Save Gocco Campaign Update

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Ok, so....I'm sure if you care enough to read this blog you already know that Riso has said bye-bye to Gocco.  You may see elsewhere that Riso is continuing on with supplies for a few years but unfortunately, those few years have expired.  I had a chat with David Murphy, Riso's Vice President of Marketing last week via email.   He had this to say: "Riso empathizes with all of our loyal Gocco customers who have shown such passionate commitment to saving this fine product.  Unfortunately, we have discontinued production of the product and its supplies and there is no consideration or plan for selling its patent.  Thank you again for your interest and we wish you the best."  

Hold your horses.  There is still hope.  It has not been officially confirmed yet but I've heard through the grapevine that Guenther Paneka of patch workshop is working on making a reasonably priced bulb-free exposure unit for the Print Gocco.  He is also planning to produce frames which will fit Print Gocco and hold the thermofax screen mesh which can be bought by the roll.  Good news, but I'm still waiting for someone to say they can reproduce the bulbs and screens here in the good 'ole U.S. of A.  I'm no patent lawyer but if Gocco came out in the '70's the patent should have expired by now anyway.  Who's up for the challenge?     Thanks to Liz Plummer for the hot tip.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Been readin your posts a bit - excellent to see someone still so enthusastic about GOCCO!

The thermofax machine and mesh by the roll have been available in the US for a few years already. The panenka one is just a newer version of the machine.

Few people in the US know how to use the equipment that's whyt it seems like a 'new' thing. We buy from NEHOC in Australia, who have been doing it for about 15 years using the older machine and about 5 using the new one.

The mesh is the RISO screenmaster 70 type and is coarse and for fabric screen printing (Not GOCCO), and GOCCO screens can't be put through the machine as the cardboard jams the machine.

http://www.nehoc.com.au/training/is/26
has the details.

Intersting machine but not a replacement for the GOCCO undortunately,.

Thought you may want to know about it as the NEHOC people have always been a wealth of information - although they don't always tell you the depth of thier knoweldge of things behind the scenes (I think they know a hell of a lot more about teh political side of RISO than they let on). My 2cents on them anyway.

Fingers still crossed on GOCCO being saved!

Anonymous said...

Hi KAtie,
Great Blog; I'm thrilled to see all the cool stuff, and by your acknowledgement of Jill's efforts :~)
We have the panenka thermal imagers and are having just a great time playing with them - so wonderful to be bulb-free.
Cheers and kudos,
Judy

Art Wall Katie said...

Thanks Judy. I think we would all absolutely love to see this in action on u-tube. Hint Hint.

Anonymous said...

I'm just trying to get to know GOCCO, and I must say I love the concept of Gocco printing, but if they go I will miss Gocco if ever its decomissioned. Hopefully we get the petition somewhere... True the product's sales could go down but a good marketing plan would have helped. However, it makes me wonder, if there is really a political reason behind stopping the production of this product?
Pardon my curiousity but I could not help but wonder why...

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