The thrill of doing business was gone for Stanley E. Freimuth when about two years ago he left Fujifilm USA Inc. and an industry radically changed and reduced by the advance of digital photography.
He left “on very good terms,” he said last week, and still has a good relationship with Fuji, where he rose through the ranks in a 23-year career to become the multinational corporation”™s first non-Japanese chief operating officer. However, it was time to move on, though not into a retired executive”™s afterlife of endless golf.
“I played a ridiculous amount of golf for two years to the point where it”™s out of my system now,” Freimuth said with a broad smile.
Wearing a tie that is no longer required in his daily business uniform, he sat at a conference table in the new offices of Tracer Imaging in White Plains. Freimuth”™s position as board chairman and executive director does not come with the phone-answering secretary and flight upgrades of his last post as senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Fuji.
Working outside a major corporation, “You have to be much more efficient, actually, to get things done, I find,” he said. “There are a lot of things one takes for granted in a large corporate setting.”
Nearby, Spiderman in working hero”™s uniform soared and lunged with 3D-effect from a movie poster. It is, Freimuth pointed out, the largest lenticular print ever made on a lithographic press. Tracer Imaging, a 7-year-old company founded by its youthful Chief Executive Officer Steven Spiro, is a growing innovator in commercial uses for lenticular technology, which produces printed images on plastic with the illusion of depth or that change and move according to one”™s angle of view. Â
Freimuth”™s part-time work and financial investment with Tracer is just one of several elements and companies in his hard-working second life in business as what he calls “an independent contractor.” Since leaving Fujifilm, he has discovered and tapped something in himself: “A newfound talent for me is putting people and companies together. I really enjoy that now. I am really good at putting people together.”
That talent is used too to help his former employer, which he connects with other companies with potentially useful technologies and specialties. Drawing on his many contacts in the maritime industry, he is helping Fujifilm Hunt Smart Surfaces L.L.C., a Fuji subsidiary based in Allendale, N.J., to launch a nontoxic silicone-based coating product that rids ships and power plants of fouling marine organisms and biomaterial and allows faster navigation.
Since leaving Fujifilm, the native Londoner has continued his community work with four nonprofits: the Westchester County Association, where Freimuth, a former chairman, still is active on the business advocacy group”™s executive committee; the Maria Fareri Children”™s Hospital Foundation board in Valhalla; the board of the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and the New York University School of Continuing Education, where he is an adviser for the master”™s program in graphic communications.
Then there are his business connections.
“What I wanted to do when I left was get involved in a lot of different things and spread a lot of different seeds and see what works and what doesn”™t,” he said. “At the peak, I had 12 different things going” as an investor or strategic adviser. “Now I”™m trying to pull things back and do what is most important to me.”
One of those enterprises is Tracer Imaging, a company with five employees at its 4,000-square-foot headquarters at 18 Glenn St. and a total of about 15 to 20 employees, including sales and manufacturing workers at its locations in suburban Chicago and Torrance, Calif. “This company caught my attention before I left Fuji,” he said, and Freimuth came aboard as an investor a month or two after his departure.
“The thing I like about this company is it”™s got an interesting technology. Lenticular is not new. It”™s been around forever. The thing about this company is it”™s finding new ways to use this technology,” from game tickets for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers animated with football stadium and player images to direct mailings and point of purchase displays.
In a time of lean advertising budgets for companies, lenticular is more costly to produce but also more effective with consumers than two-dimensional printing, Freimuth said. “The beauty of lenticular is that it attracts people”™s attention and they tend to hang onto it ”¦ and you certainly are more likely to remember what you saw.”
Tracer has a deal with a major retailer to produce a series of 3D jigsaw puzzles depicting scenes from “The Wizard of Oz.” The puzzles will be on store shelves for the next holiday season to commemorate the classic Hollywood musical”™s 75th anniversary, Freimuth said.
“In this economy, when most companies are struggling, we just had our best quarter” in company history, he said. But Spiro, Freimuth and the company”™s active board of directors, many of whom the well-connected chairman brought into the company as investors, have more ambitious plans for growth.
The company this year plans to start a manufacturing operation in its White Plains building, photographically printing lenticular images selected by retail customers from their own photo and video collections. The company has spent two years, at a cost Freimuth declined to disclose, to develop the new equipment needed for the enterprise, similar to one Kodak several years ago tried and abandoned as too expensive.
“Nobody”™s ever done this before,” he said. “To figure out how to do this in a consumer environment is very, very much tougher”¦This is the Holy Grail for this company.”            Â
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Seeking partners in the venture, Freimuth has talked to several major retailers and major imaging companies ”“ “and I”™ll let you guess who that might be,” said the former Fujifilm executive. Tracer has targeted a start-up price of under $4 for a 4-by- 6-inch print and hopes to launch the product on a test basis by the next holiday season.
“It”™s all going to be about the proper marketing and quality and pricing. That”™s why I think some of my background helps, coming from the photographic industry, and maybe choosing some of the right partners both in retail and the imaging companies.”
Tracer Imaging now has less than $5 million in annual revenue. “If we launch this consumer product, that”™s where we”™re anticipating major growth,” Freimuth said. “Our goal is to make this into a much larger corporation very quickly.”
The company also expects to grow from a recently signed strategic partnership agreement with a well-financed financial printing and secure-card company.
While looking to grow the company, Freimuth has come to appreciate the entrepreneurs who work outside the striving corporate world he left behind. “What amazes me is how much talent there is out here,” he said. “There are an awful lot of talented people who do amazing things with limited resources.” Â
Small companies such as Tracer find “how to survive in a very difficult environment,” he said. “We”™re very nimble. This company moves very fast.”
At that pace, the thrill is back for Stan Freimuth.Â
