C.J. Graphics
Open House
C.J. Graphics recently hosted an open house celebration which featured a food drive for the Daily Bread Food Bank and a live auction. Vendors, clients and other members of the industry attended the event
at the company’s main plant on Park Lawn Road in Toronto, which also
featured a travelling magician and a gallery display. Host and auctioneer
Jay Mandarino took bids for about 20 items donated by various suppliers and with all $5,100 going to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
This is the 24th-annual open house party by C.J. Graphics, which
started at the company’s 645 King Street East location with only 125
people. According to the company, more than 1,400 guests made an
appearance and donated over 3,410 pounds of food (more than double
of last year’s total).
Avanti Hits 25-year Milestone
Avanti Computer Systems, which develops business management software specifically for the printing industry, celebrated its 25-year anniversary in
December. Now with over 400 installations across North
America, Avanti’s founder, Dr. Richard Wallin, began
engineering software shortly after the arrival of the
personal computer and Microsoft’s DOS operating
system. He was actually part of an IBM initiative to
transfer software applications onto its new platform.
Wallin was soon focusing on printing, according to the
company, after a friend in the industry complained
about the laborious process of creating job estimates,
particularly when PCs were now available. The original
version of Avanti’s software ran on a PC with two 5 ¼-
inch floppy drives. One floppy held the full
application, while the second floppy stored the
data – with a capacity of 360 KB.
In 2006, the growth of Avanti was apparent
as its new owners moved to purchase rival MIS
developer Parsec, based in Denver. Patrick Bolan,
Stephen Mc William and Peter Funnell took control of the company five years ago. Today, Avanti
software employs over 1.5-million lines of code
across 35 different application modules. Its JDF-enabled technology currently integrates with over
20 third-party applications and equipment.
Avanti held an anniversary celebration in December at its Toronto head
office. Right:Stephen McWilliam, Patrick Bolan, and Peter Funnelltook
ownership of Avanti five years ago.
