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Microboards has been around since 1989. The company started out by importing
and selling the first CD recorders and recordable media in the
U.S. As recordable
technology
grew, Manufacturers sought Microboards out and the company eventually became
a value-added distributor for a variety of recordable products. Microboards
invented
the world’s
first tower duplicator in the early 90s, and has been heavily
involved in the introduction
and growth of automated duplication and printing. In 2001, the
company acquired a manufacturing facility, which has allowed it
to broaden
its product line
to include automated
duplication.
CDRInfo talks with Mr Mitch Ackmann, President and COO of Microboards Technology,
about the future of the CD/DVD duplication/replication as well as the presence
of Microboards in the optical storage industry.
Microboards is best known for its CD/DVD duplicators. What position does
your company hold in the global market today?
It is difficult to know market share, as many of the industry’s
most important players are privately held. But we are confident that we command
one of the strongest market presences in this industry.
A look at the recent past shows that most of the CD/DVD duplication and
printing products are highly customized, difficult to maintain, and quite expensive,
at least for small companies and certainly for everyday consumers. How and
when will recordable media printers and duplicators become more easily accessible
to consumers?
CD/DVD Duplicators are getting less expensive every day – most PCs have
basic copying ability built in right now. But the printing function has been
slow to reach that consumer price point. That’s largely because all consumer
printing technology (inkjet and laser) was developed around a curved paper
path with a rectangular media, and without regard for rigid or round media.
Microboards is fortunate to have developed several patents around media handling
that reduces the number of moving parts, the footprint, and the manufacturing
cost of disc printers, so we see great progress ahead for consumers in the
years to come.
What are Microboards' weaknesses?
Chocolate and well-prepared Steak.
Seriously though, we work very hard, and want our customers to be pleased
with us, almost to a fault. We try hard to make them want to do business with
us. We take customer feedback seriously and act on it.
What differentiates Microboards from other distributors and how does it
stand out from being just another distributor?
Microboards stands out for a number of reasons. While it is unusual, we
are a manufacturer as well as a distributor, so there is more direct communication
between us and the market. We have intellectual property – patents
on media handling and printing – that give us a unique edge in providing
new solutions. More importantly, we have a very loyal, broad, and well-
trained channel to service our customer base. Our resellers' depth of experience
gives us unusual strength with every kind of end user we deal with - from garage
bands to Fortune 100 companies.We have a unique and long-standing focus on
12cm Media, so we truly are very expert in it. We are specialists, and we don’t
focus on anything that is not CD/DVD related, which makes us a unique Value-Add
Distributor for all the CD/DVD product lines we carry.
You work closely with Rimage, Primera and other manufacturers in the duplication
industry. Yet aren't these companies Microboards' competitors?
We do work closely with Rimage. But while they manufacture machinery with
similar components (recorders and printers for producing discs), the similarities
end there.
Rimage has Everest Printing capability – it combines silkscreen quality
print with silkscreen quality durability that is uniquely suited to applications
that need both vibrant printing and longevity in their image. Rimage’s
network capability and SDK for integrating their software with other solutions
are unmatched. When a situation calls for a Rimage product, a Microboards product
will not fit the bill; typically Rimage situations are mission critical, variable
data, and system integrated. Microboards products, on the other hand, fit best
into mid-to large run duplication environments. We no longer work closely with
Primera – they have deviated to a lower-level consumer focus, where Rimage
and Microboards are focused on partnering into industrial applications.
We have seen in the past, what can be considered in the main as unsuccessful
attempts from far-east companies wanting to enter the recordable media, printer
and duplicator market. What in your opinion are the reasons for their failure?
These companies develop a product and attempt to drive it to market
on price alone – and in most cases you get what you pay for. Duplicators
are designed to simplify work for content professionals and other people
publishing
large
amounts of data; since every application is unique, you need a wide product
offering and skilled staff in order to put the right solution to work in
each situation. We pride ourselves on having great pre-sale and post-sale
support
for exactly that reason.
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Which companies are you collaborating with for your printing engine and inks?
We have been partnered with Hewlett Packard for quite a while, and the
results have been phenomenal – with our unique autoloader capability
and their inkjet technology, we were able to introduce the fastest, highest
resolution
inkjet printer with the lowest cost per print available, and have held that
position for several years.
Apart from CD/DVD printers and duplicators, you also distribute CD/DVD
media from Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim. What do you believe is the outlook for
the optical storage media market during the next year?
I think the outlook is fantastic. Every now and then we hear people
talking about the Internet as the death of media – as if software
and music downloads are going to replace delivery on CD. But if you believe
that,
you probably
believe that computers are reducing the amount of paper we use, too.
Experience shows us exactly the opposite. Increased exchange and archival
of data, music, and video has been a boon to our industry, and DVD is driving
that even more. We are projecting over 30% growth in each of the next two years
for our optical media business.
Currently, the optical storage industry is focusing its attention on the
new DVD formats, HD video content and the way it would be efficiently and safely
distributed. In what ways will the duplication industry be involved in these
new developments?
We’re fortunate to have strong relationships with each of the drive
manufacturers, so we get good inside information on what’s coming and
when. Duplication comes into play when these formats become distribution mediums;
as soon as people are talking about playing the discs at home, we will have
technology to service the market. We are also fortunate to have patents that
apply to the new formats – we can handle and print on practically anything,
regardless of the changes made to the recordable side.
We are also interested in the security question; content producers want
to protect profitability, and we have developed relationships with people
who
are engineering leading content protection methods, whether through copy protection,
password protection, or other encryption solutions. One we are particularly
excited about is Hexalock – their holographic copy-protection technology
remains undefeated for many types of digital content, and it is already integrated
with top products like the Rimage Producer series.
Besides CD/DVD duplicators and optical media, are there other tangent markets
and product lines that you are considering for the near future?
Yes and no. We will, of course, adopt optical media formats as they become
available and viable, but our focus is on what we do best which is CD/DVD products.
Our manufacturing arm has been very successful in bringing our core CD/DVD
technology to the point-of-sale market. For example, we have deployed our CD
dispensing and recording mechanism into Kodak’s point of sale kiosks
for digital photography with over 10,000 of these types of units in the field.
As we have with Kodak and other prominent photo kiosk manufacturers, we are
now working in new markets outside photography to develop kiosk solutions.
We are investing heavily in our Asian and European operations, expanding our
Japan and London offices, to position ourselves for expansion in global markets.
And we are looking for ways to bring our technology to new vertical markets.
We are looking to everyone from corporate marketing departments to medical
doctors for ideas on how we can help them to use optical technology.
What do you foresee as the future for Microboards in the duplication industry?
My vision is simple, but strong; Microboards will continue to get better
and better at doing what we do. We have loyal customers that have grown with
us because we take good care of them. We look for ways to make our products
better every day. We are a family-oriented, personal company – five & ten
years from now we will be bigger and better, but we will be the same people,
doing the same thing – because we do it well.
