Quark: 'No Comment'

The Backstory

When a jour­nal­ist inter­views a sub­ject there are two sets of ques­tions in play. There are the queries posed by the inter­view­er (and usu­al­ly respond­ed to by the sub­ject), and then there are ques­tions behind the ques­tions. Why would a jour­nal­ist ask this or that? What does the jour­nal­ist know or sus­pect that he’s try­ing to draw his sub­ject into con­firm­ing or deny­ing? It’s the back­sto­ry, what’s going on behind the inter­view. Usually the back­sto­ry is self-evident. The inter­view­er draws the real sto­ry out of the sub­ject such that the ques­tion behind the ques­tion is answered, that the sub­jec­t’s respons­es reveal both the pri­ma facie issue as well as the back­sto­ry. In effect, an inter­view is often a mat­ter of the sub­ject speak­ing aloud what the inter­view­er already knows.

In this case, how­ev­er, where the for­mat imposed for the sec­ond inter­view was e‑mail, and giv­en Schiavone’s tac­i­tur­ni­ty, the back­sto­ry is left untold. What elicit­ed the above 20 ques­tions from me? Why did I ask about this or that? Schiavone should have told you that him­self, in his own way, but now if you want a com­plete sto­ry, it’s up to me to explain.

Although high­ly unortho­dox, I’ll exam­ine many of the ques­tions by inter­view­ing myself.

Quark VS InDesign​.com Why did you ask: “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?”

Pariah S. Burke During a vis­it a few months ago to Quark’s Denver head­quar­ters I asked sev­er­al Quark man­agers and exec­u­tives how Schiavone had been received at the com­pa­ny, whether his new man­age­ment style was being met with opened arms or fin­gers in ears, and if he was gen­er­al­ly liked. (Schiavone him­self was out of town at the time.) In addi­tion to my ask­ing such ques­tions direct­ly of recent­ly hired as well as long-time Quark lead­ers, oth­ers vol­un­teered the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion with­out prompting.

The respons­es were all unan­i­mous, offer­ing the fol­low­ing points consistently:

  • The speak­er him- or her­self “loves” Ray;
  • Schiavone’s ideas and man­age­ment style are rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than those of pri­or CEO’s, and a refresh­ing, much need­ed change;
  • Those who were part of the “Old Quark” lead­er­ship team don’t like Schiavone (inter­est­ing­ly, some of those who said they loved and were grate­ful for Schiavone were them­selves sin­gled out by oth­ers as being among the “Old Quark” régime that report­ed­ly dis­likes Schiavone);
  • Schiavone is grad­u­al­ly replac­ing all the “Old Quark” upper man­agers one at a time.

I asked the ques­tion because I want­ed to learn how Schiavone him­self viewed the transition.

QvI Why did you ask: “Are you mov­ing all of Quark’s English lan­guage tele­phone sup­port and ser­vice back to the U.S., or only some of it?” and “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?”

PSB The why of this ques­tion is pret­ty obvi­ous: Quark cus­tomers, par­tic­u­lar­ly English-speakers in North America, often com­plain about receiv­ing sup­port from tech­ni­cians for whom English is not a first lan­guage. Even when lan­guage isn’t a bar­ri­er, cus­tomers fre­quent­ly com­plain about cul­tur­al differences–specifically that over­seas tech­ni­cians have dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing the need of American work­ers to solve show-stopper and seri­ous tech­ni­cal issues quickly.

I want­ed to see if Schiavone would address those com­plaints either by com­mit­ting to staff English-language cus­tomer ser­vice and tech­ni­cal sup­port lines with Americans, or by pre­sent­ing anoth­er plan to assuage cus­tomers regard­ing these complaints.

To be com­plete­ly can­did, I already knew the answer to these ques­tions, but I should­n’t be the one to divulge that infor­ma­tion. I’m glad Schiavone was will­ing to answer these ques­tions when he declined to address many oth­ers. I’m also hap­py to see that cus­tomer sup­port lines will once again ring in Denver. Last I had heard, a California loca­tion was still being considered.

QvI You asked: “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?” and Schiavone respond­ed by say­ing: “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.” Was that a sat­is­fac­to­ry answer?

PSB Yes and no. The fact that I knew about the con­tent of that meet­ing and his com­ments regard­ing InDesign seemed to take Schiavone by surprise–what I know often seems to sur­prise Quark. I was glad that Schiavone did­n’t deny the state­ment and that he put it in con­text. Of course, it prompt­ed my next question.

QvI Why did you ask: “What are some of those inno­va­tions, those ‘strengths that Adobe does­n’t’ have?”

PSB Because it was a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty for Quark to tout its strengths and assets out­side their mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. As we all know, Quark’s mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als are rarely her­ald­ed for their accu­ra­cy and objec­tive hon­esty.

I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to this answer because I’ve talked at length with prod­uct man­agers about their plans and ideas for the future of XPress and oth­er prod­ucts. I’m dis­ap­point­ed. Schiavone’s response could have been very interesting.

QvI You asked: “Has Quark Inc. announced any dates (or gen­er­al time for release) to its Service Plus cus­tomers for QuarkXPress 8?” Were you sat­is­fied with the answer?

PSB As of my 8 August inter­view of Schiavone, he had not announced a release date to Service Plus cus­tomers. One month lat­er, he had. I asked that and the fol­low­ing ques­tion again–the ques­tion about keep­ing to XPress’s stat­ed 18–24 month release cycle–to see if I could elic­it more detail from Schiavone.

My sources tell me QuarkXPress 8 devel­op­ment has fall­en behind sched­ule, that it’s unlike­ly we’ll see a full retail release ear­li­er than Fall 2008. Even if a ful­ly oper­a­tional retail ver­sion is late, putting out a pub­lic beta for a few months could change the over­all mar­ket per­cep­tion of the length of time between XPress 7 and 8 releas­es. Perception isn’t every­thing, though; no pro­duc­tion man­ag­er worth her salt will bet her work­flow on a beta prod­uct, so a beta XPress 8 will be lit­tle more than a good faith effort for most work­ing pro­fes­sion­als until boxed prod­uct ships.

QvI You asked: “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?” Schiavone respond­ed: “Development of QuarkXPress 8 is pro­ceed­ing as planned.” Why?

PSB See my answer to the pre­vi­ous question.

I should note that the response Schiavone gave was from the August inter­view. At that time, the ques­tion I posed was mere­ly: “how is QuarkXPress 8 devel­op­ment com­ing?” He gave the answer as writ­ten above, but there was some hes­i­ta­tion in his voice.

The sec­ond time around, in the 20-questions-style, I asked the ques­tion again in a more spe­cif­ic man­ner. I want­ed to know for sure whether Quark was plan­ning to meet its promised release sched­ule, or if XPress 8 would not be ready by May. I put Schiavone’s pri­or answer under that ques­tion and sent it to him for review. Via MacLean Guthrie, Quark lat­er con­firmed that that quote was accu­rate and, I assume, that they con­sid­ered it a suf­fi­cient­ly com­plete answer to the question.

QvI In the next two ques­tions you asked about QuarkXPress 8, and then you jumped to QuarkXPress 9. What was that about? Did you get sat­is­fac­to­ry answers to all three questions?

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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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