Quark Expanding Efforts in Europe, Customer Relations

Press Release

PARIS–(THE DESIGN WEBLOG)–31 August, 2004–Since his appoint­ment as pres­i­dent and CEO of Quark Inc. in January, Kamar Aulakh has helped Quark imple­ment a series of actions to demon­strate the com­pa­ny’s desire to improve its rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers. The com­pa­ny has changed poli­cies and pric­ing, embraced new part­ners, and com­mit­ted sub­stan­tial resources to cus­tomer outreach.

“From the inside out, we’re reassess­ing the way we do busi­ness and the qual­i­ty and effec­tive­ness of the solu­tions we devel­op to help our cus­tomers,” said Aulakh. “As CEO, my biggest chal­lenge has been to imple­ment core changes that trans­form the way we do busi­ness so that we are clos­er to our cus­tomers. We have made fun­da­men­tal changes to improve our com­pa­ny and our solu­tions, and we’re only going to get better.”

Increasing the focus on Europe

Quark is work­ing hard to bet­ter serve European cus­tomers. One key ele­ment in meet­ing cus­tomer needs is ensur­ing that the com­pa­ny has enough sup­port staff to answer cus­tomer ques­tions, lis­ten to cus­tomer feed­back, and incor­po­rate that feed­back into new prod­uct designs and capa­bil­i­ties. Since Aulakh’s appoint­ment, Quark has ramped up its ser­vice, sup­port, mar­ket­ing, and devel­op­ment staffs, tripled its field sales staff around the globe, re-opened its office near Stuttgart, and opened new offices in Hamburg and New York. The com­pa­ny is open­ing two new European offices this month in Paris and London.

“We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing our cus­tomers and part­ners with the ser­vice and sup­port they expect,” said Axel Paesike, Quark’s new­ly appoint­ed direc­tor of sales for Europe.

To build a stronger foun­da­tion, the com­pa­ny has expand­ed its lead­er­ship roles in Europe. Now, Aulakh and vice pres­i­dent of oper­a­tions Monique Wirz-Grutter are based out of Quark’s European head­quar­ters in Neuchâ´¥l, Switzerland, and a third mem­ber of Quark’s exec­u­tive staff, senior vice pres­i­dent of prod­uct devel­op­ment J’Kurz, is based in Hamburg.

In addi­tion to those efforts, Quark has appoint­ed R骡né Bouffaut as its new direc­tor of pub­lic rela­tions for Europe. Bouffaut comes to Quark from Apple, where she was respon­si­ble for pub­lic rela­tions in France.

Friendlier poli­cies

Based on cus­tomer feed­back, Quark recent­ly revised its software-licensing pol­i­cy for single-user licens­es of QuarkXPress. Under the new pol­i­cy, QuarkXPress 6 users can install and acti­vate their soft­ware on a sec­ond com­put­er at no addi­tion­al charge. Activation on a sec­ond com­put­er is sim­ple and quick.

At the same time, Quark’s efforts to strength­en rela­tion­ships with autho­rized edu­ca­tion­al resellers such as Computers Unlimited gave the com­pa­ny the flex­i­bil­i­ty to offer spe­cial QuarkXPress pric­ing for edu­ca­tors and stu­dents. Plus, accred­it­ed schools with course offer­ings that require QuarkXPress are eli­gi­ble for spe­cial pric­ing on Lab-Pak con­fig­u­ra­tion of 10 or more users for use by the school.

Building a glob­al alliance

Quark has restruc­tured and expand­ed the QuarkAlliance pro­gram in an effort to devel­op new oppor­tu­ni­ties for Quark and its net­work of devel­op­ers, out­put providers, and train­ers to pro­vide valu­able prod­ucts and ser­vices to Quark customers.

Members are invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in co-marketing oppor­tu­ni­ties, and have access to pre-release pro­grams, prod­uct dis­counts, and more. Membership in the pro­gram pro­motes vis­i­bil­i­ty with­in the Quark com­mu­ni­ty, and the pro­gram’s oppor­tu­ni­ties for QuarkXPress train­ing and enter­prise solu­tions inte­gra­tion enhance the use­ful­ness and val­ue of Quark software.

Quark is also work­ing to increase its face-to-face con­tact with its cus­tomers. In Europe, Quark’s event ros­ter for 2004 includes Drupa, Ifra, Macworld Expos in Germany and the United Kingdom, and Apple Expo. In addi­tion, Quark is plan­ning road shows in major European cities and train­ing ses­sions for devel­op­ers and oth­er partners.

Redesigning the online experience

Based on feed­back from its cus­tomers, Quark has enhanced QuarkStore, the com­pa­ny’s online shop­ping site. The goals of the redesign includ­ed help­ing shop­pers locate, order, and upgrade Quark prod­ucts faster and eas­i­er so they can save time and pro­tect their invest­ment in their desk­top and enter­prise soft­ware solutions.

About Quark

Quark Inc. (www​.quark​.com) is a lead­ing devel­op­er of tools and tech­nolo­gies for col­lab­o­ra­tive con­tent work­flows from the desk­top to the enter­prise. Quark has been pro­vid­ing award-winning soft­ware for pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ers since its flag­ship prod­uct, QuarkXPress, changed the course of tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing. Today, Quark soft­ware is used by mil­lions of cus­tomers around the world, and the com­pa­ny is guid­ing the cre­ation of vital open stan­dards to pro­mote pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and inter­op­er­abil­i­ty through­out the indus­try. With a new gen­er­a­tion of prod­ucts and solu­tions, Quark is help­ing its cus­tomers cre­ate, man­age, per­son­al­ize, and dis­trib­ute con­tent to a vari­ety of media for­mats and devices at low cost. Founded in 1981, Denver-based Quark Inc. is pri­vate­ly held.

Quark and Quark relat­ed marks are trade­marks and/or reg­is­tered trade­marks of Quark, Inc. and all applic­a­ble affil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. and in many oth­er coun­tries. All oth­er marks are the prop­er­ties of their respec­tive own­ers. For back­ground infor­ma­tion, please vis­it the Quark press cen­ter at www​.quark​.com/​a​b​o​u​t​/​p​r​e​s​s​center or send an e‑mail mes­sage to pr@​quark.​com.

Contact:

Quark Inc.
Jennifer Churchill, 303–894-3961
jchurchill@​quark.​com
or
Glen Turpin, 303–894-3687
gturpin@​quark.​com