Executive Q&A: Mal Baboyian, EVP of Canon Solutions America

IA: Tell us a little about your company, the segment of the market it serves, and what you consider to be your "core" users.

MB: Canon Solutions America [formed in 2013] is a subsidiary of Canon USA—the result of Canon Business Solutions’ acquisition five years ago of Océ North America. [Editor’s note: Baboyian presided over Océ’s Production Printing Systems division for 10 years, beginning in 2003.] The integration has gone well, practically seamlessly, which we are quite proud of.

Our core users are large-format and production print service providers. Historically, we’ve served the transaction and direct mail markets—both commercial and corporate printers, including financial and insurance companies—with continuous-feed toner equipment, which still have a large presence. But the world has changed in the past six to seven years. We’ve expanded into color direct mail, book printing, and the graphic arts.

IA: How did you get involved with the company? What is your background before that?

MB: This dates me, but I was an Air Force captain during the Vietnam war. I then had a short stint selling blueprint machines and microfiche cameras for the wide-format company Dietzgen. [He graduated with a B.S. in economics from the University of Maryland.] Océ was only wide-format then, doing only about $10 million in the U.S., and they needed someone to run their new Washington, DC location in 1976. It was their sixth branch.

It was a lot of fun; very entrepreneurial. The office products division opened in ’83. I became director of federal sales and marketing, then headed up the wide-format division of the company as a group vice president. When we acquired Bruning [a division of AM International, in 1991], I became president of the combined group and later COO of Océ. I moved to Boca Raton at the end of 2003 to head the production printing division.

IA: What do you consider your greatest achievement in this market to be?

MB: Internally, our number-one achievement has been merging two companies (Océ and CBS) almost immediately, getting off the ground running. We spent about two and a half years planning the integration. The executives of Canon Solutions America set the tone that we were a new company. The mentality of “this is the way we did it at Océ or CBS” was not tolerated. There was buy in from the start that this was going to be the way we are going to do business.

Externally, on the production print side, Océ made the decision in 2005 to invest and move into inkjet technology. We saw the future and felt that, if we did not invest heavily, we would be in trouble. In early 2006 we jointly developed a product with Miyakoshi and rolled out our first product, the Jetstream 2200, in 2008. And today, just seven leaders later, we are the worldwide market leader in production inkjet placements.

IA: If there was anything you could change, either about your almost 40-year career in regards to the print industry, your company, or the market as a whole, what would it be and why?

MB: Nothing about my career, really. I have no regrets. I’ve had a great time with many of the people I’ve been associated with at Océ and Canon. Many of my lifelong friendships are a result of my time here, both fellow employees and customers. I have had offers to leave this industry, some of them very lucrative. But this has been very rewarding, and I wouldn’t trade it.

I think we can do a better job of educating the public on the value of print. To me, what’s amazing is the perception that printing on paper is bad. We need to put holes in the myth: Print isn’t destroying rain forests. Trees are farmed, and more trees are being planted today than 25 years ago. The anti-paper movement is not about the environment; it’s about reducing costs.

Within the industry, organizations such as NPES, of which I am an executive board member, and PrintsVoice are lobbying congress and trying to educate the public.

IA: What do you consider the greatest challenge to be for the industry right now? Why?

MB: Our industry needs to keep up with technological changes. We all know that offset and toner-based print is static. The method of communication has changed: Think of phone solicitations, direct mail, magazines, newspapers and emails. Smartphones and apps have changed the world.

How does print fit in? We need dynamic content, and inkjet can help us get to one-to-one marketing, whereas non digital technologies cannot But of course the quality of inkjet has to continue to improve so the transition can continue to accelerate. We are making the capital advancements necessary in heads and ink so that the necessary [print] quality can be achieved with variable data content.

IA: What do you consider the greatest asset to be for the industry right now? Why?

MB: It may need to change, but paper communication is our greatest asset because most of the population is still dependent on it. Despite consolidation, I believe our industry is stable and growing once again. Our vendor and user communities are closely linked, which is an asset.

But our industry still needs to do a better job of bringing talent from the colleges and universities into the print industry, so that we can ensure the talent level remains strong for decades to come.

IA: In your opinion, what have been the biggest changes to the way we communicate with one another in the past few years? How would you recommend this industry take advantage of that?

MB: As I mentioned, linking in with mobile is critical. It’s not just print any more. It’s print with augmented reality [AR]. Bringing in the kind of talent that understands how to link mobile and print will help us change the way we communicate moving forward. 

IA: Looking ahead, what major innovations or technologies do you believe will shape the future of the industry? Why?

MB: Augmented reality is in its infancy, and it can be utilized with inkjet. The technology offers cost-effective VDP with better ROI. Data is another big opportunity. Our customers know what purchases their customers have made. So how do they utilize that information to be more relevant to their customer needs in the future This will be an important topic at our inaugural thINK user conference in this month.

IA: What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to printers and others involved in this industry?

MB: One way for the industry to become stronger is to get involved as much as possible in various associations with peers. There’s Graph Expo, the Inkjet Summit, HP Dscoop, and now our own user group, thINK. You cannot stand alone in this business and be successful. Listen to your customers. It’s not the same old way of doing business. Learn from them and also educate them.

IA: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

MB: From a CSA point of view, we’re excited about the future. As I told my group, I’ve only been with the company for 39 years, and this may be the most exciting time I’ve ever seen in terms of changes and growth potential. We’re making inkjet cost-effective. The folding carton and packaging market has potential, too, along with high production digital printing environments.

There were a lot of inkjet skeptics in 2009-10. Today, Canon is investing more in the printing industry than it ever has. There’s the Océ JetStream and new inks for the ColorStream. The transition from offset to production inkjet is continuing, but will accelerate as the inks and drying technologies improve. Our new ImageStream technology is another step in this progression. And the cutsheet VarioPrint i300 [formerly known as Project Niagara] is a game changer.