Running a Print business these days come with a lot of big challenges. I have seen many changes in the Print business from when I began my career in the Print Industry twenty years ago as an undergraduate studying Printing Technology. In those days as we were experienced in pasting type, art, and photographs onto a layout paper that would shot through the big camera producing films which would subsequently be exposed onto plate and then printed onto paper on the printing press. The introduction of computers revolutionised the print industry to become more streamlined, developing means for images to be transferred directly onto plates without the time consuming task of hand pasting, or the mechanical separation of colours onto films then to plates.
Subsequently, technology has continued to develop at a very rapid rate changing and influencing the way and manner Print businesses are conducted globally giving rise to challenges like what innovations should printers implement to ensure long-term survival and what technologies are the best for printers wanting to succeed in these challenging times. These are some of the most pressing questions on the minds of Print business owners as they struggle to navigate their businesses towards profitability in these modern times.
In a shrinking market for overall print volume, there will be winners and losers. To be a winner, printers must be willing to invest and use new technology. Technologies that would help drive the volume of Print businesses to ensure the business is profitable. I am not necessarily talking about investing in the latest press but using innovative solutions to project the Print business in the face of the spenders and decision makers. Here are some of the thoughts penned down to help Printers.
PRINTERS SHOULD STAY UP TO DATE
In the new era of print, the best application of yesterday’s technologies is not enough to ensure profitable survival for the next few years. Profitable survival depends upon a complex mix of: the state of the economy, changing customer requirements, and the extent that alternatives (mainly electronic) impinge on the Print businesses. One of the reasons why some Print businesses have failed to live up to expectation is because their owners are stuck in the past and neither do they follow happenings in the industry. In every industry there are new developments periodically that tend to influence the way and manner businesses are done. For example, banners where mainly printed on cloth materials about twenty years ago and they took time to get them out but now they are digitally printed on Vinyl materials and in no time they are ready. Printers who ignore such industry developments and information may end up with a business that is out of touch with reality. Your customer expectations and competitors constantly change and it is important that you keep tabs on new developments and make appropriate changes. You need to constantly find out what people want, what are the trends, who and what are my competitors’ business activities?
It is advisable to stay up to date in the industry monitoring new developments and understanding where the industry is going by attending both local and international exhibitions, subscribing to key Printing industry Magazines and generally updating your knowledge as the key decision maker of your company. On a personal note I have had the opportunity to advise some of my Printer friends to watch out for emerging manufactures of Offset presses from China where they have developed, built and are marketing Offset presses at the fractional cost of those from Europe, these are capable of cutting down the astronomical prices of current and known manufactures just as it happened in the case of Large format digital machines in the coming years ahead.
PRINTERS SHOULD BE CREATIVE AND OFFER UNIQUE MATERIALS.
Creative use of materials can differentiate printers in the marketplace to enhance the value and application of Print. Technologies such as in-line coating, UV coating, QR codes, augmented reality, invisible printing, die-cutting, folding to create a unique product and security printing are opportunities to explore. The printer should not position his company as just another “vendor” to their customers but as “marketing service provider” with the requisite technology, skills and business approach that would help achieve customers’ set objectives. A forward looking Printer should wake up every day thinking of ways to improve his business. By doing this he is unlikely to get complacent because he will certainly seize every opportunity to add something new and creative to the business. It is important that Print business owners make research a constant thing and review the performance of their business periodically to ascertain the growth or otherwise of their Print businesses.
Another point I would also comment on is that most printers do not have a vibrant creative team or are underutilizing them. Your team of Graphic artist/designer offers your company unlimited creative potential to design meaningful and effective products that your client’s business really needs in terms of other related services such as website design, packaging for marketing products, flash animations, and even design PowerPoint graphics for client’s presentations. In order for a printing company to survive in a market that offers very competitive print services your company needs to diversify and evolve to offer the look and feel quality services that your customers would expect from an advertising agency.
PRINTERS SHOULD THINK OF OFFERING A MENU OF PRINTING SERVICES: OFFSET, LARGE FORMAT, SCREEN AND DIGITAL
We have a lot of Printing presses focused on offering a single menu of print service and the challenge with this business model is that it is short sighted. In order to remain strategically relevant to the growing and diversified need of customers profitably Printers will have to diversify into other branches of printing by offering the customers a dynamic menu of print services such as Digital Printing, large format printing, screen printing, sublimation, monogramming and heat transfer printing.
Digital printers have been developed to offer more options than before with different finishing options like saddle stitching, tape binding, as well as in machine scoring. They are useful in printing small short runs, envelopes and have been effective in obsoleting small offset printers- delivering quality product quicker and more efficiently. Additionally, the addition of large format printer will enable your printing company to offer specialty print items like mounted sign work, promotional big flex posters, or custom banners.
Essentially, diversifying the menu of what your company offers will give it a competitive edge over the competition. The mantra that “The way they ran the business always worked before, why change it now?” would only lead to dwindling economic fortunes of the press. Print business owners who refuse to change their processes or services in this new age would only replicate the failures of those companies who offered the same product for decades and currently they are nowhere. The old business model and concepts need to change in order to remain profitable and marketable in this dynamic economy. With all kinds of new technologies, printing businesses have evolve d to accommodate the evolutionary process of the new age, forgoing old business models while offering quality customer service and quality products is proving to be more effective than practicing “business as usual”.