Eastern Reprographics Association - 2nd convention review post

Suri Suriyakumar; certainly, one of the most gifted speakers to ever grace the reprographics industry. (I’m not “blowing smoke up…..”)

Suri’s presentation was, without question, one of the best presentations I’ve ever heard anyone in the reprographics industry give at an industry event.

Yes, you could feel Suri’s passion for the business.

I first met Suri in 1995 at his office (Ford Graphic’s downtown office) in San Francisco. At that point in his reprographics career, he was still fairly new to the business and industry ….. but it was easy to tell that he already had a passion for the business. Simply my opinion, but if you are not passionate about the business you are in, you are not going to achieve huge success. Since I first met Suri, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to several presentations he’s given. At PEiR Group meetings, at IRGA conventions. He’s an extremely organized speaker. And a very personable, engaging speaker. However, although I’ve heard Suri do presentations before today, I don’t recall that any of Suri’s previous presentations were as “revealing” informative, and thought provoking as the one he gave today, at the Eastern (Regional) Reprographics convention.

Revealing? How So?

Well, the title the convention-events agenda used for his presentation was….. “The Future of Reprographics.” But, that’s not how I would title the presentation Suri gave today. If I were to give his presentation a title, it would have been, “ARC’s Strategy, Going Forward; What and Why.” Suri gave his audience an in-depth, revealing, informative look at what ARC is doing to capitalize on its assets, discussing the key revenue-segments of ARC’s business and sharing with his audience ARC’s approach to the FM business, the MPS business, the Large-Format Color business, and the Technology (software and cloud) business. Suri went into great detail about the MPS business, including the estimated overall size of the MPS market, players who compete for MPS business, what a reprographer has to do to develop an MPS business, and why a reprographer should seriously consider entering the MPS business.

Just to give you some idea of how informative and engaging Suri’s presentation was - - - it was supposed to last one hour (including Q&A), but it last nearly two hours. I don’t think any of the attendees wanted Suri to stop!

I have never, ever heard the CEO of a reprographics company go into such detail about his/her company’s strategy at an industry event. I’m not saying that Suri shared with his audience everything “one needs to know”, but it was a truly revealing and informative presentation.

I can’t believe that only 16 of ARC’s competitors registered for this convention and that only 14 or 15 actually heard Suri’s presentation. Those that attended the convention and heard Suri speak went away with “actionable” information.

And, to me, this was a perfect example of why reprographers need to continue to support industry associations.