Efi announced that it has acquired
DirectSmile GmbH, an award-winning provider of software solutions for cross
media marketing automation.Based in Berlin,DirectSmile’s technologies extend
Efi’s offerings and will give customers expanded, fully integrated capabilities
with data-driven digital print, web, e-mail, social media and mobile marketing
workflows.
DirectSmile invented image personalization
in 2001 and today makes media personalisation and automation software that
streamlines sophisticated marketing and production tasks for corporations,
agencies and printing companies.
While financial terms of the acquisition
were not disclosed, it is not expected to be material to Efi’s Q3 or full year
2014 results. DirectSmile employees, including co-founders and former
principals Christoph Schacht and Christoph Clermont, have joined Efi’s
Productivity Software Web2Print Solutions Group.
“Web to print is one of the fastest-growing
parts of the printing and marketing software segment,” said Gabriel Matsliach,
senior vice president and general manager, Efi Productivity Software. “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,” said Christoph Schacht, DirectSmile’s co-founder. “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. Efi is
currently incorporating DirectSmile technology into a new variable-data
printing product that will make its debut at the Graph Expo tradeshow in
Chicago, September 28-October 1.
