It’s always fun to see what everyone is reading. This year, we delivered a variety of content—from Cenveo’s Chapter 11 saga to profiles of the print and promo industry’s freshest talent. According to page views, by you, our faithful readers, here are the top 10 most-read stories of 2018. (Spoiler alert: It was a big year for Vistaprint-tagged articles.)
1. 2018 Top 50 Distributors: Stats, Trends and Key Takeaways From the Data
Always a popular feature, our annual compilation of the industry’s 50 leading print and promo distributors serves as a barometer for industry health. Who doesn’t want to know what their peers are doing?
There’s no shortage of young talent here. What their résumés lack in years, these individuals make up for with passion, skills and deep-seated principles.
There’s no better predictor of 2018 trends than the direction of the overall economy. Yes, that trickles down to the print industry, so by that logic, when President Trump succeeds, printers benefit. In response, economists revised growth forecasts upward for last year and this year.
4. Cenveo Chapter 11 Saga Unfolds with Accusations, Ruling, Plant Closures
For many in the print industry, Cenveo’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February came as no surprise. But this story took many surprising twists and turns along the way. Our colleague, Printing Impressions Editor-in-Chief Mark Michelson, reported on the developments and put together this nice recap.
5. Print+Promo 2018: A Celebration of the Women in Print and Promo
Our fifth annual "Women in Print and Promo" feature highlights women of varying professional backgrounds—from account managers to CEOs. What do they have in common? All of our nominees inspire peers, shift perceptions and have a demonstrated track record of success. Check out their stories!
6. 2018 Top 50 Suppliers: What the Data Tells Us
The Top 50 Suppliers of 2018 is much more than a list; the report also includes in-depth analysis from our Print+Promo editorial team, a rundown of year-over-year changes and additions in company rankings, world news events that impacted the industry this year, successes and trends in individual product categories, and much more.
7. Vistaprint Sends Same-Sex Couple Hateful Pamphlets Instead of Wedding Programs
A Pittsburgh area same-sex couple was expecting to receive the wedding programs for their upcoming wedding from Vistaprint. What they got was quite the opposite. Promo Marketing Group Senior Digital Editor Brendan Menapace broke down the chain of events.
8. Surviving in a Vistaprint World
The industry continues to change at rapid speed. As e-commerce and one-stop shops like Vistaprint, CustomInk and the like become more popular and widely used, providing service directly to customers, traditional distributors and suppliers need to learn how to adapt to survive.
9. Relax, Vistaprint Doesn’t Want to Be Your Competitor
In the beginning of the year, our sister publication, Printing Impressions, scored a lengthy interview with Mitchell Leiman, vice president of strategy and corporate development for Cimpress, parent company of Vistaprint. The whole thing is worth your time. Leiman maintained that local brick-and-mortar print shops could view partnering with online printers as an opportunity to improve efficiency while continuing to specialize in what they are good at. Promo Marketing Editor-in-Chief Sean Norris read between the lines and wrote this insightful commentary.
10. InnerWorkings Postpones Annual Meeting of Stockholders
It was an interesting 2018 for top distributor InnerWorkings, to say the least. On May 7, InnerWorkings revealed that it would restate its historical financial statements for fiscal years ending Dec. 31 2017, 2016 and 2015, along with all interim periods within those time frames, due to accounting errors. In a statement, the company maintained that the mistakes related “primarily to recording a portion of costs of goods sold in the wrong period, and have no material impact on InnerWorkings’ cash flow, revenue or liquidity.” Delays followed.