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We Brits delight in being out of step with our European partners. There is an apocryphal story about a headline in the Times of London some years ago. Apparently during some bad autumnal weather the headline read, “Fog in the English Channel – Europe cut off”. It sort of sums up our approach to our position of being a small island off the coast of Europe, with our adherence to pounds sterling and miles instead of euros and kilometres.

As Benny Landa explained in his recent webcast, our representatives have been on a global trek – covering North America, Asia, Europe and many points in between. We’ve met with many of printers, converters, industry analysts, and print purchasers.

We have got greedy English bakers to thank for the introduction of food labelling. King John, he of Magna Carta fame, was apparently driven to introduce a law in 1203 which compelled bakers to put their identifying mark on loaves, so the bread could be traced. It seems that bakers in London had taken advantage of the growing population by adulterating their bread and adding all sorts of other cheaper ingredients to the wheat, in an attempt to increase their profits.

Landa Digital Printing customers are like no other manufacturers customers. Let’s face it, they were amazed by a brand new concept at a trade show, probably spent no more than an hour or so looking at a multi-million € / $ presentation and then put their name and a not unsizeable pot of their own money against one of the first ones to be built. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they knew that their machine would not be delivered for at least a couple of years. I have been selling equipment to printers for many years and I can tell you that I was as surprised as anyone at the numbers of people who had faith in the vision that Benny Landa described to them at Drupa 2012.

This is the time of year in Europe when students in their final year of school get their grades and have to make decisions about whether to go to university, and if so, what course to study. For many these days, it is a very expensive investment. Some are choosing to look for other routes to employment, by-passing universities and getting internships or apprenticeships with large companies instead.

When we returned from drupa, all of us at Landa had a sense of euphoria. We had worked so hard and we had such amazing results: tens of thousands of visitors to our booth; standing room-only shows; dozens of articles about Nanography^®; some two hundred thousand visitors to our website, YouTube channel and social media pages.

In short, the reaction to Nanography was phenomenal. It was clear that we’d really touched a nerve and that the industry desperately needs a digital solution for mainstream printing.

I have a soft spot for Kodak. So news that they are exiting Chapter 11 was a bright spot for me. I started my print selling career in a division of Kodak, called Itek Graphics. Since I knew nothing about print at the time in 1975, I was sent to their training centre in North London and spent a couple of weeks getting to grips with offset lithography. I was amazed to find that all the colours that were being printed on a sheet came from only three colours and black.

When I was a young salesman, in the days before mobile phones, the internet, social media and open neck collars, my old boss gave all of us in the sales team a tie pin. It was in the form of a gold bar with the letters YCDBSOYA in a prominent position across it. You can imagine it always caused a comment when customers saw it as they wanted to know the meaning of the acronym. It was in fact a reminder to us young sales people that “You Can’t Do Business Sitting on Your Axx”.