The wide-format market is evolving rapidly. As is the range of substrates that wide-format exponents can utilise. Nowadays printers can virtually print onto anything and everything, from paper, through to vinyl, through to glass. But one of the fastest growing areas is digital printing onto textiles. Although digital textile printing technology has been around since the 1990s, it’s only been over the course of the last few years that the sector has truly come of age, finding favour in a number of different markets.

Few print industry sectors have benefited from the recession. Dwindling print spend has led clients to demand more for less, resulting in many commercial printers agreeing to unsustainable – and in some instances – suicidal prices just to keep their presses ticking over. This sort of downward price pressure was a trend that could only be absorbed for a short period of time before something had to give and as a result many commercial printers disappeared off the map.

Those printers that managed to survive the downturn are more often than not the ones that diversified and sought out new revenue streams to bolster their profits. And one of the main beneficiaries of this diversification was the digital wide-format sector.

Four years or so ago all the talk in the printing industry was about the serious levels of over capacity and how consolidation was necessary so that a leaner, meaner industry could emerge. Having endured one of the worst recessions on record the printing industry is certainly leaner as it comes out the other side with printers falling by the wayside in their dozens across Europe. Whether it’s meaner remains to be seen, but those that managed to weather the economic storm should be stronger for it. For them the immediate challenge is to generate steady yet modest growth in the months ahead with much of this growth expected to be achieved through mergers and acquisitions.

When it comes to the creation of innovative point of sale (POS) most printers are happy to leave the creative part to the ‘creatives’ - “let them dream up the idea and we’ll deliver it”, is usually the favoured plan of attack. It’s an approach that works fine when times are good - especially as the relationship between printer and designer has always been a frosty one - but in turbulent economic times printers have to be more savvy and customer-centric. And with POS being an area in which print buyers say that they’re likely to spend more money in the future, according to a recent survey by UK trade title PrintWeek, cosying up to your creative customers might not be such a bad idea.

Printers are famously bad at selling their wares. The accuracy of this statement will undoubtedly be contested by some industry stalwarts but even they would struggle to argue that the mystique that once surrounded the ‘dark arts’ has evaporated. This, coupled with the perception among many lesser informed souls that commercial printing is no longer a craft – it’s merely a push button operation that anyone can master – has surely helped to accelerate the commoditisation of print.

But despite being such bad salesmen this doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of enterprising printers out there who are finding new routes to market and generating healthy revenue streams as a result.

In theory at least producing a variable data wide-format piece of print is as easy as producing a standard size direct mail piece. However, in practice there are few examples of wide-format printers using variable data to best effect. The technology exists – there are numerous variable data software packages targeted at wide-format printing – but the sticking point to date has been coming up with clever applications that take advantage of this option.

 

When Iron Man 2 hit cinema screens this summer it was backed by a multi-million pound marketing campaign to ensure the sequel matched the impressive box office takings of the comic book heroes first outing.

It's one of the world's fastest growing printing industries with a current market value of circa $12bn and a projected potential value of $20bn. While it may currently rank as the 12th biggest printing market globally it's projected to leapfrog to 8th if the current growth curve continues.

Want to print a photobook of pictures taken on your iPhone? There's an app for that. Want to run your print shop's management information system (MIS) on an iPad from the comfort of your own living room? There's an app for that also. How about viewing video and audio content embedded in a bus stop poster via your Nokia handset. You've guessed it – there's an app for that.

Following the awesome positivity that was literally brimming at FESPA in Munich, the temptation is to relax, celebrate and rejoice in the fact that optimism abounds and the bad times may have passed. We can all look forward to better times, the storm has calmed and we can now return to our old ways of doing things. Can’t we?