Jeff Starfield

When major changes occur in a target market, we leaders of companies can view such changes as doom-and-gloom or as opportunities. In my own case, some daunting marketplace challenges in the form of new technologies virtually eliminated my original value proposition. I was faced with the choice of packing it all in, or finding a way to convert these challenges into new marketplace offerings and give my business a thriving second chance. I chose the latter.

My firm CD\Works is a Boston-based business at the lower-tech end of high-tech.  Our service is duplication of electronic data such as conference presentations, company catalogs and corporate communications. The early days of CD were technologically challenging, requiring specialized knowledge such as deciphering SCSI and cable termination and even the physical positioning of files on the disc.

Advances over the years have reduced the knowledge level to that of operating a simple copier: place the disc in the drive and key in the number of discs. Disc printing adds more complexity because of the many choices available and the trade-off of advantages and disadvantages of each, but the simplicity of the process has opened up the market to hosts of competitors who can enter for very little money and less technical know-how.

A decade ago, we needed to explain to our customers what a CD was and help them understand how it could be used. A typical job included creating several iterations of a master disc before one was working as desired, and then making up to a couple of hundred discs. But now, the service that we provided through that work no longer has the value that it used to.  

Our customers now create their own discs and — in most cases — send us a master disc ready to be copied. They will make the small quantity copies themselves but come to us when hundreds or thousands are needed. We now work in a market where CD-R and even DVD-R are ubiquitous and new disc formats and new media formats, such as flash memory cards and USB memory sticks, abound. Equipment for our customers to bring the work in-house is inexpensive and readily available.

In order to survive and prosper in this environment, we have had to morph our business to stay one step ahead of the technology and market changes. Rather than competing with the do-it-yourselfers, we have chosen to harness their desires by providing the tools they need. CD\Works has introduced an online creation capability where the user can upload files and produce a complete CD package.

This includes basic print options such as disc art and jewel case inserts, that can be designed online with stock or custom art. The customer can do this at any time of the day or night from anywhere with an Internet location.

At the same time, however, as a company we are going after more high volume corporate accounts and have focused on developing better relationships with larger clients who have jobs requiring specialty packaging and high levels of customization, such as fulfillment and complicated shipping.

Many of these jobs are for corporate communications purposes and are generally for 1,000 to several hundred thousand discs.  Our knowledge of packaging options and sources, and experience with all the details and pitfalls of disc replication has become the foundation for delivering value to customers. 

Stanford University economist Paul Romer has said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. For us, anticipation of a crisis is now a call to action and, clearly, making changes before reaching a crisis situation is essential. The trick of course is to see the crises before they actually come and to be able to identify the real from the threatening. The arrival of the Internet appeared to be a crisis at one point in time, but we were correct in our assessment that it would co-exist with physical distribution. Some sectors of the market have naturally been more affected than others, and our focus on commercial duplication has helped us avoid the more dramatic broad-market challenges faced by the music industry.

In a technology-based business such as ours, obsolescence and technological advances are a fact of life. We are constantly on the lookout for the next wave, and responding to the needs of our customers remains paramount.

We need to maintain a balance between innovation and the established market. Some years ago, for example, we found ourselves moving  "backwards" to producing VHS tapes because our DVD business — then in its infancy — still required video on VHS for the many consumers not yet capable of playing DVDs. Now producing a VHS tape is relatively rare. 

Other major changes in our industry have included the rise of competitors from related businesses adopting our technology in order to keep up with us. 

For example, tape duplicators moving into disc duplication and some printers offering replication as an added service. 

To battle these challenges, we chose to provide a one-stop resource for our customers including providing print materials along with DVDs, and such additional services as converting video to DVD and duplicating data on new media.  It's a constantly evolving realty, always aimed at keeping one or two steps ahead of the competitive game. To do otherwise is to accept defeat and assume, wrongly, that there's nothing we can really do.

Jeff Starfield is founder and president of CD\Works, a digital media duplication company. He previously worked as a business consultant and then owned and operated Ruggles and Baby Watson restaurant locations. He currently serves as president and is a founder of the International Disc Duplicating Association. He can be reached at (617) 782-5884, jbs@cdworks.com.