Shifting Markets

Companies in all print market segments — wide-format, screen, commercial, packaging, garment, industrial and in-plant — are all faced with an ongoing challenge to maintain and grow their business in the face of new and competing technologies, new competitors, changing market dynamics and shifting customer demands. All of these factors impact the types of applications produced, the run lengths of the printed products and the related services they offer.

To address these challenges, printers not only need to add new technologies to enhance their competitiveness in the market with new and existing customers, but are also looking to extend their overall offerings by looking for opportunities in adjacent markets.

According to the “Convergence in the Print Industry” study conducted by NAPCO Research and sponsored by the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA) in 2018, printers clearly identified an opportunity to better serve their customers with services outside of their current primary offerings, with 95% reporting there is opportunity for expansion within their own businesses, and 93% saying they believe expansion is happening within the industry as a whole.

According to the study, 95% of printers from all segments see an opportunity to better serve their customers by providing services other than what they currently offer. This significant finding includes the 33% of printers who have already expanded or are actively taking steps to do so, the 39% who are actively researching an opportunity and the 23% who believe there is an opportunity but have not yet researched it.

Across segments, the most significant expansion is occurring from the Commercial Printing segment to other market segments, chief among them Packaging and Graphics and Signage. The second most significant expansion is occurring in the Garment Decoration segment with the primary destinations being the Commercial Printing and Graphics and Signage markets.

And we can certainly see evidence of these converging markets when we examine the Printing Impressions 400 List.

For the past 35 years, Printing Impressions, Wide-format Impressions’ sister publication, produces the Printing Impressions 400 List, the industry’s most comprehensive listing of the leading printing companies in the United States and Canada ranked by annual sales volume. This year we dove into the data and pulled out companies that indicated they had digital wide-format equipment and/or provided wide-format sign and graphics applications — including POP/POS signage, banners, billboards, vehicle graphics, etc. From that segmented list, we reached out to these companies to obtain specific sales information regarding their wide-format divisions and departments.

Through that outreach, we were able to produce the First Annual Wide-Format Impressions 50 List, detailing the top companies within the United States and Canada, as ranked by their annual wide-format sales volume.

The listings include company name and the location of the headquarters; most recent fiscal year wide-format sales figures; percentage of total sales dedicated to wide-format; total company sales for most recent fiscal year; primary product specialties; principal officer(s); number of employees and manufacturing plants.

The financial information shown for the WFI 50 rankings was provided voluntarily by privately-held and employee-owned firms, and we instructed companies not to provide projected/estimated sales figures if their fiscal year was still in progress. As a result, printers shown on this list were most often reporting 2017 calendar year revenues as their most recent annual sales figures.

To access the full Wide-Format Impressions 50 list, click here.