Growth Stalls in a Tight Economy

The printed products industry mirrored the economy with a slight drop in revenue.

Although revenue for the Top 100 Manufacturers and Suppliers declined by 2 percent, or $900,000 to $4.87 billion this year, it is still quite a bit higher than the $4.38 billion reported two years ago.

The total number of employees reported by the Top 100 decreased by 283 to 30,662 this year. The total number of locations decreased dramatically to 369 from last year's 423.

Productivity, as measured by sales per employee, dropped a bit this year to $158,805 from the $160,123 reported last year. However, sales per location jumped to $13.2 million from last year's $11.7 million.

There are several reasons for these shifts: There is no common experience among the Top 100 Manufacturers and sales increases may have been caused by an increased share of market or by acquisition, while declining revenue may have been the result of consolidation. In addition, the makeup of the Top 100 has shifted slightly as CFC and Datagraphic merged to form Printegra, Wise acquired EPX and Crabar Paper/Witt LLC split from its parent company. Next year's list has already changed, as Ennis has signed an intent to acquire the $40 million Calibrated Forms.

The $4.87 billion in sales broke down into $1.51 billion in commercial printing (31 percent), $1.36 billion in forms (27.9 percent), $697 million in labels and tags (14.3 percent), $276 million in direct mail (5.7 percent) and $170 million in promotional products (3.5 percent). The "other products" category, which had $855 million in sales (17.6 percent of the total) this year, consisted mainly of plastic cards, services and office supplies.

Top 10 Manufacturers

The overall Top 10 Manufacturers generated $3.17 billion in total sales and employed 18,885 people at 179 locations. This represents 65.1 percent of the overall Top 100 sales, 61.6 percent of total employees and 48.2 percent of total locations. Last year the Top 10 accounted for $3.09 billion in sales and employed 18,287 people at 217 locations.