Traditional brochures 'a thing of the past'

A new company aims to produce e-brochures in an effort to cut the trade’s £4 billion annual bill for printed promotional material. E-literature specialist ebxp claims to be able to exploit new digital technology on the web to cut the cost of traditional brochure production, storage and distribution. It is estimated that travel companies spend £2 on every brochure printed. Mark Warner Holidays and Barbados Tourism have been participating in a year-long test market programme. Ebxp claims to be able to create on-screen literature while retaining the three-dimensional look and feel of printed brochures, with instant turning of pages. The company says images, which can be printed at home, are sharper than PDFs, which suffer from slow downloading and cumbersome scrolling. Greg Renk, managing director of ebxp and former boss of a London design agency, claimed that corporate literature “languishes in the Middle Ages – there has been no quantum leap since Caxton”. He added: “Existing web tools have given little incentive to alter this, with their inflexibility, low quality and sheer tedium.” The company’s sales and marketing director is former usitTravel UK managing director Jeannie Shapiro. Report by Phil Davies