The printing industry’s largest product expo, PRINTING United, wrapped up its three-day gathering at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Sept. 25. Over the next few weeks, we will provide Two-Minute Drill Q&As with office technology manufacturers who had booths at the event to gauge the reaction to the show’s effectiveness.
We open the occasional series with the perspective of Toby Saalfeld, portfolio marketing business partner at Ricoh North America. Saalfeld discusses the company’s goals, the booth’s connected print manufacturing experience and what Ricoh was looking to accomplish.
What were your overall impressions of PRINTING United and did it meet your expectations?
Saalfeld: What struck me most about PRINTING United was how much more emphasis there was on end-to-end workflow and integration. Many exhibitors were talking about workflow, but Ricoh took that approach further by building our entire booth experience around a connected print manufacturing operation, from job onboarding through production, finishing and delivery. That was intentional because our main objective was to demonstrate Ricoh’s role as a leading integrator of print manufacturing and automation. Seeing that experience come to life exceeded my expectations. In many ways, the Ricoh booth embodied the broader direction I saw the industry moving toward across the show – on a practical scale.
The connected print manufacturing experience was an ambitious undertaking; how did it perform? What was the feedback you were receiving from visitors as they watched the full job production process?
Saalfeld: The experience did exactly what we set out to do by making the production workflow tangible instead of presenting a series of disconnected product demonstrations. We redesigned the booth from the ground up to operate like a modern print manufacturing environment, with job onboarding, business and process management, production, finishing and delivery connected into one experience. It gave us a practical way to talk about how manual touchpoints create friction and why connecting islands of automation – where individual parts of a workflow are automated but remain fragmented – across the operation matters.
What did you feel was the most compelling aspect of the overall booth experience, from both a Ricoh and technology partners’ standpoint?
Saalfeld: The most compelling aspect was that the Ricoh experience extended beyond our own booth. Our world-class hardware remained central, but we deliberately connected it with software, finishing, automation, services and partner technologies, and that story continued across the show floor through partners, including Duplo for inline print-and-cut and finishing, Tecnau and Sitma for robotics and material handling, Enfocus for workflow automation, plus additional partners showcasing Ricoh-produced applications and samples. That broader ecosystem made our role as an integrator something attendees could actually see rather than simply hear us talk about.
Beyond gathering prospect/client leads, what were you looking to accomplish in Las Vegas?
Saalfeld: We wanted to strengthen how the industry understands Ricoh. Leads and pipeline matter, but the bigger objective was to demonstrate that Ricoh is more than a production print hardware manufacturer and reinforce our position as a leading integrator of print manufacturing and automation. That means helping customers look across the full operation, connect existing and new technologies, reduce friction and make better decisions around growth, ROI and efficiency.
