Published June 2001

ScenicSoft ‘big player’
in printing industry

By Kathy Day
Herald Economy Writer

Ever wonder what it takes to get the pages of a book or magazine all lined up in the right order and facing the right way? Or how they get the colors to pop off the pages? Probably not.

That’s because the people at Lynnwood-based ScenicSoft, a low-key but high-powered company, have created software used by printers, publishers and graphic arts companies around the world that gets the job done.

President Erik Smith, 49, a native of Copenhagen, isn’t shy about talking up his company.

“We are very big players,” he said.

ScenicSoft was founded in 1979 as a microprocessing company. But in 1985, the company decided it didn’t want to make computers anymore, Smith said.

After a stint as consultants, Smith and his five cohorts decided to shift direction once again, calling off the consulting business to focus on software development to make digital technology come to life in the printing and prepress business.

“We decided it was time to go for greatness,” Smith said.

Names like Kodak, FujiFilm, Agfa and R.R. Donnelly pop up on its list of clients and vendors.

And about 80 percent of the books and magazines in the Western world have been produced using ScenicSoft’s products, he added.

Its most established product, called PREPS, is used in publishing books and magazines to send pages directly from computer to the printing plates. Some products are used in printing stationery and brochures on smaller scales. They enable merging type fonts and graphic images, direct color separations and corrections, and even assist in project management.

With about 110 employees, 13 of whom work out of the company’s office in Belgium, ScenicSoft is a small company as the technology industry goes, Smith noted. A recent layoff was the first in the company’s history, and is not something Smith likes to dwell on.

But when Smith and his managers noticed a downturn in orders at the end of 2000 and saw discretionary costs being cut by their vendors, he said, they realized they had to make an adjustment, and let 25 people go. Already, the market is coming back, and Smith projects growth of about 20 percent this year. That’s less than the 48 percent they’ve averaged over the past eight years, but still good progress, he said.

To date, ScenicSoft has financed its own growth, Smith said, and has rejected buyout offers. But in the next year or so, it’s likely the company will go public, he added.

His philosophy is a conservative one, focused on producing a reliable product. He also holds to the concept of keeping employees happy by paying them well and providing them with stock options and fully paid medical insurance for staff and their families.

He boasts about the staff members, who produce products in seven languages and can speak as many as 16 fluently.

“From the day we started, we wanted to be worldwide,” he said.

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