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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”.

News that the world’s first test tube beef burger has been produced in Europe has dominated the front pages recently. It appears that scientists in the Netherlands have managed to grow stem cells taken from a cow into a form of beef.

A traveller stops on an Irish country road and ask directions from a local. “Well Sir, if you are heading there, I wouldn’t be starting from here” is the reply. This rather apocryphal story came back to me recently when I was looking around the Landa Digital Printing facilities in Rehovot.

I didn’t need a wooden snail. I didn’t actually want one either, but I have got one now!
Let me explain. I have been on vacation in Spain and most days when on the beach, we are visited regularly by “looky looky” men.