State of the Industry (SOI) 2011: A Long
 Journey Home
Any print professional would be hard-pressed to argue with the boldness of the following statement: "Add value or die."
According to Andrew Paparozzi, vice president/chief economist for the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL), the situation has gotten so tough that it requires companies to get very serious. But adding value is just one thing printing companies should do to try and dig themselves out of the rubble of the crumbled economy.
Other things, which Paparozzi outlined in the NAPL's recently released State of the Industry Report, include:
• One second of lax attention—one second of recovery complacency or thinking you've got it all figured out—and you're gone.
• Without a plan you just float along. Success doesn't happen without knowing what you want to do.
• We can do more with less. The key is to prevent bad habits from creeping back in as recovery progresses.
• If you aren't thinking differently, you aren't in business. For example, there's plenty of opportunity out there, just not in the same old places or by doing the same old things.
Paparozzi also referenced the following statement from the NAPL report: "Now recovery is what we make it. Continuously build productivity, competitiveness and value to our clients and we participate fully. Expect recovery to make everything right and we get left behind."
NAPL Senior Economist Joseph Vincenzino piggybacked on those thoughts.
"An improving economy will act as a relief valve for the extreme pressure many businesses found themselves under during the recession, but a relief valve is temporary—it doesn't lead to a permanent fix and it doesn't create the changes needed to be successful going forward," he said. "Those changes will have to be generated internally. In other words, we need to generate our own recovery—our own future—to be successful. Our new State of the Industry Report provides guidance and assistance for doing just that."
So, does that mean a complete recovery is impossible?
"If by recovery you mean regaining pre-recession sales volume, at best that will take until the middle of the decade," Paparozzi explained. "Quoting this month's NAPL Printing Business Conditions, 'Will we ever get back to pre-recession sales? Ink-on-paper never will. But we aren't about ink-on-paper alone anymore. We're offering services we didn't five years ago and we will be offering services in five years that we don't today; that's how much communication is changing.'"
And as NAPL has long emphasized, Paparozzi added, "We're all in the communications business, not the ink-on-paper business. We can regain pre-recession volume but with a revenue mix that's very different from our traditional mix."
In addition, companies specializing in specific niches like forms or labels shouldn't feel like they are alone in the struggle. Paparozzi noted because the recession was historic in both depth and breadth, it touched all corners of our industry.
"Specifically, between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2010, our industry's sales (all sources, not just print) fell over 20 percent. Over the same period, sales fell for a record 72.7 percent of the NAPL Printing Business Panel [The panel is a group of 275 companies the NAPL surveys at least bi-monthly on industry performance, prospects and critical issues. Panel members have annual sales ranging from under $1 million to over $150,000 million and represent all major printing markets and processes.], by at least 10 percent for three-fifths, at least 20 percent for two-fifths and at least 30 percent for one-fifth extraordinary declines, far beyond anything we've seen in the panel's 20-year history," he said.
So, whatever your company's current situation, it's best to innovate, develop and stay positive.
The State of the Industry Report is based, in part, on data supplied by more than 450 industry companies located across the United States and Canada, with sales from under $1 million to more than $300 million. The annual report is the flagship publication in NAPL's State of the Industry Series of comprehensive surveys, studies and flash reports on current printing industry conditions and future trends. The State of the Industry Series is sponsored by Heidelberg.
The report is available for purchase at www.napl.org.
- Companies:
- Heidelberg