Fight the Power

There’s a running joke about the forms business. It chooses you, not the other way around. So what’s a fated print supplier or distributor to do when, just to survive, he or she has two major opponents to battle: technology and the economy? In 2007, Print Professional’s Top 100 Manufacturers analysis reported that while paper-based forms continued to dominate all printed product category sales—accounting for $931 million of the $2.97 billion total sales figure—their numbers had dropped overall from the previous year. Not wanting to disappoint, forms sales continued to decline in 2008. Yes, forms were still the crowned champion of printed products, beating out direct mail, commercial print and labels & tags, for example. But, their profits took a dramatic tumble down to $813.4 million.