Quark: 'No Comment'

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?

RS: What I meant by that is that we’re not going to com­pete with Adobe. I don’t want to be some­one else’s com­pa­ny. I want to be our own com­pa­ny. There are oth­er things that are our strengths that Adobe does­n’t [do]. That’s a los­ing propo­si­tion to be anoth­er per­son­’s com­pa­ny. I want to focus on inno­va­tion, not replication.

QvI What are some of those inno­va­tions, those “strengths that Adobe does­n’t” have?

RS: While I can’t give you specifics because devel­op­ment is under­way, I can tell you that we are mak­ing enhance­ments to our server-based enter­prise prod­ucts and devel­op­ing new prod­ucts that will com­pre­hen­sive­ly serve the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing needs of our cur­rent and poten­tial cus­tomers and expand­ing capa­bil­i­ties in our QuarkXPress prod­uct. You’ll be hear­ing more about all of these ini­tia­tives next year. 

QvI Has Quark Inc. announced any dates (or gen­er­al time for release) to its Service Plus cus­tomers for QuarkXPress 8?

RS: [8 August:] No. We’re stick­ing to the prac­tice of as soon as we can. [7 September:] Yes.

QvI When QuarkXPress 7 was released in May 2006, the com­pa­ny promised a release cycle of 18 to 24 months. If you plan to adhere to that promise, then XPress 8 should hit the mar­ket no lat­er than May 2008. Is that when we’ll see it, or is devel­op­ment of QuarkXPress 8 behind schedule?

RS: Development of QuarkXPress 8 is pro­ceed­ing as planned. 

QvI What can QuarkXPress users look for­ward to in ver­sion 8?

RS: A more focused ver­sion of QuarkXPress with few­er new fea­tures but with the fea­tures users want, the ones they’ll real­ly use. I want to give them what they’ve been ask­ing for years. It will be a uni­fied release for all inter­na­tion­al markets.

QvI You mean QuarkXPress and Passport, there will be just one code base?

RS: See above answer–that should answer this one too.

QvI Is QuarkXPress 9 on the roadmap? Will there be a QuarkXPress 9?

RS: Absolutely.

QvI When you came onboard at Quark in November 2006, you were fresh from turn­ing Arbortext, Inc. from a desk­top soft­ware com­pa­ny into an enter­prise sys­tems provider, and before that man­ag­ing enterprise-grade prod­ucts at General Electric Corp. prop­er­ties. One could say you’re not a desk­top soft­ware guy, that you’re an enter­prise guy. Yet you’re the pres­i­dent and CEO of a com­pa­ny with more than 20 years in desk­top soft­ware. A lot of QuarkXPress cus­tomers are afraid that you’re here to tran­si­tion Quark from a desk­top soft­ware com­pa­ny into an enter­prise soft­ware com­pa­ny. Is that the case?

RS: Desktop and enter­prise are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. I am here to evolve the com­pa­ny to pro­vide tech­nol­o­gy that helps our cus­tomers move for­ward, and not to just add fea­tures to a 25-year-old product. 

QvI What is your strat­e­gy then for build­ing, or at least retain­ing, XPress’s, QID’s, and oth­er desk­top prod­ucts’ shares of the market?

RS: We will deliv­er more val­ue with each new release of QuarkXPress and its com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts. We also con­tin­ue to devel­op new XTensions that enable our cus­tomers to do more with QuarkXPress than ever before. And in that vein, we have added more sup­port for our XTensions devel­op­ers and oth­er third-party ser­vice providers world­wide who are mem­bers of QuarkAlliance. And as we learned through the world­wide cus­tomer road­shows we held ear­li­er this year, face-to-face inter­ac­tion goes a long way for both our users and our team. We plan to build on this momentum.

QvI In addi­tion to tran­si­tion­ing your last com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts from desk­top to enter­prise you also lead it through a sale to Parametric Technologies Corp. for a fig­ure that was near­ly five times Arbortext’s rev­enue. That’s an impres­sive accom­plish­ment. And it begs the ques­tion: Were you brought in to fix up the house and make it more attrac­tive for sale?

RS: I was brought in to bring pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment to the com­pa­ny. I’m the first out­sider to run the com­pa­ny. I was brought in to tran­si­tion the com­pa­ny and address chal­lenges in the pro­fes­sion­al mar­ket­place. And to posi­tion the com­pa­ny for growth. We are not a venture-backed com­pa­ny but a pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny that is com­mit­ted for the long term.

QvI To tran­si­tion the com­pa­ny into what?

RS: See oth­er responses.

QvI Twice dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion you inti­mat­ed that Quark might go pub­lic in the future. Is it your strat­e­gy to turn the pri­vate­ly owned Quark into a pub­licly trad­ed company?

RS: No comment.

QvI Did you hire Ernest J. Sampias as CFO in June 2007 to help pre­pare Quark for an IPO?

RS: No comment.

QvI Does the Ebrahimi fam­i­ly want to sell off Quark?

RS: No comment.

QvI Speculation–and hope–is ram­pant that a consumer-grade, or “busi­ness class,” lay­out appli­ca­tion will appear on the mar­ket from one of the two com­pa­nies that has the expe­ri­ence in pro­fes­sion­al lay­out soft­ware to build it right. You said QuarkXPress isn’t com­pet­ing against InDesign, but are you com­pet­ing against a the­o­ret­i­cal InDesign Elements? Are you build­ing “QuarkXPress Lite”? Do you believe the mar­ket has a need for a more acces­si­ble, less pow­er­ful ver­sion of XPress?

RS: No comment.

QvI Are the desk­top and enter­prise devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing teams work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion? Do they share resources and discoveries–does one group’s idea and inno­va­tion ben­e­fit the other’s?

RS: Absolutely. QuarkXPress is the foun­da­tion for the prod­ucts we’re devel­op­ing that will take us into new mar­kets and far­ther in the enter­prise space.

QvI Imagine it’s now 2012, five years from now. Where–and what–is Quark, Inc.?

RS: No comment.

Next, the backstory.

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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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