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Ah, what’s life without an adventure? Adobe puts a FedEx Kinko’s click-through button on the newest versions of Acrobat and Reader and the printing world goes bozo. Millions of Adobe users now have a straight shot to Kinko’s. Unfair competition? Well, maybe – if you are a printer who considers Kinko’s to be a major competitor. Maybe not if you routinely send nickel-and-dime, pain-in-the-neck customers to Kinko’s to get them out of your hair.
The real issue here is Adobe’s short-sightedness. The company should have realized that this would cause an outcry from an industry it has constantly courted. Its Adobe Solutions Network program has been a good marketing tool for printers over the years and gives them $2,400 in software and support for $595. So why didn’t the company take that relationship into account? My take is that this was a case of internal miscommunication at Adobe. A few printers see more sinister things afoot, but I can’t buy that.
My advice? See what comes out of the “summit meeting” at Adobe where printers and association folks will try to work out a way to deal with the situation and then get over it and go out and sell something to somebody.
We are struggling against the web,our own customers and now adobe.Any competition is competion that none of need tight now.Some one like your self in a salary postion cannot understand as a business owner that any sales going to kinko,s is food off our table and out of our families mouth’s.The damage has been done and I have no idea how adobe plans to get rid of that “button” on every new version8 adobe reader that people are downloading every day and will have on their computers for some time to come.Not everyone changes their adobe readers each time a new version comes out.Wake up!A dollar out of our pockets is a dollar out of our pockets!!Not adobe pockets for sure,We are stuck using them,but they are not stuck using us.I have no problem going out and making sales,and sales against kinko’s but now we are also forced to not only support adobe but sell against them as well!!Wake up Dave.
RETURN TO SENDER: If the printing industry really wants to exorcise this FedExKinko’s demon, it’s not complaining thru Adobe. It’s thru the pocketbook or in this case the cost of doing business with FedEx.
Put a sign on your backdoor “Any Shipper But FedEx accepted here, All FedEx Packages Refused.”
What if Print Shops around the country refused to except FedEx Shipping for a Week of even a month. Think of the return shipping cost FedEx would incur. The loss of revenue.
It would get the FedEx Board of Director’s to look up and start asking questions about the agreement with Adobe.
If the National Media got wind, Then Wall Street Knows, Then FedEx will change.
Let’s take a stand.
Two comments on Bob’s original post:
1. Lets not forget about the “closed door” commercial printing facilities that FedEx/Kinkos has, once numbered around 30 I believe. One has ask how much of the work generated by Acrobat will end up their?
Second and I’m sure Bob will remember this one. Back in 1999-2000, print franchisers and chains were all given the opportunity to provide privately labeled e-commerce software to their customers. While I can only comment on the company I worked for, the functionality of our solution back then gave users the ability to “File | Print” from any desktop application, including MS Office, Adobe and so on, which would then drive the print output to whomever privately labeled the software.
Very few print franchisers and none of the print chains either understood the opportunity that this technology brought, or perhaps the company I worked for was ahead of its time. Either way, all of them were given the opportunity to take advantage of this technology back then and even today, with more current Web-to-Print and e-commerce solutions.
I hate to say it, but is it simply easier to cry foul then to proactively take advantage of readily available technology? Or, to point the finger of monopoly when one of us (yes us, FedEx/Kinkos is a print chain)steps up and does something innovative?
I agree with many of the points in these responses. I think that all of this could have been avoided if Adobe had left the distribution of the Print to FedEx/Kinko’s capability to Kinko’s instead of including it in every one of the millions of the new Acrobat and Reader versions. That said, I am heartened that the printing associations seem to be working together and holding firm that Adobe has to find a way to remove the click-through. They may or may not be successful but chances of success are certainly improved when printers band together. Not only should you go sell something to somebody while we see how things work out, you should also join NAQP or NAPL or PIA/GATF or a PIA affiliate.
I have thought long and hard about the Brutus-like stab in the back and have decided that Adobe has chosen to eat its seed corn. I mean where would Adobe be without the print industry promoting, using and endorsing the products to customers. Kinkos is big, but not that big in the world of print.
It was coincidental that your editorial piece on Adobe was next to one about EFI’s Connect Seminars. At that conference Adobe was notable for it’s almost absence. Their “booth” was just a guy with a pile of pamphlets, not even a computer in sight. They were supposed to run a session on Acrobat for which we booked two seats and their speaker didn’t even have the decency to show up! Maybe they knew it was time to have a LOW profile.