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As usual, AAGM separated this year’s 350 entries into numer-ous categories, according to production processes and producttypes, in order to give smaller companies a chance to win overbigger ones, says Barbe. Besides golds, silvers, bronzes and hon-ourable mentions in the various categories, the contest also

awards special trophies and le Grand Gutenberg prize as itshighest honours.

Although interest in the awards remains healthy, Barbe re-ports that (as with many other professional associations

these days) membership in the Montreal Craftsmen’sClub has declined to about 125. (This number includes

a few members from Quebec City, where the localchapter has entirely disappeared.) “Since the 1930s,

we’ve been encouraging people to share knowledgein the graphic arts, and that’s still one of the main

purposes for entering pieces in the [program],”he explains. “And in Quebec’s smaller, bilin-

gual market, because runs and quantities aretypically smaller, there’s a large emphasis

on quality that the awards continue toacknowledge.”

Quebec Institute of Graphic Communications

According to André Dion, CEOof the non-profit Institut desCommunications Graphiquesdu Quebec (ICGQ): “The

Gutenberg Awards programbegan with a group of U.S.craftsmen, but for about seven

years now the contest has been heldand judged locally and is the most-important

annual event for the Quebec printing industry.”Dion’s organization (called Quebec Institute of Graphic Com-

munications in English) was established in 1996 with $9 millionfrom printing companies and $6 million in government funding

20 • PRINTACTION • APRIL 2010

attracts at least 500 guests – half being

printers, a quarter their customers, and

the rest suppliers, according to Christian

Barbe, president of Les Artisans des Arts

Graphiques de Montreal (AAGM, a.k.a.

Montreal Club of Printing House Craftsmen),

the group that organizes and juries the event.

Gala Gutenberg

CelebratingQuebec’s Best

and Brightestby Victoria Gaitskell

T This year, for the 28th time, the annual Gala

Gutenberg bestowed Quebec’s most-prestigious

awards for printing excellence on a roster of

winners that includes some of the province’s

most-innovative companies. The presentation

ceremony with headliner entertainment, held in

late March at the Casino de Montreal, typically

to support the industry’s technical and commercial development.Today, ICQG’s facilities provide technical training for the indus-try, as well as consultation, research and innovation for their cus-tomers, who are mainly Quebec printing companies, butsometimes include clients from around the globe.

ICQG supports AAGM in conducting the Gutenberg Awardsprogram by providing a neutral place to receive submissions, aswell as administrative and technical expertise (but AAGM exclu-sively does the judging.) A principal information vehicle for bothAAGM and ICQG is the exclusively francophone magazine Qi (infull Quebec imprimerie), circulated six times a year to 6,000 sub-scribers – the bulk quebecois, with an additional smattering in On-tario and New Brunswick (Canada’s other officially bilingualprovince).

Quebec’s two other leading graphic arts organizations are theAssociation Paritaire pour la Santé et la Sécurité du Travail, secteurimprimerie et activités connexes (a.k.a. APSAM or Joint Associationfor Occupational Health and Safety, printing and related sectors) and Comité Sectoriel de Main-d’oeuvre des CommunicationsGraphiques du Quebec (a.k.a. CSMO or Sectoral Committee onEmployment in the Quebec Graphic Communications Industry).

Regarding the Montreal market, Dion says the commercial situation is quite different from the rest of Canada due to theFrench-language barrier and because, historically, Quebec’s mar-ket was dominated by Transcontinental and Quebecor – bothhuge companies that built their first plants in Quebec. “While Ontario printers serve more of a national market, because of thelanguage issue a lot of documents are printed for Quebec alone insmaller runs. Therefore, the local market is proportionatelysmaller and more competitive. These circumstances require print-ers to be more efficient and are also reflected in the fact that pricesare lower in Montreal,” says Dion.

Additionally, he says that, because Montreal is located close toBoston and New York, it was more dependent on exports to theUnited States; so when the Canadian dollar began edging towardparity almost three years ago, Quebec was affected more adverselythan other provinces. “Since American exports have almost disap-peared, printers are now fighting for the local market. It’s tough be-cause, as elsewhere, it’s not a growing market and printers face a bigproblem with overcapacity. Right now [some of] the big companiesare working at only 40 to 60 percent of capacity,” he estimates.

But fortunately, in the midst of the general downturn, two ofthis year’s first-time Gutenberg entrants, Étiquettes Pro-fecta Inc. of Boucherville and Nap-Art Imprimeurs ofMontreal, show that innovation and entrepre-neurship are equally alive and well in La BelleProvince.

Étiquettes Profecta Inc.In the summer of 2009, Cynthia Cyr, Marketing Director of Étiquettes ProfectaInc. (Profecta Labels), entered the Guten-berg Awards contest for the first time with aflexo-based coupon book and three labels produced by the company’s toner-basedpresses (commonly referred to as digitalpresses). The coupon book belonged to thetype of instantly redeemable or Internetgame coupon that the company’s Aquaflex 8 prints entirely inline, down to the random inside numbering. Her toner-basedentries were the same type of labels she typically sends as pro-motional showpieces to a select clientele of about 240 Quebec andten Toronto agencies. In January 2010, she received notice backfrom AAGM that three of her four submissions were winners; butshe still had to wait until the night of the gala to discover whetherthe prizes were bronze, silver or gold.

Profecta sells its products through distributors, mainly to cus-tomers in Quebec, she explains. Eighty percent of the company’sclientele is trade and the rest is mainly pharmaceutical compa-nies with whom Profecta deals with directly to help navigate thecomplex labyrinth of legal requirements for pharma labels. Cyrcontinues to say, that although her original flexo company hasonly entered the toner-printing arena in the past four years, itstwo HP Indigo ws4500s are both running double shifts and al-lowing for expansion into other provinces because of growing de-mand. In fact, in 2009, a difficult year for many printers, Profecta’ssales grew by 23 percent (ten percent toner), while the company’scoupon sales tripled, and the team opened 166 new accounts.

“Although digital [toner] label presses have been around forabout five years now, they’re still kind of a new thing and haveopened up a large market for us, because we’re only the secondCanadian company to provide short-run digital colour labels for

APRIL 2010 • PRINTACTION • 21

GRAND GUTENBERGPrinter: Imprimerie l’Empreinte

Customer: Fabrique de laparoisse Notre-Dame de

MontrealTitle: Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal – Fine Art Book

Printer: Imprimerie l’EmpreinteCustomer: Bertuch

Title: Papeterie DimensionPlus – Complete

stationary

Printer: TranscontinentalMétropolitain

Customer: Journal LaPresse News Paper

Title: La Presse– 2008 July 15

Edition

Printer: Litho Mille ÎlesCustomer: Imavision

Title: La Petite Vie(DVD box)

22 • PRINTACTION • APRIL 2010

Printer: LakléCustomer: LakléTitle: Casse Noisette (NutCracker) self-promotion

trade. While most label companies usedirect sales reps, our clients in the tradeworld prefer to deal with our distributorsinstead of a competitor who will quoteagainst them,” she says.

Now Profecta is pushing to developnew business through agencies. “In thelast two years, we’ve opened 35 newagency accounts, so that’s where we’retargeting a lot of our publicity,” Cyr elab-orates. “The digital world is very creative,especially when you add variable-dataimages. But run-of-the-mill buyers tendto be less creative and care more abouthow much the label is going to cost. Sowe try to connect with agencies, design-ers, and marketing people instead – toshow them what our machines can do ona more creative level. They’re not print-ers. We’re the printer. So it’s our job to letthem know what their creative optionsare and what they will cost.”

Accordingly Cyr, who is an artist in herspare time, regularly experiments andbrainstorms with production staff to de-vise new products for the creative agencymarket: “As more and more people aregoing digital, they have to find a way tostand out from the next guy,” she says, “soI’m constantly thinking of what else ourcompany can do to help our clients createan impact – selling a product by region,for example. A Calgary company can in-crease sales of its sauce by putting localscenes of, say, nearby Banff National Parkon its labels. People are drawn to what

they know. That’s going to be the nextmarketing boom, I think. It’s just takinga while for people to understand it.”

Another of Cyr’s recent inventions wasto market sunscreen to tourists with la-bels showing scenery from various pop-ular beach destinations. Additionally, oneof her company’s next initiatives is to ex-pand its B2B online catalogue so thatconsumers, such as home winemakers,can design and order their own labels viathe Internet.

Nap-Art ImprimeursThis year’s Gutenberg program alsomarks the first submission and win forMartin Houle, Director of Sales at Nap-Art Imprimeurs in Montreal. His entrywas a coffee-table book printed for a con-struction company.

Traditionally, Nap-Art, which recentlyinstalled a 40-inch, 6-colour Komori, isbest known for specializing in placemats,invoices and guest cheques for restau-rants in Quebec, the Maritimes, Ontarioand Manitoba. But the other half of theoffset-focused business is general com-mercial print for local clients, compris-ing about 30 percent brokers, printersand photocopy shops. The rest are real-estate agents and other companies of upto 250 employees, including lots of re-peats and longtime regulars.

“All markets are pretty similar thesedays, but maybe Toronto is a bit moreprice-oriented, while Montreal is more

Photography of Gold Award-winning projects, and of Imprimerie l’Empreinte’s

Grand Gutenberg piece, by TranscontinentalTransmedia, prepared by Institut des

Communications Graphiques du Quebec.

people-oriented,” muses Houle. “I’m nota photocopy shop, but still I’m a smallprinter in a smaller market, and I em-phasize personal relationships and a largeservice offering. I act as a partner withmy clients, so that when they’re search-ing for something, they’ll usually call mefirst and ask for advice.”

Houle visits his clients regularly attheir places of business – a practice thatenables him to find new or better strate-gies for their problems. For example, herecently helped a bread bakery develop aunique tagging system to track the risingtime for different batches of dough.Houle has developed most of his work-ing relationships to the point where hefeels comfortable in making a sponta-neous telephone call to his clients whenhe comes across stratagems to share.

“The major thing is for us to be close toour client and to charge them the rightprice but not necessarily the cheapest one.We cultivate clients who want good serv-ice and relationships and let the othersgo,” he explains. “And we don’t just taketheir orders. Before every single price quo-tation, we ask questions to determine thereal purpose of the job. We take time witheach client and try to get a sense of their

real purpose; so then we can act as con-sultants on the best way to execute eachproject. We do everything possible tomake sure the client ends up feelingsure of what he’s doing.”

Houle says, until now, he has beenlargely focused on his own internal production and customers, so one of hismain motives for entering the GutenbergAwards contest this year was to try to raiseNap-Art’s profile and meet other people inthe industry. Dion concurs that the Guten-bergs remain one of the best ways to be rec-ognized as a quality printer among peers,agencies and customers in Quebec.

Both Houle and Cyr are encouraged bythe thought that their Gutenberg Awardswill help them win more new business.“The awards will help change people’s per-ception,” says Cyr. “Since we’ve achievedrecognition, new prospects will automati-cally assume we are a good company andnot a Mickey Mouse operation.”

Victoria Gaitskell is a veteran print and electronic journalist both outside and insidethe printing industry. Her interests includebusiness, personnel, and communicationtrends and strategies. She is keen to sharethoughts and discuss story ideas with readersat victoria.gaitskell@sympatico.ca.

APRIL 2010 • PRINTACTION • 23

Printer: Imprimerie l’EmpreinteCustomer: Musée des Beaux

Arts de MontrealTitle: Un grand musée au

cœur d’une grande ville

Printer: LithoChicCustomer:

L’Orange BleueTitle: L’Orange

Bleue – Self Promotion

Printer: Imprimerie l’Empreinte

Customer: CG3 Inc.Title: Rapport

annuel – SAQ –Annual Report

LithoChic 6 7 5 5 23Imprimerie l’Empreinte 8 6 5 3 22Transcontinental Litho Acme 8 6 2 6 22Worldcolor Montreal 6 4 4 5 19Groupe PDI 3 4 4 11Litho Mille-Iles 4 2 2 2 10Transcontinental Quebec 1 5 1 7Pazazz 2 4 1 7Transcontinental Montreal O’Keefe 2 4 1 7Mont-Roy l’Imprimeur 2 1 3 6Imprimerie PubCité 1 1 1 1 4Imprimerie Gibraltar 2 2 4Imprimerie VDL 1 3 4Promoflex International 1 3 4Groupe Lelys 1 2 3Transcontinental Métropolitain 1 2 3Intramedia Datamark 1 2 3RockTenn - Emballages Montreal 1 2 3Stylex 3D 3 3Étiquettes Profecta 1 1 1 3Groupe Produlith 1 2 3Reliure Alternative 1 1 1 3LG Chabot 2 2Transcontinental Metrolitho 1 1 2Imprimerie F.L. Chicoine 1 1 2Imprimerie Precigrafik 1 1Laklé 1 1Lithographie G. Monette 1 1Reliure Bouthillier et Beaudoin 1 1Nap-Art Imprimeurs 1 1Impression Au Point - Reprotech 1 1Collège Ahuntsic 1 1Emballage Anjou 1 1Imprimerie Lithographie Élite 1 1Imprimerie Lusoflex 1 1Lico Imprimeur 1 1Lidec Inc. 1 1

Gutenberg 2010 Winners Gold Silver BronzeHonourable

TotalMention

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