State of China Print
With Go-Go dancers and giveaways for audience participation, manroland
enjoyed full houses for every presentation of their presses.
Photos by Zac Bolan and Kathy Liu
With rare exception, foreign exhibitors
appeared to be the only companies
drawing attendee bodies into their
booths at China Print, held mid-May in
Beijing. Heidelberg used the advantage of
scale to attract crowds with its usual hall-dominating set up. manroland ensured a
full house was in attendance by utilizing
Chinese Go-Go dancers every time they
fired up the presses. Agfa hired a stage
magician to pitch its products, while HP
had spokespeople giving live demos, in
both English and Chinese, from atop
genuinely simulated Segway scooters.
The typical North American printer
today might see such showmanship as
frivolous expense or harkening back to
tradeshows of the 1970s, but the fact remains that all these international companies demonstrated their developments
to large, focused audiences. For Asian
companies, the intangibles of marketing
are a much harder sell. Evidence of this
filled China Print as many domestic
companies, from press manufacturers to
CTP and plate developers, stood mo-
tionless in their static booths and
watched thousands of attendees wander
elsewhere.
Back in 2005, the Beijing tradeshow
China Print represented a growing economy’s coming out party to the rest of the
industry. In China, print was experiencing successive years of double-digit
growth, an emerging manufacturing sector buoyed by pressroom floors stuffed
with offset presses and an enormous
population unaccustomed to the maturing of print. Worldwide, newspapers and
web offset presses were still flourishing,
oblivious of what was to unfold in coming years. Sheetfed press technology was
holding its own, though the improving
quality of digital presses was beginning
to gnaw at the edges of what was once
thought of as a secure market. And packaging was being groomed as the up-and-coming contender to the global print
throne.
Four years later, China Print 2009 – the
Asian continent’s drupa – opened its
doors to a significantly different eco-
Senior Founder management at the launch of their new Chinese designed and built digital
press, the Eagle-JET C4200. From left to right: Zhang Xuanlong, director of the board,
Founder Group; Xiao Jianguo, CTO, Founder Group; Zhang Zhaodong, president of
Founder Group; Fang Zhonghua, senior vice president , Founder Group; Liu Xiaokun, vice
president of Founder Group, chairman of the board and CEO of Founder Electronics.
The seventh Beijing International Printing Technology Exhibition (China Print 2009)
finished up on May 16, 2009, at the New China International Exhibition Center, which
organizers describe as one of the six global leading printing trade fairs. Over 20 printing
associations were on hand from countries like Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Iran, Thailand,
India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt.
