Our History
2001
Schnittstelle GmbH is integrated into empolis, a Bertelsmann subsidiary.
2002
Schnittstelle GmbH is sold to Bertelsmann. At this time the empolis catalog management product line, an outgrowth of Schnittstelle GmbH, is one of the top three in the world, with more than 100 employees. Horst Huber works as a consultant for empolis until 2003.
2003
WERK II Medien- und Informationsgesellschaft mbH is founded by Dr. Gabriele Siegert, Paul Seidel and Horst Huber. Its focus is on automation of the print channel. WERK II decides to develop products only for Adobe InDesign. In 2003 the market share of Adobe InDesign is about 5%. The goal of WERK II is to develop the leading database publishing plug-in for Adobe InDesign. Development of comet 1.0 is deliberately begun without customers.
2005
comet 1.0 is released after 1.5 years of development. The first customer, Deutscher Supplement Verlag, is found very quickly. Today this company is successfully using priint:comet 3.1. WERK II decides to market its products exclusively via partners. In 2005 it finds its first partner, Systemintegration Gieseking & Grunzig, which sells the PIM system CaTs.
2006
WERK II surpasses its own goal of gaining and qualifying a new partner every month. By the end of 2006 the comet partner network comprises 20 partners which implement projects in industry, intermediary trade, retailing and mail order. In addition to plug-ins for DTP workstations, WERK II offers a server version.
2007
WERK II decides to develop a new component called whiteboard for Web-based database work with InDesign documents. The company estimates that its long-term development effort for whiteboard will amount to approximately 100 man-years.
2008
IQuest.comet is introduced as an enterprise solution at Witt Weiden. Witt Weiden uses this system at more than 100 workstations.
2008
More than 100 persons attend the first WERK II conference for partners and end customers. In his keynote speech Horst Huber presents his vision of a seamlessly integrated Web-based print process, using the first whiteboard prototype as an example. The prototype shows the merging of database publishing and Web-to-print functions.
2009
WERK II Medien- und Informationsgesellschaft mbH now has more than 20 employees. Another WERK II product, the Adobe InDesign plug-in IQuest.comet, is given the name priint:comet and becomes a component of priint:suite. The other components are priint:adjust, priint:timex and priint:report. After only four years the customer base has grown to 150. More than 50 partners now use the priint:suite. More than 120 partners and customers attend the second WERK II conference for partners and end customers. The second whiteboard prototype is presented.
2010
The priint:comet partner network now has more than 70 partners. The first international projects are implemented. Heiler Software AG and WERK II enter into a partnership. Thus priint:comet is now used by two leading enterprise PIM providers: Heiler and hybris. The first releases of priint:comet whiteboard and priint:comet publication planner are presented. WERK II gains Witt Weiden and Eugen Trost as reference customers for the priint:comet whiteboard.
2011
The priint:comet partner network becomes international. Roughly 90 partners now use priint:comet. The 4th priint:day, with more than 210 participants, now ranks as the leading cross-channel community. The first projects are successfully implemented in the USA. In 2011, licence sales outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland account for approx. 35% of the total. More than 10 priint:comet whiteboard installations are successfully completed in 2011. WERK II announces that it will invest 30 to 40 man-years in the further development of priint:comet whiteboard and priint:comet publication planner. The company has more than 30 employees.
2012
Internationalization continues. WERK II founds priint US in Florida. Christoph Wesselburg is appointed CEO.