A number of years ago, my largest customer was looking for a way to transition from printing on a dot matrix printer to a laser printer and simplify a cumbersome process. The solution took some work and some help frommanufacturing partners. We didn’t get it right the first time. But my customer and I believed in the solution. So we kept at it and ultimately created the LaserBand product.
A good friend who was also an excellent intellectual property attorney convinced me it was worth getting a patent and a trademark for LaserBand. Sales grew and LaserBand attracted the attention of my former employer because it competed with a product they sold. They sent me threatening letters, hoping intimidation would make me go away. I was threatened with litigation from a billion-dollar company. But I had invested too much time and effort to back off. After 18 months of litigation that cost a small fortune, we settled. The settlement terms were acceptable to both parties, and the idea lived on.
Today LaserBand has evolved into a fast-growing company of its own, focused on
improving patient identification in the health care arena. We ’ve continued to create solutions in the identification field. We have 12 issued patents with more pending. We know that someone is eventually going to come up with a better idea. But we also think it might as well be us!
The lesson is that I didn’t accept the status quo or back off when I hit a bump in the road. My customer needed a solution, and I came up with the answer. It was an answer that got me into a heap of trouble. But I believed in what we were doing, and going back to the status quo was not an option. Things turned out better than I could have expected.
DMIA isn’t accepting the status quo either. The association is moving forward and trying
new things. In the years to come, we ’ll depart from what we’ve done in the past. This year’s Print Solutions Expo was all new. In 2007, we’ll have a new format for the TRADEMarts, plus an improved CEO Summit and Small
Distributor Summit. We’ll also have an all-new Spring Technology Conference. Each of these programs reflects the evolution of DMIA with its membership. Doing the same old thing is not an option.
Bob O’Connell and I started our company almost 21 years ago. We feel our company is a
microcosm of the association because we have a very diverse group of sales and
support people, and we’re the chief “cat herders.” Each one works hard for our customers. Each one works on improving themselves so
we’re better for our customers. Each one knows that if we don’t come up with a better way for our customers to do things, someone else will.
We all know the world is changing. Every so often we need to reinvent ourselves
to stay relevant. Our company has changed significantly from 10, five and even
two years ago. In fact, in the last 18 months we’ve assumed ownership and integrated a print-on-demand facility into our company
that was previously owned by our largest customer. We’ve jumped into promotional products with both feet, and now it’s our fastest growing product category. We’ve moved into a new facility that houses our offices, warehouse, and digital
print center. In the past four months we
’ve integrated another distributorship and ten great people from their company
into our organization.
With all these changes, we realized that our name no longer reflects what we do.
We realized that if we continue to call ourselves by the same name, there’s a danger that we’ll be viewed inaccurately. Consequently, we need to reinvent ourselves or there’s a real possibility of being ignored and considered irrelevant.
So in our company, we’ve undertaken a re-branding initiative. We want to better represent who we are
today. We
’ve almost completed the project, and we know our new brand will add a bounce to
our step because we can present ourselves as a company that
’s relevant to our customers and to our future customers.
Our industry’s constant evolution requires that we all periodically take a long hard look at
ourselves. We all need to present ourselves to the world in a more relevant
way. If we don’t, most will never know how much we have changed. Most will never know who we
really are.
The same lesson is true with DMIA. There has been significant change in our
industry over the last 10 years. The composition of our membership and what our
membership does has changed dramatically. Our name, DMIA, is no longer the best
description of what we do or who we are.
Our association is a reflection of our membership. We’re a diverse group of both public and private companies of all different sizes.
Each of us offers many different products and services. The truth is that the
name
“Document Management Industries Association” no longer reflects who we are and where we want to go. Over the course of the
next year, we ’ll reinvent DMIA. We’ll have a new brand. We’ll have a new name which will aptly describe who we are and where we’re going. I’m sure this will also “add a bounce to our step” and enable us to more easily convey our association’s value.
