The Big List

After countless e-mails, faxes, phone calls, meetings, discussions and great consideration the Print Professional Top 100 Manufacturers issue is complete.

Coming off the throes of the worst recession in a generation, to say this was a tough year for suppliers/manufacturers is an understatement. Many companies out there didn’t even want to share their sales figures with us this year at all. Many other participating companies chose not to distinguish their revenue generating channels.

Print Professional remains dedicated to you, our core readership, distributors of printed products. It is for this reason that our Top 100 Manufacturers list includes only those suppliers/manufacturers that primarily syphon their sales through the distributor resale channel.

However, in an effort to be as accurate and all encompassing as possible, the Print Professional team also gathered sales figures for the most elite trade printers in our industry and have added a new category, the Top Five Trade Printers, to round out the industry picture and give recognition to those companies that have astounded the industry with their ingenuity and ability to adopt and adapt to new technology.

Our industry continues to evolve. As business form sales continue to slowly erode, new revenue streams and product offerings like commercial print, web-to-print and promotional product sales, continue to creep up and fill in the gaps for both suppliers and distributors. Over the course of the next five to 10 years, I expect we will continue to watch this new print industry develop. And as it grows, it will be interesting to watch the companies who have been mainstays in the industry for decades evolve as well as the newbie companies that will arrive on the scene to shake things up.

For a marketplace that is often deemed stagnant by outsiders, their opinions couldn’t be farther from the truth. This industry is constantly mixing things up and readjusting to new technologies and business needs.