XMPie, a Xerox company, has been announced as CHILI Publish’s first official North America-based partner. The worldwide agreement comes less than a month after CHILI Publish, the real time, online editor and 3D job visualisation provider, announced its expansion into North America.
The partner agreement gives the market two ways to take advantage of what may now be the most powerful, full-featured Web-to-Print offering in the marketplace:
- The OEM portion of the agreement calls for XMPie to offer the integrated uStore/CHILI Publisher product bundle as part of its solution offering.
- Both XMPie and CHILI Publish can sell the XMPie Connector to uStore and CHILI Publisher customers. The customers must purchase the companion product (i.e., you must own both XMPie PersonalEffect with uStore and CHILI Publisher), as well as the Connector, to enable the integrated workflow.
“CHILI Publisher gives our brand owner, ad agency and publishing customers precise control over critical brand compliance; while designers, pre-production and production personnel can make layout, design, and text edits – within limits set by administrators – to their hearts’ content,” says Kevin Goeminne, CHILI Publish CEO.
“The integration with XMPie’s uStore is an excellent opportunity for the numerous verticals we serve, including in-plants and retail,” Goeminne adds. CHILI Publisher, he says, is already utilised for all applications, from web development and POS/POP through to commercial print, sign and display, packaging and specialty applications such as textile and vehicle wrapping. All were especially receptive to last Autumn’s release of CHILI Publisher 4.0, where new features included folding simulation, 360° 3D views of personalised objects and consequently, Collada file import.
With many of these markets growing quickly and in parallel with increasing options for multi-media production, CHILI Publish found that its many customers employing home-grown or insufficient workflows were getting bogged down by job processing and tracking. Goeminne says they will be intrigued by the benefits of XMPie’s uStore. “They’ve got half the solution already,” he says. “XMPie has been in the market a long time, with a solid Web-to-Print product that makes us proud to be their partner. It will save our customers substantial time and frustration if they turn the workflow over to uStore.”
At the heart of the solution is the XMPie-developed Connector. The Connector integrates CHILI Publisher with the uStore, XMPie’s complete, out-of-the-box, end-to-end workflow solution for receiving, processing and producing orders received online. Built on XMPie’s patented technologies in media personalization, uStore is a highly popular solution for creating and deploying ecommerce Web-to-Print portals; it’s also the technology driving StoreFlow, Xerox’s leading, all-inclusive Web-to-Print solution.
CHILI Publisher offers over 150 editing, layout and design tools that can be used with a variety of document formats, including PDF files, XML-based documents, Collada files, and those imported from Adobe® InDesign®. CHILI Publish also provides users with the ability to view edits, folding, and even personalised objects, in 3D. Administrators can give users varying degrees of access, depending on their skills and permission level. All job sizes and formats, from single pages through multi-page documents and snippets of articles; up-to to the most complex, odd-sized, folded die cuts and packaging items, are accepted. Users can also create documents in CHILI Publisher. All of these functions are performed while users remain in the uStore environment.
XMPie uStore customers will realise a number of benefits from the integration, including shorter approval and review cycles, and tight control of branding compliance (e.g., regional- or channel-dependent creation of campaigns within brand guidelines).
“While CHILI Publish has its respectful footprint in the market, we felt that there is a way of integrating it into our architecture that will bring unique synergistic value to current and future customers of both entities,” concludes Jacob Aizikowitz, President, XMPie.
Customers interested in acquiring the combined solution must purchase CHILI Publisher, the uStore/StoreFlow, and the Connector; in order to enable the integrated workflow. The bundled product is available from XMPie and the Connector itself is available from either company.
