The Industry Measure Says “Other” Commercial Print Shops Continue to Grow
According to The Industry Measure/TrendWatch Graphic Arts’s 2006/2007 Industry Measure Demographic Atlas, commercial printing establishments classified as “other” grew by 1.7 percent from the previous year’s Atlas, even as commercial printing and prepress establishments overall declined by 6.5 percent.
The “other” category includes commercial printers that produce specialty products like labels, tags, and tickets, using a variety of printing processes including gravure, flexo, offset, digital, even letterpress. This segment (or collection of many small, discrete segments) is not huge, amounting to only 11 percent of the entire commercial printing industry. But, its steady growth suggests that the printing industry is gradually becoming less about mass production and more about exploiting niche markets. For many shops, the best success has come from focusing on a small core of specialty products rather than a wide array of general purpose print products.
This information is excerpted from the Industry Measure Special Report, “2007 Graphic Arts Market Demographic Profiles: The Industry Measure updated snapshots of the printing, publishing, and creative markets,” January 2007.
For more information on the report, visit http://www.theindustrymeasure.com/