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Meet the Associations |
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2. - FESPA's Member Association in Spain - AEDES
FESPA Secretary (Spain) - and General Secretary of the Spanish Screen Printing Association, AEDES:
Pablo Serrano
Please introduce yourself! 
My name is Pablo Serrano. I am 42 years old and married to my pretty French wife, Valérie. We have three children, two girls (Noemi and Elisa) and one boy (Alexy). We live in Madrid but we spend part of our life in Lyon or Paris (France) with my wife's family. I love reading, cinema and to spend a lot of time with my family doing sport (ski, tennis) and travelling.
I have been working for the association world since graduating in Madrid and have been General Secretary of the Spanish Screen Printing Association, AEDES since 1999. I am also Director of the Spanish Carton Makers Association ASPACK. I love working in association management and so am also a member of the Board of ESAE (European Society of Association Executives) and a member of ASAE (American Society of Association Executives).
What was the route to your current career?
I have a degree in Business Administration with a speciality in General Management. I worked in a textile company for two years and taught in a Spanish University for three years in the Strategy Department. I started working at ASPACK in 1993 as an Assistant and in 1998 I was appointed General Secretary. One year later I was chosen to manage AEDES and I am combining both jobs. I speak Spanish, French and English but I am also very happy to speak basic Italian and Portuguese.
What is inspiring screen and digital printers in Spain right now?
The Spanish industry has had moderate growth in 2007. But the "price war" in the market continues and the main issues to solve are training and environmental problems and so on, the professionalization of the companies' management. 2008 is forecast is to close in a balance situation but with the concern that the outcome of the economic situation is still unknown.
The screen and digital print sector in Spain is spread across almost 2000 companies. Its production represents approximately 1000 million euros. A high proportion of these companies are small in size with 57% having fewer than 12 employees. Only 5% of companies have more than 50 people working for them.
What challenges are they facing?
Digital printing and Screen Printing are coexisting now in companies and the future needs to ensure that the Aedes companies can offer the best printing solution to customers. The future seems to point to the disappearance of very small companies and to get medium companies to offer realistic prices to the customers. In this scope, collaboration of suppliers in putting machines only in professional companies with a long strategy plans and not in the very small companies without future financial support, is very important.
Tell us about your Association and its activities
AEDES was born in 1990 and is the global representation in Spain of the screen and digital printing companies for matters such as labour, standardization, quality, environment, education, exports and national and international relations. Nowadays, we have about two hundred screen and digital members and our objective is to get more than five hundred members. It is a very ambitious objective but we want to apply management tools to create a commercial plan to increase membership.
Now our members can receive support like labour and legal advice, we organize technical seminars and a national congress to encourage networking with our members and we publish a paper bulletin and different communications online. Export and education plans are revised yearly to improve courses and tools to help companies and we have a bad payment register of customers. We work on various environment and quality committees.
What do you like most about being a FESPA member?
I can define in three words our participation in Fespa: Networking, Education and Friendship. The most important value that I have discovered in Fespa is the opportunity to share and to exchange experiences and information with the rest of the colleagues. For the future I think that Fespa can help the national associations at the base of the association: get and retain members. Commercial plans with annual planning and external tools (task force, telemarketing, emarketing) are fundamental in getting the c. 70-80% of the market of potential members that is the standard ; I think all the associations are needing to work at a modern and professional level.
www.aedesnet.es
Thank you, Pablo, for giving fespa.com readers an insight into your work and activities with AEDES.
Keep visiting this section to learn more about FESPA's Associations in the coming months.
1. - FESPA's Member Association in Belgium - Febelgra
FESPA Secretary (Belgium) - and Economic Adviser to Febelgra:
Valérie Vercammen
Please introduce yourself
 My name is Valérie Vercammen. I'm 35 years old and married to Erik and we have a 5-year old little boy: Loïk. We live in Brussels. Belgium is a federal state with 3 regions: Flanders (Flemish=Dutch-speaking), Wallonia (French-speaking) and Brussels (bi-lingual). I'm not a typical Belgian, since I can't call myself neither Flemish neither Walloon: my father was Flemish and my mother is Walloon (with Italian roots). We spoke both French and Dutch at home.
I love learning different languages: it opens up doors for you when you are abroad and you can speak with people in their own language. That's why I learned English and German at university and Spanish and Italian during evening language courses.
In my spare time I love to cook for friends and family, I read a lot, I enjoy walking in the country and I like travelling abroad to discover other cultures.
Since January 2007, I'm working as economic advisor for Febelgra, the Belgian Printer's association.
What was the route to your current career?
I have a university degree in economy with a specialisation in diplomatic law and insurance law. My studies were a mix of economy and law.
After university, I won the yearly contest of the Minister of Foreign trade and I worked at the Embassy of Budapest as "Lauréat du Prix du Ministre du Commerce extérieur". When I realised that diplomacy was not what I hoped it would be, I came back to Belgium and started to work in an insurance company. First as claim handler, after 5 years I became team leader of the legal department. It was very interesting to learn to manage a team of 10 persons. It gave me a lot of self confidence, but it was very intensive and stressing.
After 11 years of "insurance" I wanted to go back to my "economic" roots and I decided to search for a more economical oriented job. And then I read Febelgra's job advertisement in the news paper and you know the rest of the story. I enjoyed every part of my career. But working for a federation is definitely the best part of it!
What is inspiring screen and digital printers in Belgium right now?
2006 and 2007 have been very good years for printers in general and screen and digital printers in particular with 3% annual growth in turnover yearly. This year will be tougher as the economy is slowing down not only in Belgium, but in our neighbour countries, which are our most important trade partners, too. The last 2 decades have been characterized by a real technological "r"evolution in the printing sector: many of the current techniques didn't even exist 10 or 15 years ago. It must be exciting times for printers to experience all that change.
In Belgium, for a few years we have noticed the next trends:
• Innovation: to remain competitive, our printers must be innovative. They have to create innovative products to be different from their competitors.
• One-stop-shopping: clients become more exacting: it's important to offer them a global packet of services instead of just the printed product. There is a move from product orientation to service orientation.
• Real time economy and printing on demand: delivery delays are becoming shorter and shorter. It's very important to use ‘time' as a strategic advantage.
• Mergers: 95 % of the Belgian printing factories are SME's. (less than 10 people employed). In the last few years, there were lots of mergers and acquisitions. Companies tried to gain market share and make economies of scale by mergers to become more competitive.
• Digital printing is replacing more traditional printing techniques: studies have proven that there's an evolution going on not only from screen printing to digital printing, but from offset to digital printing too.
• Ennoblement of printing products: the physical aspect and the "look" of a beautiful printed product have been "rediscovered". This is a very positive evolution for our sector.
What challenges are screen and digital printers in Belgium facing?
Environmental: In Belgium, environmentally friendly products are gaining importance. Huge print buyers like banks, insurance companies and other big companies are demanding an eco-label. I think that Belgian printers begin to realise that printing with respect for the 3 P's (people, planet and profit) is not only good for the environment, but that the ecological label will be used as a strong marketing tool in the future too.
Technological: ISO 12647 and JDF are 2 of the technological challenges for our printers. In our conferences with the ISO work group I was surprised to see that those 3-letter-words are still scaring lots of SME's. They often think that those technologies are not for them but only for the few giants in our sector. They mostly associate standardisation with endless processes that costs lots of money and time and they are not aware of the benefits. We at Febelgra believe that one of our missions as a printer's association is to convince our members that standardisation improves quality and increases their competitiveness.
And this brings me back to our project "colour standardisation and colour management for screen printers" which will be subsidized by Fespa. The main objectives of this project are to develop a user-friendly guide for screen printers to introduce standardisation in their organisation. We want to make standardisation and colour management more achievable for our screen printers. In the first phase, we work with pilot companies. In the second phase of the project we want to share the results and the know-how with all the screen printers.
Please tell us about your Association and its activities
Febelgra (Federation of the Belgian Printing Industry) is the only officially recognized printer's association in Belgium. We have about 750 members covering most of the existing printing techniques: offset (rotary and sheets), gravure, digital and screen printers.
Febelgra has been working very hard to improve communication with its members and with external key players.
We launched a new website, we restyled our monthly news magazine "F'actua" and we developed the "White book for the printing industry": the white book is a visit card for the graphic industry containing facts and figures, statements and our point of view on social, economical and environmental matters. We're now visiting the most important ministers with our white book to make them aware of our industry and our typical problems.
We put a lot of effort into promoting our industry: in 2008 2 events are worth being mentioned:
"Beroepenhuis Gent" and the "Night of the graphic industry".
"Het Beroepenhuis" which means "house of trades" is a permanent exhibition for children between 10 and 14 years old. We build a sector corner with games and quizzes to present the graphical industry to children. We try to show our industry like it is: a modern, high tech industry with lots of possibilities. We want to get rid of our image of old fashioned, dirty industry. Other industries that have a corner on the exhibition are: construction, metallurgy, food industry, social profit, transport and logistics and chemistry. 6000 children visit the exhibition yearly. Investing in this exhibition is a good manner to reach them.
"The night of the graphic industry" was held on the 18th of June. It was a huge networking event but based on an environmental concept: people had to make a gift for an environmental project to enter instead of paying an entrance fee. With the collected funds Green is making children aware of the importance of recycling. That night, all the partners of the paper chain signed an environmental charter too. The purpose of our ‘Night' was to promote the graphical industry and to show that we're concerned about environment and working on it.
Another interesting part of my job is GRAFOC, the Flemish graphical training centre of which I'm the secretary. One of GRAFOC's objectives is making printers aware of the importance of training and investing in their human capital. We organise road shows to promote training, we give subsidies for employers for the training of their staff and we try to be the link between industry and education (secondary printing schools and bachelor schools).
Finally, I'm the secretary of the different technical sections of Febelgra: as Febelgra covers all the printing techniques, it was necessary to divide our members in what we called ‘technical sections' or ‘technical work groups'. The following sections exist: security printers, 70x100, finishing and book binding, ISO 12647, prepress and, of course, our section ‘Fespa' for screen and digital printers. We're working on the creation of a new section for graphical designers.
What do you like most about being a FESPA member?
I remember my first meeting with the Fespa staff and with my colleagues from the national associations. It was in March 2007 for the marketing forum in Heathrow. Everybody was so nice and they did really their best to make you feel welcome into "The Fespa Family".
It may seem exaggerated for outsiders, but there is really a kind of family spirit in all the Fespa-meetings. I enjoyed the big shows in Fespa Berlin and Fespa Digital Geneva. It was all new and exciting for me! The General Assembly last year in Athens was simply great: after the formal and official part with the legal duties we had a very nice time and 4 days of real summer after the typical Belgian summer of 2007. What I really appreciated during last year's secretary's meeting and during the marketing days this year was that we had the opportunity to give our point of view in the brain storming sessions. I look very forward to the General Assembly in Oslo to see all my Fespa-friends once again!
www.febelgra.be
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