industry computer software founded denver colorado u.s. 1981 1981 founder tim gill mark pope headquarters denver colorado united states area served worldwide key people raymond schiavone president and ceo owner platinum equity website www.quark.com quark software inc. founded 1981 in denver colorado is a privately owned software company which specializes in omni channel enterprise publishing software for automating the production of high value customer communications . the company s original goal was to create software that would be the platform for publishing just as quarks are the basis for all matter . 1 the company is best known for its desktop page layout and design software quarkxpress although this has now become secondary to its enterprise software solutions . contents 1 company history 1.1 ownership and management 2 product history 3 offices 4 references company history edit 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 in 1999 as a viable alternative . the release of adobe creative suite in 2003 essentially including indesign with photoshop and illustrator resulted in ongoing market share loss for quarkxpress . as a result under the new leadership of raymond schiavone quark started to refocus its resources towards the enterprise dynamic publishing market announcing a new strategy and direction in march 2008 . 2 quark continues to develop quarkxpress but the company s primary focus is now on its enterprise publishing solutions that enable large global organizations to automate the publishing process from content authoring through to multi channel output with mobile adoption being a significant driver . ownership and management edit quark was founded under the name quark engineering 1981 by tim gill and mark pope . 3 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 . 4 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 . 5 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 . 6 7 product history edit 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 . quark acquired two companies creating add ons for quarkxpress and indesign in 2005 alap 8 and in 2010 gluon . 9 in march 2008 quark announced 2 a new range of enterprise dynamic publishing solutions combining a range of quark technologies as well as integration with 3rd party systems . the company subsequently made a number of key technology acquisitions to enhance its enterprise dynamic publishing solutions . quark acquired a leading xml editor vendor in 2008 a company called in.vision research . 10 on may 29 2012 quark acquired mobile iq with a digital publishing solution for tablet devices named pressrun later renamed to app studio . 11 reflecting a shift towards web based word processing tools such as office 365 and google docs in november 2014 quark announced the release of a new authoring tool quark author . 12 the new software builds on the company s prior expertise in this space with their word based authoring software quark xml author to enable subject matter experts and business users to create structured xml content what quark calls smart content within modern web browsers the new software is html5 based but hiding the complexity of the xml from the user . quark author relies heavily on quark publishing platform for storing the xml content providing content previews to the author and automating the multi channel output . offices edit quark global headquarters in denver colorado . quark has several offices worldwide 13 development centers dublin ireland mohali india operational offices cheyenne wy usa sales & marketing offices denver co usa headquarters hamburg germany london united kingdom saint petersburg fl usa references edit a b about quark software inc. company history . quark . retrieved 2012 03 15 . a b quark announces dynamic publishing solution fills much needed gaps in end to end publishing void . the content wrangler . retrieved 2008 03 06 . social sciences gill tim . glbtq . 1953 10 18 . retrieved 2012 03 15 . quark ceo abruptly leaves post cnet news . news.cnet.com . retrieved 2012 03 15 . avery greg 2009 03 08 . software firm quark rebounds tries for innovator status again denver business journal . denver.bizjournals.com . retrieved 2012 03 15 . dove jackie . quark sold to merger and acquisition company . macworld . retrieved 2012 03 15 . platinum equity acquires quark . quark.com . retrieved 2012 03 15 . quark buys alap news . the mac observer . retrieved 2012 03 15 . spence nick . quark acquires gluon assets . macworld . retrieved 2012 03 15 . quark acquires in.vision for xml document handling . macnn . 2008 07 17 . retrieved 2012 03 15 . quark acquires mobile iq for enterprise digital publishing . quark software launches quark author the smart content tool . prweb . 2014 11 18 . retrieved 2014 11 18 . quark offices worldwide retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title quark company & oldid 743429786 categories graphic designsoftware companies based in coloradocompanies based in denversoftware companies established in 1981privately held companies based in colorado navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured 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