Comedy and Tragedy

As if things weren’t tough enough in the printing industry, I heard a story today that takes printing misery to a whole new level. One of my clients went down to the paper store to pick up some stock. While he was standing at the counter waiting for his order, a dog came racing down the main aisle, barking loudly, and the next thing my client knew, the dog had attached itself to itself to his lower leg. Thankfully, this was not a very big dog, but the dog’s teeth broke the printer’s skin and he ended up getting both tetanus and rabies shots. The dog belonged to another printer, who had brought it along on his own paper run.

My client has decided to see the whole episode in a positive light. “Sales are way down,” he said, “but between the other printer and the paper store, I’ll probably make enough money from the lawsuit to make it a pretty good year.” He’s only kidding. I think.

Gallows Humor

I’m hearing a fair amount of gallows humor from all across the industry. Another printer recently called me with a good news/bad news situation. “The good news,” he said, “is that they only owed me $200 when they closed their doors.” When I asked about the bad news, he said: “Oh yeah, they were my #2 customer.”

There’s no question that things are tough out there. There’s also no question that a sense of humor helps in times like these. But I think the real question is whether to allow the economy to dictate whether you experience comedy or tragedy. As I’ve written in recent months, there’s real opportunity in today’s marketplace. You have to go out, though, and grab it in your teeth.

Here’s something else I’ve written about in the past. You only have two ways to grow your business. One is to gain new customers and the other is to sell more to your current customers. Most printers seem to agree that the latter is easier than the former, but how are you going to sell them more when they’re buying less in general? The answer is to sell them new and different products and services, not just to hope that they’ll all of a sudden need more of whatever they’re buying from you now.

If I were you, I’d be looking at three product/service categories right now: Large-format, database development, and promotional products.

Large-Format

By large-format, I mean anything up to 48" wide. You can certainly sell larger formats than that, but I’m told that above 48", physical space requirements start becoming a consideration for most quick/small commercial printers. The poster and banner market right now seems to be dominated by the sign shops and by a sub-segment of the printing industry that specializes in large-format graphics. Their business is down too, but their customers continue to buy, albeit at lower levels, and I think it’s highly likely that you share some of those customers.

I’m also hearing that there are good deals on large-format printers these days. And the combination of demand for the product, affordability of the equipment, similarity of the knowledge base, and uncertainty in the market (read that: sign shops and specialty graphics printers are going out of business too; putting their customers in play) makes this a good time to enter that market!

Database Development

There are lots of quick/small commercial printers trying to sell variable data/variable image printing these days. Very few are experiencing any great level of success. Why? As I’ve written before, it’s a combination of poor selling strategy and limited market acceptance. The fact is that most businesses in the quick/small commercial printer’s target customer range don’t know enough about their own customers and prospects to gain full value from the printing industry’s extreme personalization capabilities. And if they do know enough, it’s usually not in a usable database format.