Quark subsidiary offers publishing services
The firm announces a $5 million investment in Quark Marketing, a subsidiary that will sell and integrate projects built around the company's Quark Publishing System.
The Denver-based company today announced an initial $5 million investment in Quark Marketing, a subsidiary that will sell and integrate projects built around the company's Quark Publishing System (QPS), as well as the Quark Digital Media System.
Quark Marketing will provide sales, consulting, training, systems integration, and legacy data conversion to its customers, executives said. The division also plans to work with third-party vendors on systems integration projects.
The move is a nod to the industry trend toward a more direct relationship with customers by providing one-stop shopping for both software and services.
Through this latest initiative Quark Marketing will absorb some employees from Quark and recruit 20 more for open database programming and field engineering jobs. About a quarter of Quark Marketing's employees will be based at the company's Denver headquarters, with the rest located around the country. Two new Quark Customer Care Centers are planned for San Francisco and New York.
Earlier this year, Quark, a privately-held company, made headlines with a bid to acquire rival Adobe Systems. Quark, which has annual revenue well below half of Adobe's, dropped that bid in September, citing market conditions and Adobe's rejection of a deal.
In August, Quark reported that revenues grew 23 percent in the second quarter, as compared to the same period a year ago. Revenues in the Americas rose 42 percent against year-ago figures, due to brisk sales of QuarkXPress 4.0.
Markets the company will target with its latest initiative include newspapers, magazine publishing, advertising, graphic design, financial services, manufacturing, corporate workgroups, legal, medical, and entertainment.