Brian Hite: Honored to Serve, Excited About the Future

Incoming PRINTING United Alliance chair Brian Hite discusses the value of the Expo and the critical role of the Alliance.

Brian Hite, CSO, Principal, and Founder, Image Options

Congratulations on becoming chair of PRINTING United Alliance. Looking at the year ahead, what does this position mean to you most?

Brian Hite: I think it's a culmination of many years of volunteer service with the board and with the Alliance, and I'm excited about what's to come. There are going be a lot of changes coming up in the future that are positive for the industry, and, for me, it's just very gratifying to know that I was part of the growth and part of what's transpired over the past several years.

What do you see “on deck” for PRINTING United Alliance in the next year, and what would you describe as its biggest opportunity?

Hite: The biggest opportunity currently is to grow awareness of the Alliance and what it has to offer businesses, and to engage more and more companies to become members and take advantage of those services. When you look at the current level of membership and the type of companies that are the majority of members, there's a lot of value there that some larger companies may not need, but there's always that expertise level that's there.

There are so many benefits to being a member beyond just OSHA regulations or HR, and I think that's powerful, but how do you communicate that message to members and convince them that, for $500 a year, they get more things than you ever dreamed possible ... if they take advantage of them.

Obviously, membership is important. I think the iLEARNING+ platform is really starting to have a strong impact for workforce development and encouraging young people to enter the industry, which is exciting. There wasn't anything in place prior to that to really encourage that other than individual programs within various companies. I think that is a key factor. The fact that we're having individuals worldwide log in and take courses shows there's value, and having those courses become part of college curriculum with different graphics programs around the country is really exciting.

It just shows the level of commitment the Alliance has towards the industry as a whole. One of the other areas I think is key is the consolidation of the disparate types of print companies within the industry. From traditional analog process like screen print and even litho, to wide-format inkjet and digital inkjet for publications, the technologies are coming together and creating an amazing environment for growth in the future, Print isn't dying, it's actually growing in certain segments. So, I think it's [an] important [message].

The other part of the changes that have happened within the Alliance has been the inclusion of all the different types of print, whether it’s OEM printing, printed electronics, apparel decoration, home goods, commercial. And consolidating all those different industries together and presenting a unified front for legislative action and other things is really key, because when most people think of print, it's, ‘Oh, it's what comes off my little copier at home,’ or, ‘It's the magazine I get in the mail.’ They don't look around and see anything around them as being print, but everything everywhere is print. You can't go anywhere, to any business, any outdoor venue, just driving down the street, without seeing tons of print. I think it's so commonplace that people don't recognize it for what it is.

It's important that people understand the true scope of the industry, the strength of the industry, and how essential it is to every single business and person in the world. There isn't a single company that doesn't rely on print in some fashion.

What are you looking forward to most at this year’s PRINTING United Expo and why?

Hite:  The biggest thing I'm looking forward to is the experience of networking with the people at the event. It's time to get together with vendors. It's the time to learn about new products, new equipment, and really build those relationships with vendors and with fellow printers.

Everything from the AI Pavilion to the PRINTING United booth, where you're meeting all the staff. That is powerful. And if I can communicate one message, that would be when you show up, don't just walk around the floor carrying a bag and collecting brochures. Interact with the people. Go to the PRINTING United Alliance booth. Go to the AI Pavilion. See what's out there because there are learning opportunities there that anyone can take back.

And it's not just once a year at the Expo. Things like the Executive Leadership Summit, the Wide-Format Summit, the Inkjet Summit — all of those things communicate knowledge you can't get anywhere else.

Over the past few years, what has changed in the broader printing industry, and what advantages does the Alliance’s approach bring to printers in a changing environment?

Hite: That's difficult to answer because there's so many viewpoints that you can take on it. One, you can say, ‘Wow, it's been a really difficult couple of years for certain segments of the print industry because of the economic conditions.’ And some industries are affected by tariffs, others it really doesn't impact that much. For me, tariffs really, I think of them as a better thing for long-term for U.S. production, but I think, in the short-term, it does hurt some companies.

Looking at the positive side of it, I think there is a convergence. There are new companies coming out that are taking advantage of technologies — everything from AI to some of the new equipment coming out — and they will be the leaders moving forward in the future.

The other challenge that I think is changing, and for the better, is the fact that in the past most printers, their staff have worked for them for 30, 40, 50 years sometimes, and they're all aging out and retiring. I'm excited to see all the new, younger people coming in and bringing their ideas and concepts to the industry. We've hired numerous college graduates, and they are bringing an energy and a level of excitement back to the business you tend to lose over time. When you first get in, you do your first big thing and you're like, ‘Wow, that's so cool.’ But after you've done 1,000 of them, you kind of forget that it's still really cool, you know?

I think you'll continue to see consolidation as technologies allow businesses to enter markets they didn't traditionally participate in. Whether that's good or bad, I can't say. For me, it's great. I'm kind of staying in my lane on the print side. But from the business side, we've transitioned into a much broader perspective of business. Instead of print being the primary driver of the business, it's a component of what we offer as part of our final product. So, whether we're building a display and adding graphics to that display, or we're creating a store environment where we're putting in all the fixtures, but all the wall coverings and window graphics and POP stuff is print. It's that transition where print is becoming somewhat commoditized in various areas, where the price point is getting down to the point where you have to be really efficient... be the lowest cost producer of something to remain competitive, especially when you're dealing nationally or internationally. I can do business in California. It's a lot easier if my company was in Indiana, or Kentucky, or someplace where the cost of doing business was a lot lower, but we're still able to compete because of efficiency in being a low-cost producer.

I think the Alliance is helping to inform, through legislative action and through its efforts in communication, the essential nature of all things print. That is something that wasn't really a thing until the past several years. We've had legislative fly-ins. We've met with Congress people. We have an advocacy program. We're talking about things that impact the industry from postage, to environmental laws, banning various chemicals — things that really are special interest-driven, not necessarily right, economically driven, or even environmentally driven.

What is the value of an industry association like PRINTING United Alliance, and why should printers of all stripes be involved? What has it meant for you?

Hite: Look at it this way: if you don't know what you don't know, then you don't know, right?

If I look at what the Alliance has done for me, much of it is personal. It's the relationships I've built. It's the people I've met that I can call to ask questions about things in my business. It's being able to help others when they call me to ask me questions about what's in the business. None of that would've existed if I hadn't become part of the Alliance. I wouldn't have the longtime friendships that I have with everybody from vendors to customers to competitors.

That sense of community that exists when you engage with the members helps with identity. If you have a small shop somewhere, and you're living day to day, and you're making a living at it, that's a good thing. But if you also knew 50 other people that had the same experience as you, that were doing the same things as you, and experiencing the same struggles, you have someone to bounce ideas off of. You have someone that can help you navigate challenges you face in your business. And you also have those relationships where it's bidirectional, and some of those companies are going grow into much larger companies, and some of them are going to stay small. But the friendships and the relationships remain.

I think that sense of community is probably the most important thing if people are willing to engage. I'm sure that anybody that shows up at the Expo and walks around, they meet a lot of people. Most of that's transient. They walk up, ‘Oh, hi, I'm Brian,’ ‘Yeah I'm Bob. Nice to meet you,’ and you never see them again. I think engaging with the person, ‘Well, hey, Bob. How did you get started? What do you do? Where's your business? Oh, I know somebody else in that area. Do you know so and so?’ I think that interaction as part of the Expo is a value proposition that's never discussed. Most people go, they look at the equipment that's coming out, they make decisions about what they need or not need based upon the sales pitches they received or the research they've done, and it's a good venue for that too.

It's the best venue for printing that exists today. Even some of the specialty things, like labels or packaging. That's all being brought to the to the Expo now. And I think, once people realize, including the equipment manufacturers, and say, ‘Hey, I don't have to go to 20 shows a year. I can go to one and see everybody,’ that is a good thing for companies like mine. They are exposed to other lines of business they didn't consider before. It's like, ‘Wow, you know, that label machine's kind of cool, and it's affordable, and you know what? I have customers that buy this stuff.’ So, I think all of these aspects, from community to seeing the latest and greatest to experiencing what the Expo has to offer is good.

I know Las Vegas is becoming a challenging venue to have Expos. The cost of attending a show there is higher. The cost of running a show there is higher. All of that being said, it's still convenient for most people. It's a direct flight for a lot of people, and even with the cost increases, there's still a tremendous value to attending. At some point, Vegas is going to wake up and say, ‘You know what? We've lost a lot of business. We need to get back to reality and start encouraging people to come here again.’ But when you look at the activities available from the Expo and the various vendor activities that take place, it's ‘engage’, really.

You mentioned the changes your company has undergone over the past few years. Do you think they’re indicative of broader industry trends? 

Hite: I do think it's a broader industry trend. You're either extremely niche and doing very well, or you were niche and you've had to adapt to changing economic conditions, changing customer profiles, to offer more. If you look at my business, we did a lot of trade show and event graphics for years, and a lot of retail. Well, COVID impacted both of those businesses severely. Both have returned — not to the levels they were prior to COVID, but they've returned.

But when you talk about consolidation and people getting into different businesse, the trade show industry used to be very kind of bucket driven, where you had graphics providers that provided graphics to the exhibit builders. The exhibit builders would then connect with a company that would do the install and dismantle, and they would connect with a transportation company to ship the stuff back and forth. There was an ecosystem. We all supported each other. But, as consolidation happened and some of those key suppliers grew, they started bringing print in-house. They started bringing building in-house and shipping in-house. When you look at a market transitioning where you may have been doing millions of dollars worth of business, you've seen that business decline as a result of these big players that no longer buy from you. So, in my case, I've had to begin to not necessarily compete with some of those guys, but offer some of the same services they do, whether I'm designing an exhibit, or building an exhibit, or doing a corporate interior, or some other thing, as well as adding a creative studio to do the front-end design so you can control more of the back end.

All of those things are just things you do as part of daily business. You adapt, and I don't know of a single business that I'm associated with that hasn't had to make changes and look at new markets.

And that sort of change over time, do you see it as an evolution? Or are there moments in time where you say, "We were this. Now we are that"?

Hite: I think both are true. I say we were this, but we were kind of that all along. We just didn't compete with our customers as much. Where if an opportunity came to us from one of our customers, we would send it to another customer to have them handle their part, and we would do our part.

But now, we've made the conscious decision if somebody comes to us with an opportunity like that, we take the opportunity, and we do it ourselves. I think that is just part of adaptation and business continuity you have to have; you have to continually look at what's coming.

I look at AI for example, and everybody's talking about, ‘Oh, the impact of AI.’ Well, I personally experience a significant amount of impact from AI in my ability to do more work, my ability to get to a result a lot quicker, and it's usually related more to admin-type tasks that seem to have the most benefit for me. I mean, I probably save 20, 30 hours a week of manual typing on my computer by use of AI. I don't have AI create content for me or anything like that, but I do use it to do analysis, take spreadsheets and format them, and create them and put the formulas in.

You know, we're using it for a lot of areas — but it is not going to go out on the floor. Will it potentially run a printer? Maybe someday, sure, with robotics, but not today. Will it move that cart of material from one part of the shop to the other? If you have robotics, you can probably get it to do that, but all of that's at a cost, and it's not going to improve margin for me to do that.

Things that would be impacted by AI would be certain financial tasks, matching purchase orders to invoices to bills that are received, that kind of stuff. That AI saves hours and hours a week. Automating your sales tax process when you're dealing with multiple nexus points in a lot of different states — that is something AI's going be great at.

Finally, looking into your crystal ball, how do you think Image Options will be different five years from now?

Hite: I see us transitioning a greater part of our revenue to the creative process. I see us increasing the level of fabrication we do within certain markets. I think we're going to need very soon to modify our workflows around print, due to technology changes, market changes, and the cost of doing business where I am. It's not ready yet, but it's close enough that it's almost time to make investments in certain things that will improve throughput and reduce cost to remain competitive.

I think most of that is going to be changes in how we do business with our customers, and who those customers are. I saw a trend, began probably in 2016, 2017, where the professional buyers started to — because they were expensive, they had knowledge, sovereignty — started to be replaced by procurement processes. And procurement processes really damaged a lot of companies and did a disservice to the clients they brought on board.

I’m seeing a return to more relationship selling again, where you build a relationship with a client. It went very transactional for a while. Now, I'm seeing a shift back to a little bit of transaction, but more relationship-driven sales process. As far as successes that we've seen from new customers, it's always been about combination of relationship, and then performance and customer service — almost getting back to basics, with technology enabling that.

And what developments do you see in the wide-format space that contribute either to its growth or its continued product diversity?

Hite: I would say the thing that's contributing most to its growth is people adapting their processes, adapting their workflows, because there is price compression everywhere, and price compression tends to impact businesses in a way where they start to have their margins erode. They really focus hard on, ‘how do we maintain margin if this is the new floor for the price?’

The other thing I see happening is new players coming into the market that may or may not have experience within the market, and their price points are based on different models. For example, years ago we were producing vinyl banners at $8/sqft for these big programs. And then a little printer came into our area and bought some gear and started doing the material costs as a pass-through and just the labor. So the price dropped 70% on that product, just because of one vendor coming in and doing that, when they could have continued to work at the model the industry was at, and done extremely well instead of struggling and forcing all the other companies competing with them to adapt and struggle.

I would say going forward we're going to continue to adapt. We'll continue to adjust our business as we go along. I see us doing more and more design, more and more fabrication, possibly more exhibit builds, and definitely still staying strong within the corporate interior market. We have many, many projects in the pipeline for that, and it's just a completely different business.

One of the advantages is some of the work is allowing us to better forecast future volumes because the projects are ‘Yeah, this project is going to complete in December of whatever,’ and we're hearing about it a year in advance. So, you can start to capacity-plan, resource-plan, et cetera, to accommodate those projects. Whereas the print world has always been ‘Hey, um, I'm gonna send you a file. Can you have this done for me, you know, by 5:00 pm, and, uh, I need it here?’ So, there's still some of that, but less of it for us just because it's difficult to have a process and have that type of business work well in that process.