HP opens demo center in Georgia, USA

HP has opened a 60,000-square-foot Graphic Arts Experience Center to showcase its technology portfolio and educate customers about new opportunities made possible by digital printing. Housed in newly renovated space at HP’s Alpharetta, Georgia, campus in metro Atlanta, the center is a sales hub and training facility for graphic arts customers and prospects throughout the Americas region.

Visitors can see live demonstrations of technology from HP and members of the HP GraphicsSolutions Partner program in the center’s production-floor environment. The site also will host educational workshops on marketing, print business management and other subjects.

‘This is both a demo center and an important training facility where HP consultants and outside industry experts can meet with customers to discuss the best approaches to building a thriving business,’ said Jan Riecher, vice president and general manager, Graphics Solutions Business – Americas, HP. ‘The Experience Center gives us the opportunity to inspire and educate graphic arts professionals seeking to take advantage of the accelerating analog-to-digital transformation.’

The new Graphic Arts Experience Center will include technology for the commercial, direct mail, technical, publishing, signage, labeling, packaging and pro-photography printing markets, including the HP Indigo 3550, 5500, 7500 and W7200 commercial digital presses and the ws4500 and WS6000 label and packaging digital presses. Five networked conference rooms in the facility adjoin its sizable equipment display area, providing a meeting location for industry groups and associations.

Training opportunities include HP Capture business development programs that help print service providers learn ways to launch marketing campaigns, expand their reach to new markets and connect with their customers in more effective ways.

The center also offers several additional HP Capture services, including one-to-one consulting from HP on digital vs analog job costing, business planning and analysis using HP SmartPlanner 3.5 software. Customers can learn how to improve their workflow efficiency, color management and productivity by working with their consultants using the HP Workflow Solutions Navigator program.

To create the center, HP consolidated two Georgia facilities – a Dunwoody-based HP Indigo demo center and the Marietta-based US headquarters of HP’s 2005 Scitex Vision acquisition. Theresa Mattioli, former manager of the HP Indigo site, manages the new demo center, working with the Dunwoody and Marietta facilities’ combined product demonstration staffs. Calin Shope, a former HP digital press presales consultant, recently joined Mattioli’s team as the center’s new customer experience manager.

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