Jeff Ekstein

(Originally in the October 2004 issue of PrintAction)

At the recent Canadian Printing Industries Association conference in Jasper, Alberta, Jeff Ekstein was elected as chairman of the board. Ekstein has spent several years working with the association, primarily bringing the concerns of Canada’s $20-billion printing sector to the attention of top-level parliamentarians. He does this in his spare time, when he is not busy running Willow Printing Group. PrintAction tracked Ekstein down at his home in Concord, Ontario, on a Sunday to get his take on the direction of the printing industry in Canada.

John Robinson: What excites you most about the print industry?

Jeff Ekstein: I’ve been in the print industry pretty much my whole life, being part of a third-generation family business. As time has progressed and the industry has changed, as technology has changed, I still have the same enthusiasm because there are still new challenges with every job. And new technology keeps things fresh.

What scares you most about the printing industry?

Today, the biggest fear I have is my competition. Not in the sense that I don’t like competition, but rather their outlook on the future. Many of my peers have blinders on and think that things will come back because they have survived through depressed pricing time and time again. They are the ones who are actually driving the prices down. Instead of looking to add value, they are just falling into the trap of dropping prices, dropping prices, and dropping prices. That scares me because they are taking the entire value out of print.

Does print have a public relations problem?

If you want to talk about the image of print, it is seen as a dirty profession, ink under the fingernails and maybe not all that sophisticated. So we go to clients and talk about computer to plate. We figure that they understand what we are talking about, which makes us appear to be more technologically advanced. But that is not necessarily the case.

Yes, I believe that there is a public relations problem within the industry both from the marketplace looking at it as being a non-technical, dirty, blue-collar profession, but also from a value perspective because a lot of people still look at it as ink on paper.

How is the CPIA fixing the misinterpretation of print?

We are working on the development of a sector council. One of the initiatives of the sector council is to help the public relation efforts regarding the image of the industry, from the perspective of trying to attract people to the industry.

To get people to enter the industry, you need to appeal to, say parents. Parents that help their children determine what type of a career they would like to get into. These parents are also in the business world, so you are killing two birds with one stone.

People have to participate. A few can get things going, but you need to have enthusiasm. There seems to be some enthusiasm right now. We had more than 40 people participate in a workshop in Montreal (see Bob Dale’s column in PrintAction August, page 18).

The government has, I think, 25 sector councils right now and they want to get at least 50 per cent of industries involved in sector councils. With that as a goal, they will have a ton of sector councils and it will be difficult to manage them all. They have said that we need to work with common industries to have joint sector councils, so they have approached us about partnering with the packaging industry.

Sometime in the near future we are supposed to have a meeting with the steering committee of the packaging council to see if there are synergies. So there is a bit of a delay right now, but this project has a scheduled end date of November 30. We are anticipating that by Spring [2005] we should have a sector council established.

Does the CPIA have a public relations problem within the printing industry?

I believe that it does, unfortunately. There are great, solid members that support CPIA but you really need to have volunteers step up who understand the importance of the CPIA. Unfortunately, with limited resources it is really hard to promote yourself because you are too busy doing the work that needs to be done.

There is a partnership with the regional associations, which are called the FARAs, and I think we need to work together better. We need to pool the resources across the country between national and the regions to work harmoniously and tackle issues that are in the best interest of the industry. That is something that I am going to bring to the table.

What has been gratifying for you, working in the CPIA?

It’s about doing things in the best interest of the industry. I think, over the last four years of my Government Affairs leadership, we have been able to do a lot of good things, whether they are appreciated or not, or even if people don’t understand the impact. For example, we had this long battle about postage stamps. The feedback we got in a lot of cases was, what are we wasting our time on postage stamps for, it only affects a few printers. People were missing the point.

The point is that we were protecting free trade. The Canadian government and Canada Post were violating NAFTA marking requirements of that trade agreement. Canada Post isn’t above the law and we had to take a stance as an industry to say, stop, you aren’t above the law. We are expected to follow the law when we send goods across. The same should be true both ways. People lost sight of what we were protecting.

Why is the CPIA important?

The CPIA has been around since 1939, and since it has been there its mandate has been to be a watchdog for the industry and it has performed that role very well. It’s easy if you are a non-member to sit back and say, well this is going to happen anyway because CPIA is doing whatever they do regardless of whether I am a member or not. But the CPIA will not survive without revenue. Every company within this industry has an obligation.

What are the current member numbers of the CPIA?

There are about 600 member firms. If you look at the numbers from the year 2000, you would say there are a few more members today, but it is deceiving because a new FARA came into existence in Northern Alberta. Really there has been a decline.

How is the Quebec situation?

Quebec has been an issue for a number of years. We just recently had some very encouraging talks with restructuring Quebec. I think it is a little premature to comment on the structure because it hasn’t been finalized, but I am very encouraged by the discussions that have taken place.

What was the most important development to come out of the recent CPIA conference?

This was a conference that put truth on the table. A lot of people asked me what is the sign here, should I get out of business? The message wasn’t get out. The message was wake up. One comment made was that prices are still going to drop another 30 to 40 per cent before they stabilize and that is a scary thought for printers right now, particularly for those who think that prices have bottomed out.

How has Willow changed its outlook?

We have reinvented ourselves over the last few years. We have a more consultative approach and value-added approach to what we do. Our tagline has changed over the last number of years from printing and lithographing to today’s tagline, which is Beyond Print.

What technology has made the greatest impact at Willow?

The greatest technology at Willow has been the printing press. It’s a fascinating piece of technology when you think about the millions of colours that can be produced and what you can do when things come down to the press. I don’t want to sound like I’m a guy with blinders on, because I know we cannot just concentrate on ink on paper.

What technology do you not have, but think would make a huge impact at Willow?

I think in time, variable data with the Indigo, Xerox... that type of technology. Not so much on the short-run possibilities but from the idea that people are starting to collect more and more data. Even though Indigo came out in the 1990s, I still think variable data has a way to go, maybe another three years still.

It’s not only that the marketing side needs to get it but you also need the data. If you don’t have the data, what are you doing? You’re just customizing a letter. Being able to personalize a message sheet after sheet is exciting, but companies haven’t collected enough data to do that. So if we can shadow and work with clients on how to collect that data…

Is that a place for printing companies?

I think it is. He who owns the data owns the customer.

Do printers get bogged down thinking about technology?

If you are not properly explaining to clients about what that technology can do for them, it’s meaningless. What does CTP mean to a client? What does digital printing mean to a client? You have to come up with a strategy.

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