2010 State of the Industry: Part One

"The economy has definitely changed the way many printers view themselves and the niche they serve. The feedback we continue to receive from many of our customers is that they're growth in a down economy was directly tied to their flexibility or ability to expand into new areas of print," said Mark Overington, vice president of marketing, EFI VUTEk. "The clear winners were those who were able to move away from a commoditization mindset, diversify their product offerings by producing unique applications and provide their customers what turned out to be higher margin services. Similar feedback came from new customers who moved into digital grand format as a necessity to remain competitive and reverse continued margin erosion due to shorter runs and increased localization. The challenges we see today are for commercial and screen printers who don't have a short run or digital print model. As analog margins continue to decline into the low single digits, those printers will need to look at premium margin alternatives."