Xerox/Fuji – A Powerful Team for Retailers

Xerox/Fuji – A Powerful Team for Retailers

1124

Creating a buzz on the eve of the show was the recent announcement by Xerox regarding their partnership with Fujifilm, a move being watched closely by the folks at Kodak no doubt.

The deal will essentially place new Xerox technology – to debut at the show tomorrow – in the hands of photo retailers and photo labs around the U.S. The technology revolves around updates to the Xerox Phaser 7760 tabloid color laser printer and its DocuColor 240/250. Fuji’s Frontier digital labs play the leading roll on the retail fulfillment front. We’ve eyed some of the results on the photobook front and we’re very impressed by the unit’s output color reproduction and overall quality.

Xerox added that their DocuColor unit offers up to 50 ppm printing in color and 65 ppm in monochrome with images printed at 2400 x 2400 dpi. It can print postcard-sized prints to 13 to 19-inch images. An optional finisher can produce the aforementioned photobooks.

The Xerox Phaser 7760 color printer also offers duplex printing for items such as calendars and cards, along with the aforementioned photobooks and a maximum resolution of 1,200 x 1,200 dpi. Xerox tells us it can print a color page in nine seconds (first page) with speeds up to 35 ppm for color and 45 ppm in black and white with print sizes to 11.5 x 17-inches. The idea is that consumers will upload images at a kiosk and have the aforementioned items (photobooks, calendars, greeting cards, etc.) printed and produced in store.

Fuji tells us their new Frontier 710 produces up to 810 4R-sized prints per hour and supports print sizes up to 24-inches long. It uses the company’s Image Intelligence automatic image-correction technology and a “one touch” chemistry-replenishing system.

The company is also offering several optional add-ons for the system, including a 36-inch paper advance (for print sizes up to 8 x 36-inches), the ability to add up to three built-in paper magazines and an automated quality control strip processing.

The photobook category is a hot one at this year’s show, along with a myriad of other photo gifting solutions, and several manufacturers are offering some very slick solutions. Photobook building capabilities are available as features in kiosks like HP’s PhotoSmart Studio as well as in kiosks from Lucidiom and Whitech among others. Durst offers the Photo Book station targeted for volume labs which can produce as many as 30 books per day. CameoStyle’s software solution can serve as the front-end photobook solution for any digital printer. KIS Photo-Me Group’s My Creative Album solution offers another easy entry. If you think your customers would rather build and print books at home, Peleman Industries just introduced the MyBook Photo Book kit, an easy-to-use solution for the do-it-yourselfers that enter your store. Companies like Epson, Siberra and Pixology also offer interesting possibilities in this market. From what we’re seeing in the pre-show hype, this category will make more than a few headlines in the days ahead.

NO COMMENTS