Considering the days when business success could be sustained with a mimeograph machine and a good calculator, it’s obvious industry professionals have been broadening their horizons and expanding product lines for quite some time to serve customers. What’s newsworthy, as this year’s State of the Industry report bears out, is the amazing diversity and creativity with which today’s manufacturers and distributors are going about business. Naturally, profound market shifts also impact the national association representing the independent supply channel.
The Oct. 2007 decision to rebrand DMIA—the appellation introduced in 1996 when document management challenges dominated—as psda (Print Services Distribution Association) reaffirms the power of print in all its varied forms, and the importance of myriad services and distribution efficiencies in supporting printing needs.
“The key word is print—we represent the entire print industry from an independent distributor channel model,” stated psda president Bob O’Connell. “The distributor name is being redefined every day. Over the last 10 to 20 years, the industry has gone in a consultative direction—how to design something so it’s economically fit to print, distribution methods, best direct-mail practices, postal-discount issues, database management ... all these things [have] become very important.”
O’Connell made reference to a recent survey indicating approximately 45 percent of distributors’ sales are now generated by commercial printing. “Most [psda] members have gotten into commercial or color print,” he continued. “We use the term loosely in our industry, but I define commercial printing as anything [featuring] color print, including letterhead, stationery, brochures, flyers, direct mail and all types of digital print.”
O’Connell said the organization’s shifting focus brings with it a commitment to revamp educational offerings to cover the broad base of print, and even the spring technology meeting has been restructured as a spring technology conference. “We definitely see the need to help distributors with the educational side of commercial print; more [like] the mechanics of it all,” he observed. “There is no better training than touring a plant and seeing it all happen, but there is a certain amount of technical training, due to the color involved, which I think everyone needs.”
In fact, at this year’s national meeting, taking place October 23-25 in Baltimore, a commercial printing pavilion will be introduced, and the green pavilion, which debuted last year with great success, will surely return. Furthermore, the organization will be attracting new types of exhibitors, particularly those who traditionally have not sold through the distributor channel. After all, besides education, it is sourcing contacts and networking opportunities that drive membership.
“Certainly for me, [networking] has been one of the most valuable tools since I’ve been a member,” noted O’Connell. “To have people around the country who have already ‘been there and done that’ and who can help you avoid certain pitfalls ... I mean, you can’t place a value on that. There are a lot of non-competing companies as members, so you can always find someone in another city you can speak with confidentially and get the information you need.”
As to how the current economy is affecting the industry, O’Connell said it can be either an opportunity or a threat, depending on where you are standing, how you market yourself and what kind of business person you are. “It’s certainly a threat if your largest customer is a mortgage company that has gone out of business, costing you 20 percent of your sales. And, in a bad economy, customers tend to pull back, especially in marketing departments which will postpone projects not considered necessary,” he said. “But, companies are also moving away from having people on staff who are technically competent in the world of print, so there is a greater need for outsourcing. [A customer] who sends out a hundred thousand pieces of mail every month isn’t going to want to do so in a bad economy—the postage alone is enormous. If I’m in front of [that] customer, I’m talking to [him or her] about one-to-one marketing and saving a lot of money while getting the same or likely even better results.”
He went on to say that in addition to commercial printing, most of the opportunities will probably involve digital printing, promotional items, one-to-one print programs incorporating online print ordering, proprietary label designs and integrated products. “But, I’d say the largest potential for growth in our industry and the association is the intellectual property area of our business—helping customers with their data, as well as with conceptual design, whether a graphic design or streamlining [a process],” O’Connell continued. “The most success we have is when we get in on the inception of a project. When we are in at the beginning meetings ... with the decision makers, we can help design the entire program. However, if we are just printing, the printing becomes a leftover commodity. So many people struggle with commercial printing because they are down in that commodity printing sector. They have to bring some talent, expertise or knowledge to the table and get in at the inception.”
In certain ways, said O’Connell, the DMIA was kind of an unknown. The biggest difference between psda and DMIA is that going forward, the association expects to be a player in the print industry of the future, and it plans to promote itself accordingly. “The end-all for me,” he imagined, “would be [to have] an end-user say, ‘Oh, you’re a psda member,’ and recognize [that fact] as a value. Then, I’ll know we have arrived.”
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- Bob O Connell