Eight years ago was very different for Expresta and owner Matej Kitka – “Now I am a big boy,” he says with a smile as we meet him at Ultimate Tech’s booth in Hall 8B at Drupa. The company has grown, and with it the need for automation.
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Hi guys, Jacques Michiels for Inkish at Drupa. We are here on the booth of Ultimate Tech. We are having a chat with one of the cusomers from Slovakia.
I am talking to Matej. How are you? Nice to meet you. Great to meet you here. Is this your first time at Drupa? Have you been here before?
Matej: I was here 8 years ago as a young guy, with an open mouth all the time. With one small copier in-house in Slovakia. So I’m happy now, after 8 years, I’m already a ‘big boy’ within the printing industry.
Jacques: We are here at the Ultimate (Tech) booth. You are users of the Ultimate Tech software but before we get into that, you were referring you started it up, where are you now with your company, what’s it called and where are you now, more or less?
Matej: We are Expresta, we are a fully online company so 99% of the orders are coming from online sales to us. Either from our website, which we are developing on our own or via our customer service via email, chat or phone. So not only through our website but also from our customer service for sure.
We are operating in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria and all over Europe in English. We have 4 or 5 languages on our web site where we are receiving the orders. We are calculating them in our own software and also setting up the workflow for each order in our own software so we have our own in-house deleopment team, which I think is our big competitve advantage.
And also what we offer to our customers is our own API so they can connect to us and they can send the their orders shopify of other systems. So we have global customers who would like to print something in Europe, they are connecting with us and we are producing and shipping all their orders within the European Union.
Jacques: So you are basically the producer for that party. We won’t go too much into the details, but of course it has become a very technical business. Connectivity is, certainly in your line of work, extremely important.
So when you get the files in, you have been in a big growth situation, what were some of your problems? How have you dealt with it? Where did you get the Ultimate Tech in and what was this for?
Matej: So let’s say we are doing everything mainly on our own but we need strong partners within our application. One of them is Ultimate. We are working with them for, I guess, 10 years already. When we started to work with HP, we also integrated it into our system Ultimate. They helped us from the start. First we went through the phase of integration via hotfolders. So some easy integration. Then we started to automate much more so we are now in a full XML integration with Ultimate. Currently we are evaluating if it makes sense to continue further. Our last module we purchased from Ultimate was the Offset Module for us to be able to prepare the various lay-outs within one job. So let’s say we can prepare a file with 16 pages signature the 112 pages signature etc. What I like about our cooperation with Ultimate is that they have a very good track-record of updates and they are always offering something new. Right now it’s something for wide-format, before it was something for cut lines and die-cutting. We don’t need to look for another vendor, we just see that Ultimate has an additional option for us which we can just implement it into our application.
Jacques: It’s great to hear because as you are saying, the jobs are getting more complex, the machines get connected online, so it’s good to hear that there are suppliers that are on the forefront of that technology and that they can provide.
So maybe also dive a little bit into what you were telling me earlier that you also probably, or maybe already going into online book production, maybe even book-of-one. What are you looking for for technological solutions in that area? What is the specificity that you need?
Matej: We were already producing the books-of-one because we installed the Horizon Smart-Binding solution last year but it was sheet-fed. Now we are upgrading to a roll-fed solution so we will be installing this summer a roll-to-roll Canon printer and then we will have an unwinder, cutter and perforator connecting to our Horizon Smart Binding line.
Jacques: Your are expanding heavily so now you need, let’s say, the glue to connect everything together, that everything connects smoothly.
Matej: To be honest we are very scared on one hand, because switching from sheet-fed to roll-to-roll is something scary, maybe, but at least we won’t have any paper jams. But I think we have all the necessary products to do this. We have development, our DTP, we have our well-trained operators, that have experience with roll-to-roll. So I that we will, or I hope that we will do it and we will make it. That we will really be able to produce not only book-of-one, in an economic sense, but also a few hundred books or even thousands. Up to now we were producing purely on HP Indigo’s. That makes sence for two or five hundred books.
Jacques: Yeah it’s totally different stuff now.
Matej: Now with roll-to-roll, for black and white printing, there is no economic limit for printing compared to litho.
Jacques: Fantastic to hear from you, very pleased to have made your aquaintance, and it’s good to hear that your operations are also back by a solid supplier of technology.
The best of luck to you and have a good Drupa.
Matej: Thank you.
This interview with Matej Kitka from Expresta was conducted at Drupa 2024 by Jacques Michiels for INKISH.