to become an international provider of low cost printing system technologies with many thousands of customers worldwide, with more than 1000 using its Ilumina digital colour press alone. The company now sells direct to dealers, a move which it hopes will bring it closer to end users. It will also have a fiscal benefit, since bypassing distributors removes another layer for commissions. In Australia it is Quickprint Technologies, part owned by a very succesful printing franchisee, is the dealer.
This ultimately benefits customers because it provides an open channel for development ideas, and access to different applications for Xanté technologies.
