After a day away from our discussion about the status of Corel and some marketing ideas, we’ll return to the subject for one more idea. Tomorrow I’ll recap the series and talk about what we can all do to make some of these ideas a reality.

One of Corel’s biggest successes in my eyes is their development with Wilcom of Decostudio geared towards users doing design and digitizing for embroidery and multi-decoration. Even though this is the only embroidery package sold by Corel, there are several other embroidery digitizing packages that use CorelDRAW as their graphics engine. In only a few years, CorelDRAW has become an intergral part of the embroidery package.

Another flavor of CorelDRAW geared towards the technical illustration market is Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite. I’ve not been to a trade show featuring technical illustration so it is hard for me to judge how well this product is doing. As Corel is actively updating the product, I gather it has been profitable.

I would like to see Corel develop other specialized versions for vertical markets. The most obvious one to me is the sign market. Add in a feature that directly supports cutting from CorelDRAW similar in function to Cocut. Maybe include a soft RIP for those doing wide format output. Users in the sign market could be consulted to develop the full feature list. Decostudio costs a lot more than just CorelDRAW. This sign specific version could also carry a much higher price tag.

Another market that may warrant a specialized version is the engraving market. While I don’t think there are as many features needed by this market, maybe Corel could include clip art that works better with engraving.

Those two are the industries that seem to be the best fit for a specialized version, but I bet there are even more that could be developed. Let me know if the versions I’ve listed would be of interest to you or describe to me a special version that you feel would justify a higher cost.