EFI Acquires Direct Smile

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EFI has bought personalisation and automation software company DirectSmile. The company’s operation will broaden EFI’s customer offering in relation to data-driven digital print, Web, e-mail, social media and mobile marketing workflows.

EFI is currently incorporating DirectSmile technology into a new variable-data printing product that will make its debut at Graph Expo in Chicago (28 September – 1 October 2014). DirectSmile employees, including co-founders and former principals Christoph Schacht and Christoph Clermont, have joined EFI’s Productivity Software Web2Print Solutions Group.

Gabriel Matsliach, senior vice president and general manager, EFI Productivity Software said, ‘Web-to-print is one of the fastest-growing parts of the printing and marketing software segment. This acquisition gives us the ability to further address this segment with additional, best-in-class variable data and cross media technologies. DirectSmile’s customer base, which has a large proportion of agencies, corporate marketing departments and designers, is also highly complementary to EFI’s core client base, which opens the door to new growth opportunities.’

‘EFI has always been a top industry innovator, and we have partnered with EFI on many past projects to help customers bring more value to their variable data and cross media marketing efforts,’ added Schacht. ‘EFI is the worldwide leader in digital printing workflow and being a part of the EFI portfolio is a great opportunity to expose our technology to many more companies. DirectSmile customers will be able to achieve higher levels of automated, targeted marketing success as well as gain important new efficiencies through integrations with EFI Fiery digital front ends, EFI Digital StoreFront and other products.’

EFI will continue to develop, sell and support DirectSmile products as standalone software for the agency, enterprise and print industry markets. DirectSmile’s technology also will be integrated into EFI’s web-to-print and ecommerce offerings, EFI Digital StoreFront.

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