Quark: 'No Comment'

If you’ve been fol­low­ing this sto­ry, you know it began with star­tling alle­ga­tions lev­eled against Quark by a con­fi­den­tial source with­in Quark’s U.S. oper­a­tions. On 5 August 2007 Quark VS InDesign​.com pub­lished the claims of the “Source”: that Quark was lay­ing off per­son­nel, that it was spend­ing more mon­ey than it should on exec­u­tive perks, that QuarkXPress 7 was dras­ti­cal­ly under­selling pro­jec­tions. To answer those alle­ga­tions, I inter­viewed new pres­i­dent and CEO Ray Schiavone who con­firmed that Quark had dis­missed an unspec­i­fied num­ber of personnel–bizarrely, Schiavone claimed that the lay­offs did­n’t actu­al­ly hap­pen until days after Quark VS InDesign​.com pub­lished that they had, and that I could­n’t have known about them ahead of time despite irrefutable fact to the con­trary. As to the oth­er claims, Schiavone was even less spe­cif­ic in his denials, though deny them he did.

During my first inter­view with Schiavone, which occurred on 8 August 2007 fol­low­ing the employ­ee brief­ing where­in Schiavone report­ed­ly broke the then-not-so-new-news that per­son­nel had been laid off, I asked about a num­ber of top­ics beyond, but inspired by, the alle­ga­tions of the Source–topics like QuarkXPress 8, whether Quark has ced­ed the war for desk­tops to InDesign, and whether Schiavone want­ed to take the privately-held Quark, Inc. public.

By mutu­al agree­ment, Schiavone and I decid­ed to speak again and in more depth about those sub­jects before pub­li­ca­tion. The for­mat agreed to was e‑mail–I would pro­vide Quark with a 20-questions-style selec­tion of fol­low up ques­tions, and Schiavone would respond in writ­ing; any sub­se­quent­ly lin­ger­ing points would then be clar­i­fied by tele­phone and/or e‑mail. As expressed by MacLean Guthrie, direc­tor of Quark’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and a par­ty to my ini­tial inter­view of Schiavone, Quark seemed just as inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing the sec­ond inter­view as they were the first.

Of course, that was before the first inter­view was actu­al­ly published.

[For the record: Quark reviewed and con­firmed every quote and fact in the “Quark Responds to ‘Quark Insider’ ” sto­ry pri­or to its pub­li­ca­tion. –Editor]

Unfortunately, the fol­low up ques­tions, ques­tions which Quark was ini­tial­ly anx­ious to answer, will go large­ly unan­swered. Apparently that is because I failed to accept and regur­gi­tate every­thing Schiavone said as gospel–something oth­er writ­ers des­per­ate to gar­ner favor with Quark were only too hap­py to do. By pre­sent­ing a fair arti­cle that bal­anced the spe­cif­ic alle­ga­tions of the Source with the light-on-fact retorts of Schiavone, and ask­ing you, the read­er, to make up your own mind, I have evi­dent­ly bro­ken the First Commandment, and as a con­se­quence have appar­ent­ly been excom­mu­ni­cat­ed (again) from the divine grace of the Kingdom of Quark.

After three weeks of Guthrie’s delays and excus­es, I had giv­en up hope that Schiavone ever intend­ed to address the ques­tions I fur­nished to Quark on 15 August 2007. Last week I gave Schiavone one final chance to have his say. Though Schiavone was dynam­ic and gar­ru­lous in defend­ing him­self and his New Quark against the alle­ga­tions of the Source, in this oppor­tu­ni­ty to put Quark’s best face for­ward­ed he answers min­i­mal­ly and terse­ly, if at all.

Of course, any astute observ­er knows that what one does­n’t say is often more telling than what is said.

20 Questions for Ray Schiavone

Quark VS InDesign​.com Quark is a com­pa­ny with a lot of his­to­ry (some might say bag­gage) and ingrained atti­tudes. You must have known that going into the job. How did the com­pa­ny greet you? What have you been doing to change the so-called “Old Quark” cor­po­rate culture?

Ray Schiavone My approach has been 100 per­cent customer-centric. I’ve worked to empow­er every employ­ee to play an active role in our cus­tomers’ suc­cess. I believe that there are only two jobs in the com­pa­ny: Sales and sales sup­port. This phi­los­o­phy gets every­one out­ward­ly focused, and if any employ­ee is capa­ble of help­ing with cus­tomer issues, they’re called upon.

QvI Can you tell us a lit­tle about some of the peo­ple you’ve brought in to help with the New Quark, why you chose them?

RS: We’ve built a team that has proven exper­tise in turn­ing around com­pa­nies, expand­ing busi­ness­es in new glob­al ter­ri­to­ries, devel­op­ing prod­ucts in new ver­ti­cal mar­kets, and gen­er­al­ly lead­ing com­pa­nies to suc­cess. For exam­ple, Graham Freeman was a for­mer Adobe Sales SVP who realigned Adobe’s world­wide sales oper­a­tions. Jim Haggarty has intro­duced strate­gic tech­nol­o­gy plans and built world-class infra­struc­tures for com­pa­nies across diverse indus­tries. And as VP of mar­ket­ing Terry Welty led the repo­si­tion­ing of Arbortext, help­ing to turn the com­pa­ny around as the leader in enter­prise pub­lish­ing software.

QvI Congratulations on the new office in Silicon Valley. Loud com­plaints by English-speaking cus­tomers about non-native English-speakers in cus­tomer ser­vice and tech­ni­cal sup­port. A work­force reduc­tion in India. A new office in Santa Clara, Calif. Are you mov­ing all of Quark’s English lan­guage tele­phone sup­port and ser­vice back to the U.S., or only some of it?

RS: Our goal is to main­tain cus­tomer sup­port cen­ters in the US, Europe, and India so that our cus­tomers vir­tu­al­ly have 24-hour sup­port. When oper­a­tions close for the evening in one region, our tech­ni­cal teams in anoth­er region can work on resolv­ing any out­stand­ing issues. We want to be even more time­ly and effec­tive in address­ing our cus­tomers’ issues this way. We’re look­ing at how to fur­ther expand our cus­tomer sup­port in the U.S.

QvI When can Quark’s cus­tomers expect the phone to ring in California instead of Mohali? Will that be by the end of 2007, or by Spring 2008?

RS: Customer sup­port in Denver will begin this fall, and we will con­tin­ue to have a cus­tomer sup­port team in India and Neuchatel [ Switzerland].

QvI During our pre­vi­ous con­ver­sa­tion you sev­er­al times used the word “restructuring”–particularly in rela­tion to recent lay­offs, hir­ings, and shift­ing of posi­tions between depart­ments. It’s all rather vague, though. How are you restruc­tur­ing Quark? Into what are you restruc­tur­ing it?

RS: I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase before, “Change before you have to.” Every smart com­pa­ny has to heed this advice to stay com­pet­i­tive. As a com­pa­ny evolves, it needs to align its assets in order to cap­i­tal­ize on future mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties. And that’s what we’ve done. 

Quark is focused on our cus­tomers’ future. While we con­tin­ue to add val­ue to QuarkXPress and main­tain our com­mit­ment to our desk­top cus­tomers, we are expand­ing in the enter­prise mar­ket and in oth­er new growth areas. In order to do this, we’re putting addi­tion­al resources behind our strate­gic growth products. 

QvI We’ve heard that, dur­ing a senior staff meet­ing in Spring 2007, you report­ed­ly said: “QuarkXPress has lost against InDesign. That fight is over.” Is that how you feel? Has Quark giv­en up the fight for the desk­top pub­lish­ing market?

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15 thoughts on “Quark: 'No Comment'”

  1. hunter

    Fine job of report­ing. Thank you. I’ve been strong­ly think­ing about switch­ing since our last major print­ing prob­lem. Maybe this is what I need to get me off dead center. 

    Their direc­tion does make sense from a pure­ly finan­cial per­spec­tive, in fact it seems like the only solu­tion for them – to head in the enter­prise direction. 

    Hope you can keep your off-the-record con­tacts, it’s quite inter­est­ing to hear the real sto­ry in addi­tion to the for-public-consumption story.

    It would also be inter­est­ing to find out what Schiavone’s pri­vate com­ments are after he reads your report. Probably not going to hap­pen though.

  2. Quarker

    Pariah, your inter­view clear­ly is one-sided and is wrought with assump­tions. How can you expect a CEO tell a “jour­nal­ist” what the strat­e­gy of the busi­ness is for the next 3–5 years. Do you under­stand com­pet­i­tive advan­tage or do jounal­ists not have to wor­ry about competition.
    I do not blame Mr. Schiavone for not respond­ing to your ques­tions as he is turn­ing around a soft­ware com­pa­ny, that has a long lega­cy of prob­lems and I can imag­ine has more impor­tant issues to cov­er than defend­ing hum­self against hearsay from an “uniden­ti­fied source”, who you are using to cre­ate a controversy.
    Too bad you do not pub­lizie the good news about Quark, i.e. the Quark Connects pro­gram which was announced at Graph Expo which pro­vides all Quark print­er part­ners with a direct avenue to the consumer/customer ver­sus Adobe’s (since retract­ed) pro­gram to exclude all print­ers by using Fedex.
    It is very evi­dent you are an Adobe sup­port­er and con­tin­ue to bash Quark when you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty. I strong­ly sug­gest all read­ers of your blog read your respons­es and assump­tions with cau­tion as they are very miseleading.

  3. nk

    hmmf… did any of you guys ever see “The Mummy”? Remember how those anu­bis war­riors dis­in­te­grat­ed into sand when their heads got chopped off (and when their boss got dead­ed)? I think all these Quark war­riors are going to go the same way some­time soon

  4. bill_gains

    The days of being able to charge 700-plus dol­lars sim­ply to put text or pic­tures in a box has long since past. We all need to stop try­ing to get blood from this stone. And all this talk of Quark becom­ing an enter­prise appli­ca­tion – sim­ply more cor­po­rate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to main­tain their ridicu­lous pric­ing sched­ule. Not only does InDesign beat this dinosaur feature-wise, so does CorelDRAW!, the red-headed stepchild of DTP.

    Quark… still sav­ing pages as EPS one page at a time (or is there a $100 Xtension to fix that?).

  5. Back in the game

    Since I have been back in the design com­mu­ni­ty – with the abil­i­ty to use, teach and speak about ALL the prod­ucts that are out there. It took me less than 1 week to com­plete­ly get my skills back up to speed at expert lev­el in InDesign CS3. I have fall­en in love with Bridge and the sim­plic­i­ty of the suite. I still teach and present QXP because I have expert lev­el skills – but the demand is very low. My eyes are open wide, as I am in touch in InDesign users and not just Xpress users, as I had been for the past 3.5 years. I am find­ing peo­ple are ask­ing me to teach/present InDesign 90% more than QuarkXPress. 

    And this is because the ramp to move to InDesign has been steady through­out the past 5 years. It has not declined in the least – and Quark knows this, and has addressed it with the future plan for the direc­tion of the com­pa­ny. I found out last week that one of the few major US pub­lish­ing giants that is still using QXP (ver 4) – has decid­ed to move to InDesign, but has not told Quark yet. I know because they were in a class that I taught on Transitioning to InDesign. 

    It is sad because I tru­ly sup­port­ed every effort the com­pa­ny made to reach out to the Quark com­mu­ni­ty – how­ev­er, I think the boat was miss­ing dur­ing the old admin­is­tra­tion days. I applaud Quark for rec­og­niz­ing what they have to do to make the com­pa­ny viable once again, which means chang­ing the strat­e­gy and vision. Quark will sur­vive – whether it’s prod­uct line changes, whether or not the com­pa­ny is sold or becomes a pub­lic enti­ty is yet to be seen.

    The PM team at Quark is great – and they know what they are/were up against and real­ize the changes that the com­pa­ny has to make. However, reveal­ing them to the pub­lic could dam­age the com­pa­ny severe­ly. I know the path of some of the new tech­nolo­gies that are being built – but can­not dis­cuss them until 9/6/08. If Quark has not released any­thing new by that date – then feel free to get tin touch with me.

    In the mean­time – explore your options, look at the design tools that are best for you. Even if Quark did go all-enterprise – the sup­port will not go away for the desk­top prod­ucts. By the way – the employ­ee that will be head­ing up the new Tech Support team in Denver is amaz­ing and he is a long time Quark employ­ee and tru­ly cares about cus­tomer sup­port. Congrats Craig!

    I look for­ward to attend­ing the Quark Symposium in Chicago on October 30 to see if Quark is chang­ing their mes­sag­ing. I will follow-up with a full sto­ry which can be found at http://​www​.cre​ative​blvd​.com – where I am the Editor-in-Chief. I am pulling for Quark and am look­ing for­ward to see­ing new technologies.

  6. Anne-Marie

    Hey there Pariah, very inter­est­ing report­ing. Thank you!

    A cou­ple things … have you been to the Quark Forums late­ly? Seen all the higher-ups and VPs list­ed by name as the mod­er­a­tors of the forums and actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing, help­ing, ask­ing for sam­ple prob­lem child files etc. from the users who post there? I thought of that when Ray said “if there’s a cus­tomer prob­lem, we pull in every­one to help.” It’s heart­en­ing to see, I tell you. Adobe staff help out on the Adobe forums, but on their own time, and cov­er­age is spot­ty. They make it clear they’re User to User forums. There is no oth­er way to talk to an Adobe offi­cial oth­er than pay­ing for the tech sup­port call. So the free 800-number sup­port plus the respon­sive, author­i­ta­tive forum sup­port is real­ly great to see.

    The oth­er thing … you were talk­ing about Quark mov­ing to some sort of a host­ed solu­tion. I think just about every soft­ware devel­op­er and their grand­moth­er is doing the same thing. Starting with Web 2.0 good­ness like Google’s spread­sheet and word pro­cess­ing pro­grams, to Photoshop Elements and Première Elements built into pho­to shar­ing sites, to Microsoft Office Live … if Quark *weren’t* plan­ning on mov­ing at least some offer­ings in that direc­tion, I’d be sur­prised. Or I guess I should say, I would­n’t be sur­prised; but you say/surmise they are, so to me that’s a sign at least some peo­ple over there are in touch with indus­try trends. 

    I don’t think you’ve been frozen out of Quark. Maybe they just want a break. ;-)

  7. Mjenius

    Asking hard ques­tions is part of being a jour­nal­ist. If Quark is real­ly uncom­fort­able with these ques­tions, they should real­ly think twice about going pub­lic. Journalists and investors will be relent­less. Once they go pub­lic it’ll be much tougher to BS, because that’ll just make them look either stu­pid, dis­hon­est or both. I wish they’d go pub­lic just to see their finan­cial. Seems like Ray knows what he’s doing, but they real­ly need to work on their PR.

  8. Andrew Smith

    Reading through the first half of the arti­cle, I real­ly felt that his answers were like some­thing that the PR depart­ment would write.

    Kudos to PB for see­ing through them all. A great and inter­est­ing read.

  9. Keshav Singh

    I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work on the devel­op­ment of Quark XPress in
    India start­ing ver­sion 5 and can vouch for huge amount of hard work which had gone into the devel­op­ment dur­ing last few years.
    Though there were a num­ber of dif­fi­cul­ties which had to be over­come the devel­op­ment process had start­ed sta­bil­is­ing by the time ver­sion 7.0 was completed.
    Observing the inten­si­ty of exchanges and the emo­tion­al out­pour­ings I can’t help but hope for ear­ly sta­bil­i­sa­tion and time­ly release of impov­ed versions

  10. Andrei

    I’m using Quark for about 9 years now. It’s been get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter with every ver­sion, and at the time it was launched, I thought the 7.0 ver­sion was tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary. But now I chose to switch to InDesign. By the words of Schiavone, “that war is over”. That’s it.

  11. Thomas Ledermann

    Just as i would say, i switched to InDesign with Version 1.5. Shure was bug­gy that time, but improved so much. Quark was still good in that time and still has some func­tions InDesign is miss­ing… But there are so many things way bet­ter in InDesign.

    Someone got a list of the dif­fer­ences between those two?
    That be nice…

  12. Puboisher

    The war is over?

    How about ScribusVsIndesign​.com? How long will it be before Scribus has more users than Quark?

  13. budimir

    i like work­ing in Quark, i now they have prob­lems to com­pete with adobe but they have to be patiente and not to pay atten­tion on graph­ic issues like inDesign but on my oppin­ion on speed, sta­bil­i­ty, simplicity …

    greet­ings from Europe

  14. Mjenius

    Adobe’s new pric­ing in Europe is prob­a­bly not help­ing either.

  15. someone who knows

    they’re fir­ing again… though not that brital­ly this time.. its a new HR pol­i­cy – implied fir­ing… all those ppl who dont get a 1 yr con­tract let­ter are implic­it­ly fired..

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