Quark Acquires A Lowly Apprentice Production Inc. (ALAP)

Press Release

Quark, Inc. acquires ALAP

DENVER – December 14, 2005 – Quark Inc. today announced that it has acquired the busi­ness and assets of A Lowly Apprentice Production Inc. (ALAP), a lead­ing provider of extend­ed tech­nol­o­gy for the pub­lish­ing and graph­ic design indus­tries. With the acqui­si­tion, Quark has acquired ALAP’s prod­ucts, which add valu­able func­tion­al­i­ty to the Quark prod­uct fam­i­ly. In addi­tion, ALAP founder Paul Schmitt has joined Quark as vice pres­i­dent of prod­uct devel­op­ment. The finan­cial terms of the acqui­si­tion were not disclosed.

“Quark’s acqui­si­tion of ALAP is an ide­al strate­gic fit for both com­pa­nies. ALAP’s pop­u­lar imag­ing, impo­si­tion­ing, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools are a nat­ur­al com­ple­ment to QuarkXPress, and they put more use­ful fea­tures into the hands of our customers,” said Linda Chase, inter­im pres­i­dent of Quark. “ALAP’s imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy will work with the out­stand­ing QuarkVista tech­nol­o­gy in QuarkXPress, and adds sophis­ti­cat­ed com­posit­ing and Photoshop sup­port to QuarkXPress. We’ll also be able to put low cost impo­si­tion­ing soft­ware into the hands of our cus­tomers and deliv­er a more com­plete port­fo­lio for auto­mat­ed dig­i­tal workflows.”

“This is very excit­ing for both Quark and ALAP. There’s a strate­gic fit between the Quark and ALAP prod­uct lines, and our cus­tomers will see imme­di­ate ben­e­fit from the clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion in devel­op­ment on QuarkXPress 7 and future products,” said Paul Schmitt, pres­i­dent of ALAP and Quark’s new vice pres­i­dent of prod­uct devel­op­ment. “As a long­stand­ing XTensions devel­op­er, we’re extreme­ly famil­iar with Quark tech­nol­o­gy, and we’re con­fi­dent that we’ll inte­grate our prod­ucts into the Quark fam­i­ly very quickly.”

About Quark

Quark Inc. (www​.quark​.com) is an indus­try leader and the only soft­ware com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing multi-channel com­mu­ni­ca­tion and com­merce man­age­ment soft­ware solu­tions that are trans­form­ing the busi­ness of cre­ative com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Quark has pro­vid­ed award-winning soft­ware for pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ers since its flag­ship prod­uct, QuarkXPress, changed the course of tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing. Founded in 1981, Denver-based Quark Inc. is pri­vate­ly held.

About "A Lowly Apprentice Production, Inc."

Founded in 1990, A Lowly Apprentice Production Inc. (ALAP) is a lead­ing provider of extend­ed tech­nol­o­gy for the pub­lish­ing and graph­ic design indus­tries. Affordable, easy to use and seam­less­ly inte­grat­ing into the host appli­ca­tion envi­ron­ment, ALAP’s prod­ucts have won major awards in both the United States and in Europe.