Quote from Seybold Bullitin: What’s in a Name? HP Acquires Scitex’s Name, Along with Its Vision

Source: Seybold Bulletin August 31, 2005 : By Stephen Beals

OUR [Seybold] TAKE:

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One of the more fascinating aspects of this acquisition is that HP bought the Scitex name as well as the company. Scitex had sold off parts of the company on several occasions but had held onto the Scitex name. Clearly, HP is convinced that it has acquired a company whose name alone can bring in business.

Creo didn’t buy the name when it acquired the biggest chunk of Scitex a few years ago. Meanwhile, Kodak, which acquired Creo early this year, is rebranding all of the products that once bore the Scitex name with the Kodak moniker. So even though Kodak now owns most of what once was Scitex, HP owns the Scitex brand name.

For HP it’s a relatively small but significant acquisition. It shows that HP is serious about expanding its market space and gives it some strong footholds in critical emerging economies where Scitex Vision already has made inroads. This acquisition appears to be designed to enhance and increase market penetration rather than to reduce overall costs.

As far as we can tell, HP will leave Scitex Vision largely intact. Scitex Vision’s president and CEO figured prominently in the press presentation and is scheduled to present the companies’ future vision at Print05 in a couple of weeks. HP did discuss some possible cost savings in the service end of the business from “common customer relationship management.”

Scitex’s engineers have a reputation for technological prowess that any cutting-edge company would covet and its technical support team is considered world-class by most observers. It’s a reputation that HP would do well to exploit.

There is some danger that a very large company such as HP might make changes that could dilute this very strong asset. Distributors and end users will watch this very carefully, and HP has much to gain by keeping service levels up to present standards. Of course, the actual integration steps HP will take remain to be seen.