Counting Noses

Last week I got the fall issue of RIT’s Print Review and was interested to see that their attempts to get a handle on printing industry demographics were less than a definitive success. They went to lots of resources and came up with the conclusion that “The printing industry needs a centralized database in order to maintain and research relevant information on a timely basis.” In other words, they were having a hard time getting a handle on true demographics from the welter of currently available sources. One finding of interest was that: “The underlying problem is that the majority of printers are individuals or proprietorships and some may not be listed anywhere... This investigation surmises that small companies are undercounted—and the U.S. printing industry is mostly small companies.” The researchers also rightly pointed out the difficulty of establishing just which firms, technologies, and processes should be included. Of the 16 criteria they did consider in the study, one was “What is the difference between a small printer and a quick printer?” The answer, of course, is that there is no difference because “quick printer” is a self-applied label used by some small commercial printers. The researchers also lamented that any study winds up working with dated data. That was pretty evident since one of the three printing trade publications used as resources is no longer in business.