Bruno Müller: "Our Participation at drupa Left a Convincing Impression"
06/14/2016
Bruno Müller looks back at the company's successful participation at drupa. The CEO of Muller Martini was particularly delighted by all the positive customer feedback with regard to the booth's concept: "The way we explained our core topic of Finishing 4.0 in a clear and impressive manner surprised many visitors."
The eleven eventful days at drupa are now a thing of the past, how do you rate the event from Muller Martini's perspective?
Bruno Müller: I consider it to be an outright success. We are not only highly satisfied with the number of visitors, we also received lots of positive customer feedback about how we presented our offering, both as regards our machines and our services. The way we explained our core topic of Finishing 4.0 in a clear and impressive manner surprised many visitors.
Does the large number of visitors from the very first day then lead you to conclude that Muller Martini, with its key topic of Finishing 4.0 and the buzz words of consistent automation, integration, variable, customized products, touchless workflow, addressed precisely what the graphic arts industry is interested in?
Bruno Müller: Yes, because I'm convinced that there is major potential for development in customized, variable and high-quality printed matter. However, it needs to be produced efficiently. We showed how to do that with specific, practical applications and demanding live presentations. That left a convincing impression on many visitors to the booth.
How did the customers comment on the integrated solutions and the demos with complex hybrid products?
Bruno Müller: What our visitors liked in particular was the design of the booth - how they were able to enter the topic of Finishing 4.0 in the tower and get a perfect overview of all our live products from a bird's eye perspective. I met the most varied people from the graphic arts industry and from various major businesses - publishers as well as printers, representatives of management and machine operators. Many visitors had something of an "Aha!" effect from the way we presented new business models for the future at the fair. That was equally the case for visitors who already have experience in digital printing as well as for conventional printers and finishers who have not yet considered the topic of digital.
CEO Bruno Müller: "There's major potential for development in customized, variable and high-quality printed matter. However, it needs to be produced efficiently.
Positive responses from visitors are one thing, investment decisions and projects lined up are another. How satisfied are you with the sales concluded at drupa?
Bruno Müller: The fair was also very successful for us in this regard. As we presented new ideas to our customers with future-driven production processes, various projects are also lined up for the future. What's important now is to process these projects rapidly and to hopefully complete many of them.
Three days before the end of drupa, the fair management announced that the next drupa will not be held in 2019 as originally planned, but in 2020 in the usual four-year cycle. How do you view this decision?
Bruno Müller: It's the right thing to do in my view. After all, we want to impress at drupa with several machines, but the expense involved is considerable. For this year's fair, for instance, we moved more than 200 tons of material to Düsseldorf in 27 trucks on 258 pallets and invested three weeks in installing the booth. What's more, in addition to 30 technicians, we also had more than 100 sales experts and product managers of sales companies from all continents in permanent deployment. In light of these figures, it's understandable that we prefer the four-year cycle, and we're now already looking forward to drupa 2020.