This week I attended the 10th EFI Connect at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. This show has grown every year and this year’s show, with over 1,200 customers, analysts and partners, was the biggest yet. In fact, it sold out – a first to my knowledge. This was a global event with a great number of customers and press coming from all over the world, particularly the UK and Germany.

IMG_2087EFI is no longer the small controller company that helped connect copiers to computers back in the 1990s. They’re massive and will in all likelihood become a billion dollar company this year.

EFI has bet big on expanding their portfolio into other areas. Their acquisition of VUTEk in 2005 was a huge “get” for the technology company and subsequent acquisitions in inkjet have turned EFI into the premier wide format company in the world.


IMG_2227It doesn’t stop there though. Last year’s purchase of Reggiani also turned EFI into the dominant player in the growing textile printing market. The opportunity for EFI in textiles is enormous because the industry is still mostly analog and they can take similar workflow approaches and digitization to remove steps from the process to make textile manufacturers faster, leaner and more productive.

It’s the same concept we’ve watched for years as production print has been migrating to digital. When I chatted with VP Frank Mallozzi, he told me ink is EFI’s future.

They also showed more advances in their ceramic printing hardware. Yes, they literally sell machines that print onto tiles that you would put in your home or office or where ever you put tile. They can achieve incredible patterns, looks and feels with these printers. It’s a great way to customize or achieve certain looks much more economically (like wood or marble).

IMG_2233You might think EFI is all over the place, but there’s a common core between these technologies. They all improve with a nice EFI digital front end (DFE) driving the process. It doesn’t matter if you’re printing on paper or large paper or outdoor signage or tiles or wood or fabric or labels or just about anything else you can think of. A workflow solution combined with an EFI DFE will make a customer more competitive and allow them to offer products they never could before.

EFI wants to take the touch points out of the process. The word automation was heard many times during my short visit and that leads me to another area where EFI continues to excel. Workflow.

Event Photos

IMG_2223Their workflow suites and productivity software continue to improve and I don’t think there’s any other company that has done as much in this area. I point to the fact that most print vendors partner with EFI because quite frankly, no one can do what they do. It’s interesting to me that many of these partners are also competitors. EFI has always walked a fine line.

Fiery has grown up since it was just a graphic arts solution that made a printer print better. Fiery Command Workstation (a free download) makes managing Fiery servers a snap and there more than a half dozen other Fiery solutions that work with everything from inkjet to graphic arts to production gear to tile and textile printers.

IMG_2239As they continue to evolve, SaaS and Cloud services will become another significant area of opportunity for Fiery.

EFI continues to impress me with their vision and growth and it’s a wonder they haven’t been acquired. Perhaps they some day they will be but for now, they’re firing on all cylinders and have certainly built a loyal customer base to say the least. While many print and workflow vendors are struggling with a shrinking document printing market, EFI is thriving. Printing documents is just a small part of what EFI is focused on and who they’ve become. It was a long trip for a relatively short meeting but there was a ton to see.

~Andy