Many in print face a grim few months as the economy struggles in the face of the continuing Covid pandemic. Print’s member associations have called for some kind of emergency relief for the worst affected printers, especially those hit by local and regional lockdowns to snuff out any hope that had emerged over the summer. This is the season in print when traditionally the profits are made owing to booming orders in the pre Christmas period. It used to be about break even until September and then profits for the remainder of the year. For some, this year the presses will be quiet.
By Christmas, according to feedback from members of the BPIF, BAPC and IPIA, as many as 3,000 printers will close with a further 3,000 will be in such distress that they will be unlikely to survive the following three months. If allowed to happen, this will be simply devastating for the UK printing industry. With a limited domestic capacity, future orders will flow overseas, let alone the impact of jobs and tax revenues for the UK exchequer.
However, print does not exist in a vacuum. Outside of books, magazines and newspapers, greetings cards and business cards, printers are rarely delivering a finished product. Print is an industry which is a provider to other parts of the economy. If retail is doing well, there will be orders for graphics, point of sale and product information; if the travel industry is booming, printers can expect orders for holiday brochures, posters, guide books and more; if entertainment is thriving, there is a need for tickets, posters, programmers and so on. While not decrying the need for some kind of assistance for printers that might not otherwise survive, government funds might be more effective in helping the sectors that can drive orders to printers to stay open.
On the other hand however, UK print is a sector that has been marked by overcapacity, under investment and declining demand for many years, extending for more than a decade. This is evident in the difficulties it has in recruiting new talent.
This is an industry of small businesses with all the conservative attitudes that follow. Many companies have survived for longer than perhaps they ought to have done because many are lifestyle businesses. In the good times there is plenty to go round and money to be made. Now a generation of print business owners is coming close to the end of their working lives and their plans for retirement have been sunk as effectively as an iceberg striking the Titanic. Many are going to decide that to continue is not worth the hassle and will quietly sell to a former competitor. Much of this type of M&A activity will pass beneath the radar. No amount of emergency relief will stop this happening.
Marian Stefani, managing director of the IPIA, one of the organisations that is now calling for a letter writing campaign to bring print’s plight to the attention of MPs, has called this a Ctrl-Alt-Del moment for print and the industry should seize this opportunity for a reset. She does not describe what the new normal for printing looks like.
The merger between Precision, ProCo and Prime within this context is a highly astute move. It has been two years in the making and is unlikely to be replicated by another trio of businesses. But as a substantial business the new group is very much in charge of its own destiny, not immune from, but less subject to winter storms.
The other model in recent years has been the roll up of often distressed businesses by Paragon, which has been quiet of late. Bigger is essential to acquire the financial strength to continue to invest and to serve larger brands looking for the complete service from fewer suppliers.
This was the strategy employed by print management companies to good effect over the last generation. For almost 30 years printers have had an ambivalent attitude to print management: hating the prices they impose on printers but hooked on the volumes that they provide and unable to break the habit. A reset of the industry might tilt the balance, or might alert printers to the idea that they can combine in some kind of alliance with others to present themselves as a single-source provider of print and marketing communication services. On past experience this is unfortunately not likely.
On the other hand printers are becoming equipped to offer a broader range of print services: digital supporting litho printing, large format inkjet alongside perfect binding. If the lack of critical mass means that most will struggle to be as efficient as Paragon or Precision Proco Group, not every customer needs that firepower.
The new normal will increase the split between the larger businesses that are highly efficient and are on the leading edge of technology, and those businesses that have intimate knowledge of the markets and geography they operate in. For one thing that has become clear in recent months is that modern supply chains, in the search for lowest cost, have become too fragile. The shipping of books from the Far East has been disrupted by interruptions to distribution of an already slow to respond supply chain. It may be in the way that staff have been forced to commute to city centre offices on crowded trains, trams and buses for hours each day. Many workers are no longer willing to do so, causing a whole infrastructure of shops, bars and cafes that have lived on the spending power of office staff to suffer.
Print’s reset involves more localism, the opportunity being to forge relationships with similar sized businesses, the flourishing of artisan breweries being a fine example. To stand out these businesses will need more than a standard approach to marketing, to delivering their message. Google is not great for local businesses, squeezing out serendipity under the weight of Adwords.
Even if the consumer using Google is astute at searching, there is no guarantee that the search words used will identify any particular company. And she or he will still need to get past the behemoth businesses with seemingly unlimited marketing budgets.
Banner advertising is increasingly in question as more and more research says that banners are ineffective, viewed for a fraction of a second and of course as the saying goes, you are more likely to climb Everest than click on a banner ad. If anything email advertising is even more unwelcome.
It is up to printers to arm themselves with the data, with the reports that show that digital channels are not always effective. Just because you can target individuals with an email, with a video, with Facebook, does not always mean that you should.
Printers also need the case studies and proof that print works. Few organisations are doing this, Print Power being a worthy exception. We have seen in recent months that print is successful at helping social distancing and that printed signage in time of crisis is effective, delivering a clarity of message that is sometimes missing from political leaders.
Print’s reset needs the materials that show not only that print works, but how it works. That it continues to work when phones have been turned off, that ‘likes’ on social media are unlikely to be saying anything meaningful.
This is why we are launching #BeyondA4. It is a campaign to highlight examples of print that works, by going outside the standard CMYK A4 trifolded leaflet that an online trade printer can produce at minimal cost. These have their place (in the drawer with the other takeaway menus) but are not where the opportunity to make an impact with print lies.
We want to highlight the jobs that go beyond the default formats, that use larger (or smaller) formats to good effect; that use striking colours and value added effects to make an impact; that by a careful choice of papers, engage more of the senses than a flat screen ever can. We will use the pages of this magazine, the new look Print Business website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And we want you to submit examples of print that goes #BeyondA4.
Print’s reset should be about looking at print in a different way, perhaps turning back the clock 60 years to the impact that the first colour advertising pages had. Emerging from the 1950s the spread of four-colour printing allowed colour advertising to move from the billboard to Sunday supplements and a whole ecosystem of web offset printed magazines and catalogues. These were simply impossible before web offset litho printing came along in the 1960s. Print delivered colour to the Swinging Sixties well before colour television arrived.
We cannot return to that prelapsarian state, but must find a place where print has that impact. The technology available to printers today overcomes any of the objection that buyers have had in the past. It is a predictable measurable process, regardless of technology. It does not involve vast amounts of waste nor require huge print runs to become economic. It is not a long drawn out process with lots of production steps to delay completion. It works on almost any material.
These attitudes persist because printers have allowed them to and too few have not been active at marketing the benefits of print. We spend too much time talking to each other. Too many printers remain in thrall to their press or binding line, not what can be done with it. They are unwilling to invest time and effort in trialing different papers, different inks and varnish effects (few have used the enforced slowdown to run this sort of testing).
Print’s reset needs to happen. Print can delight, it can surprise, it can be more than marks on a piece of paper. That is what we should be striving for and shouting about Print needs to go #BeyondA4.
Why print has to break away to #BeyondA4
Many in print face a grim few months as the economy struggles in the face of the continuing Covid pandemic. Print’s member associations have called for some kind of emergency relief for the worst affected printers, especially those hit by local and regional lockdowns to snuff out any hope that had emerged over the summer. This is the season in print when traditionally the profits are made owing to booming orders in the pre Christmas period. It used to be about break even until September and then profits for the remainder of the year. For some, this year the presses will be quiet.
By Christmas, according to feedback from members of the BPIF, BAPC and IPIA, as many as 3,000 printers will close with a further 3,000 will be in such distress that they will be unlikely to survive the following three months. If allowed to happen, this will be simply devastating for the UK printing industry. With a limited domestic capacity, future orders will flow overseas, let alone the impact of jobs and tax revenues for the UK exchequer.
However, print does not exist in a vacuum. Outside of books, magazines and newspapers, greetings cards and business cards, printers are rarely delivering a finished product. Print is an industry which is a provider to other parts of the economy. If retail is doing well, there will be orders for graphics, point of sale and product information; if the travel industry is booming, printers can expect orders for holiday brochures, posters, guide books and more; if entertainment is thriving, there is a need for tickets, posters, programmers and so on. While not decrying the need for some kind of assistance for printers that might not otherwise survive, government funds might be more effective in helping the sectors that can drive orders to printers to stay open.
On the other hand however, UK print is a sector that has been marked by overcapacity, under investment and declining demand for many years, extending for more than a decade. This is evident in the difficulties it has in recruiting new talent.
This is an industry of small businesses with all the conservative attitudes that follow. Many companies have survived for longer than perhaps they ought to have done because many are lifestyle businesses. In the good times there is plenty to go round and money to be made. Now a generation of print business owners is coming close to the end of their working lives and their plans for retirement have been sunk as effectively as an iceberg striking the Titanic. Many are going to decide that to continue is not worth the hassle and will quietly sell to a former competitor. Much of this type of M&A activity will pass beneath the radar. No amount of emergency relief will stop this happening.
Marian Stefani, managing director of the IPIA, one of the organisations that is now calling for a letter writing campaign to bring print’s plight to the attention of MPs, has called this a Ctrl-Alt-Del moment for print and the industry should seize this opportunity for a reset. She does not describe what the new normal for printing looks like.
The merger between Precision, ProCo and Prime within this context is a highly astute move. It has been two years in the making and is unlikely to be replicated by another trio of businesses. But as a substantial business the new group is very much in charge of its own destiny, not immune from, but less subject to winter storms.
The other model in recent years has been the roll up of often distressed businesses by Paragon, which has been quiet of late. Bigger is essential to acquire the financial strength to continue to invest and to serve larger brands looking for the complete service from fewer suppliers.
This was the strategy employed by print management companies to good effect over the last generation. For almost 30 years printers have had an ambivalent attitude to print management: hating the prices they impose on printers but hooked on the volumes that they provide and unable to break the habit. A reset of the industry might tilt the balance, or might alert printers to the idea that they can combine in some kind of alliance with others to present themselves as a single-source provider of print and marketing communication services. On past experience this is unfortunately not likely.
On the other hand printers are becoming equipped to offer a broader range of print services: digital supporting litho printing, large format inkjet alongside perfect binding. If the lack of critical mass means that most will struggle to be as efficient as Paragon or Precision Proco Group, not every customer needs that firepower.
The new normal will increase the split between the larger businesses that are highly efficient and are on the leading edge of technology, and those businesses that have intimate knowledge of the markets and geography they operate in. For one thing that has become clear in recent months is that modern supply chains, in the search for lowest cost, have become too fragile. The shipping of books from the Far East has been disrupted by interruptions to distribution of an already slow to respond supply chain. It may be in the way that staff have been forced to commute to city centre offices on crowded trains, trams and buses for hours each day. Many workers are no longer willing to do so, causing a whole infrastructure of shops, bars and cafes that have lived on the spending power of office staff to suffer.
Print’s reset involves more localism, the opportunity being to forge relationships with similar sized businesses, the flourishing of artisan breweries being a fine example. To stand out these businesses will need more than a standard approach to marketing, to delivering their message. Google is not great for local businesses, squeezing out serendipity under the weight of Adwords.
Even if the consumer using Google is astute at searching, there is no guarantee that the search words used will identify any particular company. And she or he will still need to get past the behemoth businesses with seemingly unlimited marketing budgets.
Banner advertising is increasingly in question as more and more research says that banners are ineffective, viewed for a fraction of a second and of course as the saying goes, you are more likely to climb Everest than click on a banner ad. If anything email advertising is even more unwelcome.
It is up to printers to arm themselves with the data, with the reports that show that digital channels are not always effective. Just because you can target individuals with an email, with a video, with Facebook, does not always mean that you should.
Printers also need the case studies and proof that print works. Few organisations are doing this, Print Power being a worthy exception. We have seen in recent months that print is successful at helping social distancing and that printed signage in time of crisis is effective, delivering a clarity of message that is sometimes missing from political leaders.
Print’s reset needs the materials that show not only that print works, but how it works. That it continues to work when phones have been turned off, that ‘likes’ on social media are unlikely to be saying anything meaningful.
This is why we are launching #BeyondA4. It is a campaign to highlight examples of print that works, by going outside the standard CMYK A4 trifolded leaflet that an online trade printer can produce at minimal cost. These have their place (in the drawer with the other takeaway menus) but are not where the opportunity to make an impact with print lies.
We want to highlight the jobs that go beyond the default formats, that use larger (or smaller) formats to good effect; that use striking colours and value added effects to make an impact; that by a careful choice of papers, engage more of the senses than a flat screen ever can. We will use the pages of this magazine, the new look Print Business website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And we want you to submit examples of print that goes #BeyondA4.
Print’s reset should be about looking at print in a different way, perhaps turning back the clock 60 years to the impact that the first colour advertising pages had. Emerging from the 1950s the spread of four-colour printing allowed colour advertising to move from the billboard to Sunday supplements and a whole ecosystem of web offset printed magazines and catalogues. These were simply impossible before web offset litho printing came along in the 1960s. Print delivered colour to the Swinging Sixties well before colour television arrived.
We cannot return to that prelapsarian state, but must find a place where print has that impact. The technology available to printers today overcomes any of the objection that buyers have had in the past. It is a predictable measurable process, regardless of technology. It does not involve vast amounts of waste nor require huge print runs to become economic. It is not a long drawn out process with lots of production steps to delay completion. It works on almost any material.
These attitudes persist because printers have allowed them to and too few have not been active at marketing the benefits of print. We spend too much time talking to each other. Too many printers remain in thrall to their press or binding line, not what can be done with it. They are unwilling to invest time and effort in trialing different papers, different inks and varnish effects (few have used the enforced slowdown to run this sort of testing).
Print’s reset needs to happen. Print can delight, it can surprise, it can be more than marks on a piece of paper. That is what we should be striving for and shouting about Print needs to go #BeyondA4.
October marks the start of Print Business’s initiative to take print out the commodity market. To tear down any misconceptions, now that print is not taught on marketing courses, that it is “old fashioned”. Printers should be sending out their salesforce to shout about superlative advantages it has over screens.
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