| Type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | Denver, Colorado, U.S. (1981) |
| Founder(s) | Tim Gill Mark Pope |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Raymond Schiavone (President and CEO) |
| Owner(s) | Platinum Equity |
| Website | www.quark.com |
Quark, Inc. (founded 1981 in Denver, Colorado) is a privately owned software company best known for QuarkXPress. It is called Quark because the company's goal is to "create software that would be the platform for publishing", just as quarks are the basis for all matter.[1]
As of August 2011, Quark's offerings include:
Contents |
Quark was founded with $2000 in 1981 in Denver, Colorado, USA. Between 1981 and 1985 their primary products were Word Juggler and Catalyst. Word Juggler was the first word processor on the Apple III. Catalyst was a program that was distributed bundled with the Apple IIe, and allowed users to run floppy-disk based applications from their hard drive. They also attempted a product line called "Quark Peripherals", but the market for storage devices at the time resulted in a huge financial loss.
In 1986 Quark released QuarkXPress 1.0, which due to its precision quickly gained marketshare from Aldus Pagemaker. With the release of QuarkXPress 3.0 in 1990, Quark quickly achieved a dominant position in the desktop publishing market and became the standard for desktop publishing. By the end of the 1990s they gathered a market share of around 90% worldwide.
In the late 1990s, Quark faced intense criticism for slow innovation cycles, high prices, and a poor response to customer needs. Therefore, many customers welcomed the release of Adobe InDesign as a less expensive and viable alternative. The availability of InDesign, which was initially released in 1999, resulted in QuarkXPress losing market share. InDesign also demonstrated the first significant competition for that market, which forced Quark to lower prices and invest more into service and marketing.
In 2001, Quark followed a US trend of moving their development resources and technical support to facilities in India.[2] By 2007 Quark had tired of its Look East approach and started to reverse it by opening a development center in the Bay Area.[3]
Beginning of 2005, coinciding with the retirement of Fred Ebrahimi, Quark announced that it would change and started to lower prices and release versions more frequently.
At the end of 2005 Quark announced a new logo, designed by SicolaMartin, a division of Y&R Brands. The logo's purpose was to be the last step of Quark's new image into a more friendly and inviting company. Soon after they released the new logo, it found backlash from bloggers on the Internet, who noticed the striking resemblance to the Scottish Arts Council logo. In response to these criticisms, a new logo was announced in March 2006, which Quark still uses today.
Quark was founded under the name "Quark Engineering" 1981 by Tim Gill and Mark Pope.[4] In 1986 Fred Ebrahimi joined Quark as CEO and co-owner. In 1990, Mark Pope sold his share of the company to the other partners. In 2000 Tim Gill left Quark and sold all his shares to Mr. Ebrahimi.
In keeping with its India focus, Quark appointed Kamar Aulakh, a Quark veteran of Indian origin, as its CEO in February, 2004. In June 2005, Quark informed its employees that Aulakh was no longer with the company.[5]
At the end of 2006 Fred Ebrahimi gave all his shares of Quark Inc. to his children, with his daughter Sasha Ebrahimi taking the position of Chairman.[6]
On November 1, 2006, Quark appointed Raymond Schiavone, former CEO of Arbortext, as its new CEO.
On August 9, 2011, the Ebrahimi family sold all their shares to Platinum Equity, a California based private equity firm.[7][8]
Quark's first products were word processing software for the Apple II and Apple III.[1] In 1987 it released its best known product, QuarkXPress, for Apple Macintosh. In 1992 it also released the product for Microsoft Windows. Along with Adobe's PostScript, Photoshop and Apple's computers, QuarkXPress could be considered one of the founding blocks of Desktop Publishing. QuarkXPress offered a degree of precision and set of features which were needed to make desktop publishing viable, and which rival PageMaker didn't offer at that time.
In the 1990s QuarkXPress 3.x gained around 90% marketshare of page layout applications. Its editorial workflow system, called Quark Publishing System, sold almost a thousand times to magazines and newspapers, cementing the high marketshare.
In the past the company unsuccessfully announced a picture editing application, QuarkXPosure, which was never released, and a multimedia authoring add-on XTension for QuarkXPress, QuarkImmedia. Neither is part of Quark's portfolio anymore. The company briefly purchased and marketed a standalone multimedia authoring program, mTropolis, before discontinuing it in the late 1990s.
Today, competition between InDesign and QuarkXPress is still fierce and market share of the two applications is subject to speculation, especially as InDesign is mostly sold in conjunction of Adobe's Suite (and therefore doesn't imply market use). The last reliable study was conducted 2004 by Merrill Lynch, which estimated that then the market share of QuarkXPress was eight times higher than competitor Adobe InDesign.
Quark acquired two companies creating add-ons for QuarkXPress and InDesign, in 2005 alap[9] and in 2010 Gluon[10].
Quark also acquired a leading XML Editor vendor in 2008 of XML Editor, a company called in.vision research[11].
Quark has several offices worldwide[12]:
Development centers:
Operational offices:
Sales & Marketing offices: