Image Enhancement & Page Standardisation Solution for Error-free Printing and 35% Ink Saving

Project Information

ColorBOX

Grant agreement ID: 815956

DOI

10.3030/815956

Project closed

EC signature date 4 May 2018

Start date 1 May 2018

End date 31 August 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

PICO SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ColorBOX (Image Enhancement & Page Standardisation Solution for Error-free Printing and 35% Ink Saving)

Reporting period: 2018-05-01 to 2018-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Processing, printing and online documents are on the to-do-list of any company, whatever their size and revenues. It is common experience that a lot of ink and paper are wasted in seeking the most enhanced and colour balanced print result. Pico ColorBOX is the disruptive tool that can really help the widest audience in the prepress workflow as it is an automated, customer-friendly, plug and play resource, that allows image enhancement and colour calibration. ColorBOX strongly prevents waste of ink and paper; it helps companies to build brand awareness; it is time-saver for the workers who otherwise will manually adjust images and files.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

From our market research we have identified a global market value of $22.18b and the size of our segments of interst, which are printer vendors and vendor-specific printer models, within packaging and labelling companies, textile industry, printed-media, media agencies and communication offices at any level.
To complete the technical development, we elaborated a detailed work plan to increase the current TRL 6 prototype of ColorBOX up to TRL 9 during 24 months, when we will work in the development of a user-friendly could version of ColorBOX and in Software integration activities together with the development of a dedicated hardware.
Our Freedom to Operate analysis evaluated the risk of ColorBOX entering the market. None of the relevant patent applications offer a complete package of image enhancement, repurposing and file optimization including document dimensions, image conversion, DPI correction. In addition, our competitors’ offer does not hold a strong threat to our system, hence we have identified freedom for commercial operation with ColorBOX.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Once on the market, Pico will sell ColorBOX Full and Light, Plus an on demand cloud service online. We plan to use both direct and indirect sales, and offer distribution commissions to the sales intermediaries and partners. To disseminate our product, we plan to exhibit ColorBOX to our target market at events including Viscom Italia, Interpack (Germany) or SGIA Expo (USA). We will also implement a try & buy program, expecting from that an 80% conversion in the sales of our solution.

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