Hence the name Colortrac is a combination of the words colour and track.  Why an English person and a UK based and privately owned company chose to use the American spelling of color and drop the k from track is no longer remembered and must remain a mystery.

Colortrac’s business in this very large territory is handled by a regional distributor, Russian Industrial Company in Moscow (see www.colortrac.ru and www.cad.ru). Russian Industrial Company – RIC – have done an excellent job building a network of resellers covering this huge territory and supporting these resellers in every way including helping them build their web-sites. There are still some areas where the presence is weak but they have competent and committed representation of trained resellers in most of their enormous territory.

At the end of May there was a RIC reseller meeting in Moscow where RIC dealers from all over Russia and a few other countries were trained on Colortrac large format scanners. I, Peter Sandberg, trained them in sales & marketing and Graham Vaughan from Colortrac’s Support Department trained them in service and support of the latest Colortrac scanning technology. The event was well attended by about 20 participants attentively listening, learning, taking the scanners apart – and putting them back together again. Even a reporter from a Russian trade magazine grabbed the screw driver and aligned a camera.

In Russia service training of dealers is very important since the territory is so large. It is necessary that there are trained service engineers in many locations in order to quickly resolve whatever issues come up. Graham Vaughan, the technical trainer, was surprised by the enthusiasm and determination among the participants to get hands on experience of the rather complicated task of aligning the six cameras of the Gx+ 42. Most surprising was that the group was so eager that almost all came back on the second day, when Graham was supposed to give in-depth training to the RIC specialists only. It turned out that the whole group got the in-depth training.

Meanwhile I, Peter Sandberg, had business planning meetings with the management and marketing team. It is always a humbling experience to meet RIC. Their highly professional approach to marketing and channel building and their sincere dedication make me wish that one day I will become as qualified at my work. I am very pleased to have RIC as my distributor in this complicated territory. I could not wish for anyone better.

When the office closed the work stopped and the socialising began. Russians are world famous for their hospitality. The relationships with our partners in RIC have developed into warm friendship. After a series of late evenings it is now time to go home and rest after a tiring but successful and pleasant week.

Peter Sandberg in Moscow

Al Abbas Group in the United Arab Emirates is a large business group with 27 different companies active in a wide variety of business areas – see www.alabbas.com . One of their companies is Hybrid Imaging Products L.L.C. Hybrid Imaging Products is a very successful distributor of a large variety of prestigious brands and covers the whole Gulf region (UAE; Oman; Qatar; Kuwait; Bahrain; Yemen) through branch offices and resellers. “Hybrid Imaging Products LLC (Previously International Office Supplies) was established in1976 and it is one of the oldest office products marketing company in the UAE. We are specialized in digital printing solutions and we offer OA products from the brand leaders in the industry.”

Hybrid Imaging has now taken up distribution of Colortrac large format scanners. In mid May there was a launch event where HIP staff together with Colortrac distributors from a number of other countries in the Middle East attended training on Colortrac products, both sales & marketing training as well as technical service training. The event was successful and conducted in good spirit in the facilities of “Al Abbas Institute of Technology” in Dubai, a company in the Al Abbas Group that offers leading edge education in the field of Information Technology and Management.

Mr Jaiprakash Pillai, General Manager of Hybrid Imaging Products, is enthusiastic about further widening the Al Abbas portfolio into the field of large format colour scanning and image processing. I, Peter Sandberg, Business Development Manager for Colortrac in EMEA (Europe; Middle East; Africa) am very excited to get a company such as HIP as my distributor. HIP’s potential is impressive and I am very optimistic as to what this can lead to in regards to Colortrac’s presence in the Gulf region. A major step forward for Colortrac.

Peter Sandberg in Dubai

With this we at Colortrac are not quite as gloomy and depressed as many others are these troubled days. To spread our enthusiasm among our channel partners we designed a series of distributor meetings to show off our new products. With typical British wit the conferences were called “Smart and confident with Ci and Gx+”. The plan was to demonstrate live the performance and quality of our new machines, as well as talk about the innovative technology and compare it to whatever else you can find in the market.

We at Colortrac are proud and confident that we now offer the very best quality and performance at the very best prices. The objective of the meetings was to share our pride and confidence with our partners and instill in them the same confidence so that they can face their customers with pride and enthusiasm.

In another place in this forum you may have read Declan’s description of the first meeting in this series. It was in Italy, in the showroom of Neolt, our Italian distributor near Milano. Colortrac partners from all over Europe came and were impressed (we hope). The next stop on our road-show was Dubai where we conducted TWO trainings, each lasting two days.

The first training was for our direct distributors from all over the Middle East and Africa. Attendants spanned from Iran in the North East to Nigeria in the South West. The hosts for the event were the Al Abbas Group, our new distrbutor in the Gulf region. It was a two day event with the first day focused on sales and marketing subjects with elaborate live demonstrations. The second day focused on technical service and support where the machine was taken apart and put together by the interested attendants under the guidance of Graham Vaughan, Colortrac’s technical trainer.

The second event in Dubai was a repeat of the first two-day event but with Canon Middle East and Canon Emirates and some of their channel partners. Again I, Peter Sandberg, led the first day and Graham Vaughan the second day.

Both events where successful. Dubai is an interesting place to visit. Both Graham and I had a great time with interesting business meetings during the day and socialising with our partners in the evenings. I hope I will come back soon.

Peter Sandberg in Dubai.

Colortrac announced a series of large format scanner product promotions May 1st designed to stimulate the market by offering extra price incentives to buyers. These promotions will be active from May 1st to July 31st 2009 and are made available through our international network of distributors and sales partners for purchasers of our SmartLF range of wide format scanners.

In the northern hemisphere the promotions will be marketed under the banner “sizzling hot Summer Saver” and in the southern as “super spicy Winter Warmer”; a bit cheesy but the best we could come up with at the time!

The basic concept is to offer higher product performance for the price of a lower specification product, namely an express color wide format scanner for the price of an standard speed color scanner or, a color scanner for the price of an large format monochrome scanner.  In addition, extra discounts are available on scanner accessories and stands and for certain product combinations we will include our ScanWorks and CopySmart software free of charge.

The large format scanner promotions are available on selected models only. For technical imaging applications we are promoting the latest SmartLF CIS wide format scanners - the SmartLF Ci 40c and Ci 40e models, and for  full color graphics applications  the brand new  SmartLF Gx+ 42c and Gx+ 42e.

So, if you are considering the purchase of a large format scanner, please contact Colortrac directly via our on-line  ‘Get a Quote’  form or find your nearest reseller from our  ‘Where to Buy’  page on our web site.

Thanks for your time and good luck with your product search, if you are not sure which large format scanner or software is right for your application, we will be happy to help. Click to  contact a Colortrac wide format scanner expert  now!

The beautiful view of Bergamo, near to Milan, northern Italy and home of Neolt S.p.A. - the Colortrac distributor in Italy for many years.  Also shown are the Gx+ 28 scanner, the offices of Neolt and Peter and Bruno.

Today saw the first of two Colortrac EMEA distributor conferences formally announcing the now complete 3-width model line-up of the new SmartLF Gx+ range of LED CCD scanners.  Peter Sandberg (European Sales) and myself  (Sales & Marketing) were there to deliver the conference.  Also on show was a refresher presentation of the recently introduced Ci 40 low-cost paper scanner extolling the virtues of its small footprint, good colour performance, speed and low cost. 

Hosted at Neolt’s offices in Bergamo with the superb help from Neolt’s Bruno Wijnands for translation, delegates attended from Bulgaria, Croatia, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Switzerland and of course the host country.  Live demonstrations of the scanners, videos and presentations covering competitive information and pricing coupled with a tour of the Neolt production facilities and viewings of the latest Neolt UV wide format printers made for an action-packed day. 

In the evening delegates were treated to a meal at a favorite pizzeria venue on the side of the mountain overlooking the walls of the old town - La Citta Alta. 

The next meeting which will include technical training as well as sales and technical overview sessions will be held in Dubai on May 10th-11th. 

See you there!

Declan

This is our second version. We were very happy with the first version and posted what we considered to be good useful content on it. However, someone made changes in our web hosting package to support sharepoint, and other stuff I don’t understand or care about too much, and our blog got zapped.

We were very upset, it was personal and it’s taken us 6 months to get over it so we can try again. We will certainly be looking after back-ups and security properly this time around.

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