Regardless of industry, news around mergers and acquisitions tends to lead to a lot of prognosticating and armchair quarterbacking. Naysayers have their negative leanings and look for schadenfreude, while others take the more honest and measured approach of weighing the pros and the cons to determine how they really feel about a specific move, even if it is not a positive outlook.
We announced our acquisition of ProPrintPerformance at the beginning of April. The Sweden-based organization, which is a known quantity in the print industry, offers services designed to enable sales and marketing professionals to demonstrate added value to their production print customers. Noteworthy is that this is the first international transaction under the watch of Atar Capital, Keypoint’s parent company.
It’s no secret that production print remains a strong area for businesses in the print industry to invest in. Case in point, the subject has been a big player at the last three dealer meetings I’ve attended: Konica Minolta (hosted at its production-focused Customer Engagement Center), Kyocera (inkjet technology), and Sharp (moving upstream to “true” production print via a partnership). Because of the print volume deficit many small to medium-size dealers face compared to pre-pandemic times, they are becoming more and more open to selling “big iron.”
Keypoint Intelligence recognizes that potential, too. We acquired Karstedt Partners in September 2022 to strengthen our packaging and labels practice area and, as we did then, we want to be as open and transparent with you—print industry compatriots and otherwise. Randy Dazo, Chief Strategy & Operations Officer, sat down with Etienne de Wette and Erik Brijker, two of ProPrintPerformance’s primetime players, to shed light on how ProPrintPerformance brings expertise, sales enablement, and skills training to Keypoint’s portfolio.
