How big is the U.S. printing industry? Off the top of my head, I came up with these answers:

• Bigger than a breadbox
• Smaller than Wall Drug
• Not big enough.

A better answer can be gleaned from the 2004 Printing & Graphic Arts Directory, published by C. Barnes Co. and Compass Capital Partners (www.cbarnes.com). The directory, which is based on U.S. Dept. of Commerce, PIA, NAPL and other estimates, indicates that the U.S. print market segments includes (in millions of dollars):

• General commercial: 53,197
• Magazines and periodicals: 7,864
• Catalogs/directory: 9,755
• Direct mail: 7,944
• Inserts/coupons: 6,957
• Financial: 5,281
• Newspaper: 15,194.

Other segments include specialty printing (10,489); forms/label printing (10,572); package printing (38,191); and trade services (11,907).

Confusing industry information

For another perspective on the industry's size, see “An Investigation into Printing Industry Demographics,” a report produced by Frank Romano and Marnie Soom for the Printing Industry Center at RIT (Rochester, NY).

The report noted that there are about a dozen sources of industry information, including the aforementioned C. Barnes and Co., Reed Business Information's Blue Book, CAP Ventures, Dun & Bradstreet, NAPL, NPES, Yellow Pages, PIA, State Street Consultants, trade magazines, industry suppliers and federal government statistics.

Nonetheless, the researchers concluded, “there is a fundamental need for base data to allow consistent comparison over time for the printing companies themselves… The industry needs a centralized data service to maintain and publish relevant information on a timely basis.”

Why is it so hard to determine the size of the U.S. printing industry? For one thing, you have to define what constitutes a printer. Suppose you just counted any person or company with a reproduction device that sells print. What about those that don't charge for printing services? You would be excluding most in-plant operations, newspapers that provide commercial printing services and lettershops that do some printing to accommodate clients. Romano and Soom debated this question as well as 14 related issues. The complete report can be downloaded for free at http://print.rit.edu/research/rsrch_1.html.

The researchers' goal was to list all of the major printing firms in a comprehensive database and to understand the demographics of the largest printers, as well as a sampling of small and midsize printers.

Romano and Soom ultimately created a database of about 3,000 printing firms. They found that fewer than 1,000 companies represented 65 percent of the revenue for the entire printing industry.

Taking market shares from competitors

Competition will only get fiercer. A recent NAPL survey found that while more than 66 percent of participants expect sales growth of at least five percent this year, 74.5 percent expect to grow by taking market shares from competitors, 22.8 percent by picking up shares from companies that have gone out of business, and 9.2 percent by merging and acquiring.

“Our survey group is thinking redistribution,” wrote Andy Paparozzi, NAPL's vice president and chief economist, in our process automation special report in March. “They are raising the question every printing company must address: How do we gain share in markets that aren't growing fast enough for everyone while protecting share in markets that are getting a lot more competitive?”

Whatever you do, don't wait for an improving economy to bail you out. Although Paparozzi predicts we'll see prices and profits start to firm by summer, he warns that a favorable turn isn't going to make everything right again. Now is the time to minimize turnaround times, inefficiency, waste spoilage and human error. Because unfortunately, the printing industry just isn't big enough.

Industry loses typesetting pioneer

John W. Seybold passed away last month at the age of 88. In 1963, Seybold founded the world's first computerized composition service bureau, ROCAPPI (Research on Computer Applications in the Printing and Publishing Industry). The company used a Fototronic CRT typesetter with an RCA301. According to one obituary, “Between 1963 and 1970, John and his team at ROCAPPI essentially invented most of the concepts now used to create, edit, format and manipulate text information for print or electronic distribution… There is no aspect of publishing today — print or online — that is not fundamentally different because of what these pioneers accomplished.”