10 Observations About the Effects of COVID-19 From Leading Print-related Companies

After speaking with several leading print-related companies, here are the top 10 observations concerning the effects of COVID-19.

1) Some companies that service the medical, food and beverage, and online sales are actually seeing an increase in business. Other companies that service the travel, hospitality (hotels and restaurants), gaming and events industries are hurting big-time.

2) There is a mix of working virtually and coming to the office/plant. Obviously, a production-related employee cannot work from home. Office personnel who work directly with production and some accounting personal are working at plants. However, it is becoming hard to get enough production employees to show up due to children being out of school and basic fear. Companies that have allowed certain of their employees to work from their homes are feeling this less.

3) Payments from end-user customers to print distributors will be slowed, along with the resulting payment from the print distributor to the trade supplier. Some customers have actually announced via email or snail-mail a slowing of payments to their suppliers.

4) There is a lot of cleaning going on particularly touch areas...some anti-COVID-19 “fogging” for extra sanitation. Some companies have hired outside hygiene specialists to utilize every possible precautionary practice to keep their facilities open.

5) Label companies seem to be faring better than print-on-paper companies.

6) Lead times on certain raw materials have stretched-out and some are on allocation.

7) Deliveries to end-user companies could be difficult if they are not open their normal hours...watch-out for “redelivery” charges.

8) Direct mail companies are very slow unless they mail announcements about COVID-19.

9) Companies with Cash will come out of COVID-19 “OK”, but many companies will not be able to weather the crisis; many will file for bankruptcy.

10) The uncertainty surrounding when things might get back to “normal” is keeping most companies from implementing anything “new” or making any major changes/additions to their businesses.

Thanks to Tom D’Agostino, Jr. (CEO of Smart Source LLC), Jim Kersten (President of DLS), Denny Pottebaum (Chairman or QRG),
Rochelle Heinl (VP or Repacorp) and Artie Collins (CEO of NPN360) for their input with this article.