Looking at the changes that have happened in the printing industry during the past 10 years, it is hard to predict where this market is going.
Many businesses in the industry have shut down while others have grown stronger. There are few facts and trends that are certain and should be pointed out and taken into consideration for future decisions.
Smaller print quantities – Due to the lower prices of digital printing and the budgets that moved from printed material advertizing to a digital one, the requirements for large quantities have decreased and most private/business customers are ordering their prints by demand and no longer stock prints like they used to in the past.
Lower print prices – Since the internet came into our life, the competition between print suppliers got higher and shoppers became more loyal to prices than to their suppliers. As a fact, business consumers moved from one print supplier to another in the last 5 years more than they did in the last 30 years.
Paperless revolution – It is a revolution that taking place for many years now and the signs are clear, paper communicators printing such as flyers went down by 65%, transactional reports from service providers such as communication, insurance companies and banks are adopting strategies to move completely online, phone books has almost disappeared and invoices has moved online almost completely.
Personalized printing – Due to the prices of digital printing and the variable data software availability, it is much easier to print personal communicators. Also, since online advertising is very personal, end users want to get the personal touch also when it comes to a printed advertisement.
Online shopping – Since in most fields online shopping became a significant part of the business, it didn’t step over the printing industry and one of the only segments that stayed stable and grew during the last 10 years is the print on demand / web to print market and it seems to keep growing up.
It is a fact that changes has to be made before it’s too late, we can definitely say that the businesses that grew in our industry are the ones that were more open to changes and are not too proud to admit that lots of time, money and effort were invested in the wrong things. The industry changed dramatically in an unpredictable way, the only certain thing we know is that it will keep on changing and we must open our minds and really listen because it’s going to be interesting!