What You Need to Know About PRINTING United

Over the past few days, you’ve probably heard a lot about PRINTING United. From the booth in the main lobby to the signs, banners and videos throughout the show floor, PRINTING United has been front and center, but you probably still have questions about what’s happening to the SGIA Expo in 2019 and what you can expect from PRINTING United.

In a nutshell, PRINTING United, a new event owned and operated by SGIA in partnership with NAPCO Media, will launch in Dallas, Texas, October 23–25, 2019. Focusing on the opportunities presented by the convergence of printing technologies and markets, PRINTING United will cover print and finishing technologies in industry segments from garment to graphic, packaging to commercial, and industrial to in-plant. Its objective is to bring together all segments of the printing industry — from graphics and signage to commercial and packaging — to provide a comprehensive view of all the components of integrated solutions and to satisfy virtually any client need.

Why PRINTING United?

Printers are faced with an ongoing challenge to maintain and grow their business in the face of new and competing technologies, new competitors, changing market dynamics, shifting customer demands and other factors. These realities are impacting the types and run lengths of the printed products and related services they offer and have pushed the industry to evolve in new ways. To address these challenges, printers not only add new technologies to enhance their competitiveness with existing customers, but can also extend their overall offerings to both new and existing clients by migrating into other print segments that expand their overall capability.

This active migration process — e.g., a commercial printer looking for opportunities in the wide-format graphics space or a graphics shop looking to expand into garment printing — is occurring in the printing industry. According to a recent survey by NAPCO Media and SGIA (“Convergence in the Print Industry: Understanding Growth Opportunities and Competition,” 2018), 95 percent of printers see opportunity for their own expansion.

SGIA and NAPCO created PRINTING United in response to how the marketplace is evolving. Widening the Expo’s reach into other segments of the printing and visual communications industries ultimately means it will be a stronger show that better serves all facets of the graphics universe, something the industry has been asking for and needs. For printers who want to expand into adjacent markets, add new product lines and increase revenue — and for exhibitors who want to serve their needs — PRINTING United brings everything under one roof.

PRINTING United is where you’ll see adjacent market opportunities, so you can decide what your business will look like not just today, but also in a year or five years from now.

Bigger. Better. Bolder.

PRINTING United is bigger, better and bolder. Bigger, because it will bring together the widest array of printing technologies and market segments under one roof.

It’s better, because it will deliver a greater ROI for printers and suppliers. Printers will get more out of their investment of time away from their shops. They will be able to investigate new business opportunities in one place as exhibitors showcase their full range of equipment to the widest possible audience.

For exhibitors, PRINTING United makes it easy to sell outside their traditional pipeline. Increasingly, printers are growing their businesses by adopting technologies in adjacent markets, giving vendors the opportunity to sell to customers they didn’t even know existed.

PRINTING United is bolder, because it’s all about the connections, community, knowledge and solutions you need to increase your revenue and profits and catapult your business to new levels. It’s also all about being a pioneer, because you’re part of where the industry is heading.

Most trade shows in the printing industry serve only a slice or two of the industry — e.g., commercial printers, wide-format graphics, garment decorators, industrial printing/printed electronics, package printing — but that’s not the way the industry is moving, so it’s not the way PRINTING United is built.

PRINTING United is October 23-25, 2019 in Dallas. Register for free at the PRINTING United booth in the lobby (near registration). Space sales is in the office above the C2 hall — room C201.

Have more questions? Ask anyone on the show floor who has a PRINTING United ribbon on their badge, and they’ll be happy to answer your questions.

Hope to see you in Dallas!