PRIMA – part of the US/UK photobook, wall décor and personalised products giant District Photo, is buying PMI Pty Ltd, Chris Zapris’ similar business established with the help of Vic. Govt. funding in 2012. The two previously fierce competitors use different production technologies – which ones will win out?
 |
| Parent District Photo in the USA operates fleets of HP Indigos |
District Photo, once a film processing network of laboratories, established in 1949 by Merv Cohen, is today a global e-commerce group of digital print imaging businesses putting photos and designs onto almost anything including Mugs, Canvas wall art, T-Shirts, other textiles and of course Photobooks. PRIMA, established in Australia in 2016 as PRIMA Printing, is a subsidiary of District Photo and headed here by Amnon Judah.
The Cohen Family still controls District Photo, with the founder’s heirs Neil and Keith Cohen managing the investments. They cosied up with Apollo Private Equity in 2019, to become minority shareholders in the merged Snapfish and Shutterfly online photo businesses. The UK acquisition, TruPrint/Harrier Group has been re-named Snapfish.
The Snapfish connection is interesting as PMI was primarily established to be the Australian production centre for Snapfish when HP owned it. However – HP sold off Snapfish in 2015 to – wait for it – District Photo, who had originally sold Snapfish to HP in 2005, for US$300 million. Are you following this?
So, in 2016 District Photo established PRIMA Printing in Australia and snapped up Snapfish. Both PMI and PRIMA also offer production services for major retailers such as Woolworths, Coles, OfficeWorks and so on. Now, the two will come together – but what of the production equipment?
Two differing imaging approaches
Prima Printing in Noble Park, Vic is currently running:
8 x Ricoh 9210 A3 printers for Photobooks
5 x Epson Surecolor 60600 Eco-solvent wide format printers for Canvas, wall art etc
16 x Epson Surecolor F7200 dye-subs for home décor, soft signage etc
2 x Kornit Atlas DTG printers for T-Shirts, Tote Bags etc
PMI in Brunswick, Melbourne differ in that they currently run:
5 x HP Indigo Electroink presses
8 x HP Latex Large Format Printers
Both operations use Horizon PUR binding. PMI also has silver-halide production capability, as does District Photo in the USA, reflecting the photolab origins of the group.
So, with the coming together of these two former fierce competitors, how will operating 4 distinctly different production technologies pan out? In the short term, it probably won’t make any difference. Both companies are approaching their businest season for personalised gifting and phtobooks. Orders come in online from a variety of sources – both organisations operate multiple websites and deal with multiple outlets in order fulfillment.
In the longer term, maybe customers will continue to notice a difference in the same way that people would comment on Kodak-Fujifilm-Agfa differences in photochemical imaging days. ‘Fuji is contrasty and has brighter greens…Agfa is warmer and great for autumn shots’ they would say. Eco-solvent does tend to present brighter colours and will last longer outdoors. On the toner side for photobooks, Ricoh is a dry toner method, which is regarded as mature technology. However, faced with the challenge of inkjet, all toner companies have spent development time on improving quality, colour and resolution.
While Indigo has been the preferred photo-quality press for a number of years, is built ‘like a press’ for higher duty cycles and has extensive extra colour capability with IndiChrome; many customers can no longer tell the difference in the end results.
Interestingly, District Photo in the USA uses Indigos and also inkjet. The Ricohs at PRIMA are an exception within the group.
It’s a fascinating conundrum now that Australia’s two largest photobook, canvas and other wall art and photo-gifting are merging. PMI Imageworks, as it was originally known, began as a competitor to Glenn Innes, NSW-based wholesale fulfillment operation Photo Create, who started the whole personalised print game for Harvey Norman and Fujifilm (indeed a former Photo Create executive, Rob Tolmie assisted the start-up of PMI).
PMI was granted a $2.6 million government boost in 2012, from a fund set up to create jobs following the closure of the Ford plant in Broadmeadows, boosting manufacturing employment in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Things can move rapidly in the digital print imaging world. In the end it will probably come down to dollars and cents and if the ‘value proposition’ suits customer expectations.
Either way, these two very successful print operations have demonstrated how to adapt to a sesimic analogue-to-digital shift and the growth in e-commerce. Printers of all sizes can learn from this.
