Progressive Solutions Installs Two HP Indigo 7500s to Support Frecklebox Subsidiary

PALO ALTO, CA—Nov. 30, 2010—Progressive Solutions, a Santa Clara, CA-based print service provider experiencing upwards of 200 percent growth at its Frecklebox personalized children’s gifts subsidiary, installed two HP Indigo 7500 digital presses last month to address rapidly expanding production needs.

The presses provide the high productivity and consistent, reliable offset-quality imaging needed as Frecklebox enters its peak holiday season for personalized children’s books. In addition, the HP Indigo 7500s’ closed-loop quality control systems facilitate production of the premium greeting cards and invitations Progressive Solutions manufactures for one of its customers, tinyprints.com.

“Our company was founded on the concept of high-quality, print-on-demand service, which means HP Indigo has always been our production engine of choice,” said Mark Sarpa, president, Progressive Solutions. “Our positive experience with HP has gotten even better with the HP Indigo 7500. The press’ Vision System inspection features are a huge advantage for any company that builds its business around personalization and variable-data printing.”

The new Vision System is an integrated module on the HP Indigo 7500 that scans press output at full press speed. Developed in conjunction with HP Labs—the company's central research arm—the Vision System automates a number of the press calibration and service tasks that operators typically would perform, maximizing uptime and improving print quality.

Future enhancements for the Vision System will allow for additional calibration and automatic diagnostics as well as optional, real time scanning and verification of the printed image.

“Our end-to-end digital production offerings have helped Progressive Solutions build a strong business offering personalized keepsakes that meet consumers’ high quality expectations,” said Jan Riecher, vice president and general manager, Graphics Solutions Business – Americas, HP. “The new HP Indigo 7500—coupled with HP SmartStream workflow solutions that integrate with Progressive Solutions' web-to-print technologies—create an ideal digital color manufacturing line for this customer's peak production season.”

Progressive Solutions’ two new presses were financed through HP Financial Services. The company's work with HP Financial Services gives Sarpa more confidence in his firm's ability to expand into new markets.

“Even with conservative estimates, we can see there will be a need to install additional HP Indigos in the future,” said Sarpa. “Fortunately, HP provides us with more than presses and ink. We have a long-term relationship and the financing part of that relationship gives us the flexibility to grow when we need to grow.”

With its expanded, highly productive HP Indigo portfolio, Progressive Solutions is expanding beyond its niche markets. The company already has added more sales staff to grow its base of corporate print work—including high-quality, medium-run-length jobs that competing PSPs typically print on half-size analog offset presses.

Progressive Solutions also will use its expanded fleet of HP Indigo digital presses to support the launch of JaxInvites.com, a new subsidiary that offers stationers premium personalized invitations that can be mailed in full-color, digitally printed tubes instead of envelopes.

The HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press is ideally suited to replace small and midsize analog offset presses and to handle high-value applications, such as variable-data-driven marketing collateral, photo books and personalized direct mail. Available options for the press include a white ink upgrade for full-color printing on colored, transparent or metallic media, and an optional thick substrate kit that lets users print on thicker media up to 400 gsm/460 microns.

Improvements on the HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press include:

• Intelligent Automation features that increase press productivity by up to 10 percent
• An up to 20 percent improvement in color consistency and uniformity
• Up to 10 percent less energy per printed page, with reduced use of imaging oil.

The latest version, 64-bit HP SmartStream Production Pro Print Server Progressive Solutions installed with the press improves front-end workflow processing times by an average of 18 percent.

More information about HP Indigo presses is available at www.hp.com/go/gsb or through the HP Graphic Arts Twitter feed.

About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world's largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

Source: Company press release.