Vince Lapinski is to become the first American CEO of MAN Roland North America, since the early 1990s, when he succeeds Yves Rogivue on January 1, 2007. Rogivue, who has led the organization for six years, stunned the sheetfed printing sector in 2002 by bluntly accusing press-manufacturing competitors of funny financing. He argued that presses are given away for market share with complete disregard for the industry’s health. Before Rogivue arrived, this topic was never openly discussed.

As Rogivue focused on sheetfed, Lapinski used his matter-of-fact manner to take charge of MAN Roland’s web offset division. Lapinski grew the commercial web market share in North America from eight percent to 30 percent in three short years, marked in 2005 by a historic US$200 million deal with Quebecor World Inc. MAN Roland’s newspaper market share hit a record-high one year at 78 percent. PrintAction spoke with Lapinski about his plans to continue the web success while increasing growth in the sheetfed sector for MAN Roland. 

Jon Robinson: How comfortable are you on the sheetfed side?
Vince Lapinski: I would be the first to say that my focus has been on the web business, however, I have watched the sheetfed business over the past few years. I am going to take some time to dig in, roll up my sleeves, spend time with sheetfed customers, and get out there with the sales and service teams. We have made some nice strides in the last year or two, but we are not where we want to be yet, market share wise. In Canada, we are well-positioned on both the sheetfed and web businesses. With significant orders in the last few years in commercial web and long-standing success over the years with our newspaper business.   

You are the press architect behind the North American Quebecor World web deal. How did that change MAN Roland’s position in the market?
It really put our commercial heat-set side on the map because it was so big. In prior years we received important orders from Quad and Donnelley. We gained success with independently-held commercial printers which helped us slowly build the business, but the Quebecor was such a big order it gave us – and them – a lot of exposure. Once you get an order of that size people take note and say, ‘Wow, they must be doing something right to get a company of that magnitude and that size to make that big of an investment with that many presses ordered at one time.’  

Why did Quebecor World turn toward MAN?
They had sites in Europe with MAN Roland commercial heat-set equipment. Some of those plants they had acquired in building Quebecor in Europe. So they got exposed to our equipment in Europe more so than anywhere and what they saw was solid, consistent performance. Frankly in the U.S., with a lot of the equipment they put into their plants from our competitors, they were never getting to the performance level they should have. 

Why did Yves Rogivue shake up the sheetfed industry by calling out other press manufacturers to stop funny financing?
It was a sound business message and, I think, it is the right message. Was it going out and being bold? Yeah. But it is very hard to argue against it.  

How did the funny financing agenda change MAN?
Before that, we were sucked into it like everyone else was, doing very creative financing to move equipment. A lot of that equipment came back because companies went under. They couldn’t pay for it, so you are taking that equipment back then quite honestly you haven’t sold anything. You have created a huge downside risk.

Will you continue Rogivue’s financing agenda?
With that particular agenda: Yes. That will certainly be my mantra too. We don’t need to creatively finance in order to sell equipment. Quite frankly, printers who are healthy should be up in arms when these other suppliers are supporting weaker printers, which compete with that advantage and then ultimately put your stronger printers at some risk. Nobody wins.
Have competing press manufacturers changed their financing structure?
No. Some of our competitors are still financing like that, still doing full recourse, creative stuff to move equipment. 

Is MAN Roland manufacturing in China currently?
No, not at this present time. There are a lot of things being looked at but nothing that I could share today. But there are a lot of things being looked at.  

Will MAN Roland’s North American operations be overshadowed by the attention of building market share in China?
Emerging markets are important. The brick countries are certainly part of a strategy for any company that plays globally, looking at Brazil, Russia and China and others. But if you look at the worldwide printing market, and they say it is about US$500 billion, the U.S. market is still about US$186 billion. So this market is still a very strategic market for MAN Roland and that won’t change. We have invested a tremendous amount of money in this market over the years – tremendous.

What is your agenda for North America?
Yves got us started in the right direction, increasing the sheetfed business volume and ensuring we are profitable. I think the next challenge will be breaking into the competitive accounts. Our first priority is to make sure that we secure and support our existing customers, that they keep coming back and buying from us. That is critical. But now there is opportunity to break into some of the other markets where our competitors are very strong, in the mid- to large-format. 

Let’s face it: Heidelberg is still the major market-share leader and they are still our number-one target and we have made some good inroads in the last couple of years, gaining some access to some of their accounts. So I think our strategy is very clear to build market share by targeting select customer accounts.

Why, in May 2006, did your parent company, MAN AG in Munich, sell 65 percent of MAN Roland to Allianz Capital Partners?

When MAN’s new chairman Håkan Samuelsson took over [in January of 2005], he was running the truck and bus business. Saumelsson and the market analysts felt it no longer made sense to have a conglomerate of different portfolio companies, because it wasn’t allowing the [group] stock to appreciate on the marketplace. The stock could get stronger, bring more value to the shareholders.

If you read the latest business news, MAN is trying to take over Scania. Scania is, maybe, the third largest truck company in Europe. And Volkswagen, which has 34 percent of Scania, has now bought 15 percent of MAN. So the thought is that Volkswagen, MAN and Scania will come together somehow and create this mega truck company. It would be the largest truck company in Europe. 

This is the reason for the spin-off of MAN Roland. Going forward, the best thing for Samuelsson to do was to find a good partner because MAN still owns 35 percent of us. Now Allianz, with 65 percent, typically invests in companies to grow them through acquisition, and then plans to take MAN Roland public. 

With Allianz now owning 15 percent of Heidelberg, what is the potential for it being merged with MAN Roland?
I can’t tell you anything because I don’t really know.  It would seem that Allianz has a vision of how to consolidate this industry and they have the money, experience and capability to do that.

What is the current financial position of Heidelberg relative to MAN Roland?
It could be anything, you never know. When they spun off their web business, people will tell you that they really didn’t get much money for it from Goss. They put a tremendous amount of money in and had major market share, but were losing money every year. I think, that is when Heidelberg said, ‘we don’t see a way to profitability in this business. We need to get rid of it and instead focus on sheeted presses.’

How much potential does the Canadian market hold for MAN Roland?
Our equipment is in most of the major newspapers in Canada. In the commercial heat-set side we have made some nice inroads. For years, the only company using our heat-set equipment was PLM. Barry [Pike, CEO of PLM] was our lone promoter up there with our web equipment. But we increased our sales in Canada, gaining the following Commercial accounts: St. Joe’s, Point One and Dollco. Dollco is an excellent example of a printer with our sheetfed equipment whose business made it possible to grow into our web equipment. Kevin [Nicholds, CEO of Dollco] and his team have been excellent to work with. He is elated about the equipment as they just started up the ROTOMAN. 

Some larger vendors, not just press companies, in Canada are scaling operations back to the U.S. Will MAN Roland follow this trend in the future?
We are very entrenched in Canada and have decent market share in Canada on sheetfed. Obviously Heidelberg is one, but we would say that we are clearly number two in Canada. We are very much committed to Canada. We have our Canadian group there and Canada has been excellent to this company. We are bullish there.

What are your sheetfed projections for North America?
We certainly want to grow our market share on the sheetfed side in North America. We have to. Our new owners expect it. We are going to continue to be challenged to get to that 20 to 25 percent. We would like to get to 25 percent market share in North America but it is also important that we run a profitable business. We want to be building market share with profitability, not by just going out and taking orders. You can go out and buy market share, but we are not going to take that path.

With pundits suggesting that high-production inkjet will eventually hit offset much like how desktop publishing hit typesetting and how CTP hit film, how is MAN Roland preparing for the future?
It is a provocative question. I wouldn’t say that inkjet will move that fast. How long will conventional printing be in place? We think for a long time. But will that market change? Yes, the industry is changing. We have the DICOweb, which is the direct imaging on press, and we continue to develop this and other technologies that can meet the future needs of printers.  

MAN Roland has a strong R&D effort. There are areas that might go outside of the normal print-on-paper, where printing may be used in other industries to create products. I do not want to lead into this too much, but I would tell you, that as a company, there are other growth areas.