Is the printing industry effected by Financial Crisis much?

[joyjia]

The world is in the financial crisis, many industries are effected so much, quite a few factories stop production or are being closed, how about the printing industry in your country?

I'm in the digital printing industry in China, it seem not too bad right now, but not sure about the offset printing.

How is the printing business in your country?


Joy

 

[UberTech]

Well for us it is kaos. Most of my customers say they are flat out, the offset crowd with digital say the offset is flatening off but the digital doesn't seem to get a break. I have been waiting for this tsunami of a depression but so far no sign.

 

[joyjia]

So digital printing seems good.

Hey, UberTech, where are you located?


Joy

 

[dking]

I work in a .com "budget" digital shop and we can barely keep the roof on this place.

Going to hit at least 1.5 million clicks this month.

 

[UberTech]

I am in oceana.

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

Just going from the press releases on the vendor side companies like Heidelberg, manroland, esko graphics and others are hurting, for printers shops around the country are closing and doing layoffs. RR Donnelly, Quad Graphics, Transcontinental, and Brown Printing are a few of the big ones doing consolidations and layoffs.

 

[joyjia]

Just going from the press releases on the vendor side companies like Heidelberg, manroland, esko graphics and others are hurting, for printers shops around the country are closing and doing layoffs. RR Donnelly, Quad Graphics, Transcontinental, and Brown Printing are a few of the big ones doing consolidations and layoffs.

Too bad.......

 

[nhprinter]

Got to move.......

Got to move.......

I guess I'm going to have to move to Oceana. The printing business here in the northeast US has been spiraling down for the last couple of years. The present financial crisis is just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Everyone is laying off. From other print shops, to our ink and paper suppliers, to the manufacturers. There's no getting away from it. I've got more resumes sent to me in the last couple of months than I've gotten in the last 3 years.

We're a medium size shop that has both digital and offset so you'd think that one or the other would be busy, but nobody wants to spend any money right now. I'm not sure how much longer we can last.

 

[joyjia]

Sounds not so good, I thought there is no big effect by the financial crisis in printing industry......

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

joyjia,

I've heard rummers from people such as used equipment dealers and auctioneers that many print shops in China have closed over the last year as people work to reduce inventory and deliver product sooner to their customers. How would you comment on that?

 

[joyjia]

joyjia,

I've heard rummers from people such as used equipment dealers and auctioneers that many print shops in China have closed over the last year as people work to reduce inventory and deliver product sooner to their customers. How would you comment on that?

Hello Internal_R&D_Analyst, those must be the offset printing factories, digital printing is not too bad, at least, our shop is still busy at the moment. Some printing factories in Guangdong province(near Hong Kong) are in a tough time, because most of their products are for export, the more export percentage, the more possibility of closing.
One of my friends is in an offset printing factory in Zhejiang province, he told me that they are good, because only 30% of the products are for export, and the domestic market right now is not too bad, but I guess it will go down in the coming months.

Hey, where are you from??

Joy Jia

 

[toronar]

Well here in Germany it is kind of interesting ... a lot of smaller and larger printshops (offset) are closing down; some printshops had a lot of big customers. This big customers had just striken their entire budget for marketing/ads in this year and so the printshops that "relied" on them had to close up.

Kind of sad really. The printshops were profitable, produced good quality in time ... but in the end, if 80% of your usual customers don't need anything printed this year, all that won't save you. Most of the print-shops had 3-6 of this big customers. You usually don't think that all of them would stop giving out jobs at the same time, but that happened.

As for me: the printshop I work in does kind of ok. We do have less jobs to accomplish from most customers, and we even had to reduce our 3 shifts to 1 in january, but it slowly recovers and we are back on 2 shifts. So far no one had to be let gone, and I knock on wood it stays this way.

 

[Craig]

Is it me or is this effecting the larger shops more than the smaller ones? I can speak for my shop in saying we are actually picking up customers right now. I have no outside sales, and do very little marketing, yet I have added 2 new accounts this week. I think smaller shops like mine are able to flex and make changes much faster then shops with big iron and lots of overhead.

It's kinda funny when you think about how much grief digital shops have taken from the offset guys. Stuff like, "it's not real printing", now their customers are understanding the value of short run digital work.

 

[toronar]

Is it me or is this effecting the larger shops more than the smaller ones? I can speak for my shop in saying we are actually picking up customers right now. I have no outside sales, and do very little marketing, yet I have added 2 new accounts this week. I think smaller shops like mine are able to flex and make changes much faster then shops with big iron and lots of overhead.

I guess the larger shops suffer more because the jobs from big clients are far more affected by the financial crisis than the "usual" jobs from small/big clients for smaller printshops. Think letterheads & co.

 

[UberTech]

I think the best position at the moment would be the digital operator who has a toe into the offset. I get the feel that clients still need stuff printed but the volumes have dropped enough to keep digital super busy but not enough to justify offset.

I would say that if your struggling and wonder how long you can last then you may want to consider merging with someone else. It isn't bad business decisions that have put you in this position, it is the economy and everyone is feeling it. The guy down the road is probably in the same boat as you joining forces will atleast spread the stress!

If you consolidate your resources you may have to let a couple of people go but at least you will be able to keep some in work.

 

[amsman]

Imo

Imo

In Australia things are still reasonably good.

Smaller companies that have a low overhead model will be fine, other companies where they have a high overhead are starting to struggle, margins are dropping to stay competitive and costs are rising so it's definitley getting tighter.

We are a medium four colour offset shop with toe in the water digital just put in place ( Xerox 5000AP ) and I can see at this early stage that the digital short run is going to increase dramaticly over the next 2-5 years.

A recession this deep will possibly only increase and intensify any changes in direction that most print business owners where contemplating ( Automation, lower staffing etc.) and will generaly clean out ALL industries of operations that were struggling anyway or are running a poor

business model.

 

[dynamicprinter]

From what I've seen here in Connecticut over the last couple years it's a mix of big and small closing.

 

[joyjia]

From what I've seen here in Connecticut over the last couple years it's a mix of big and small closing.

Last couple years? Why? Because China exported a lot? Or anything else?


Joy Jia

 

[nhprinter]

Is it me or is this effecting the larger shops more than the smaller ones? I can speak for my shop in saying we are actually picking up customers right now. I have no outside sales, and do very little marketing, yet I have added 2 new accounts this week. I think smaller shops like mine are able to flex and make changes much faster then shops with big iron and lots of overhead.

It's kinda funny when you think about how much grief digital shops have taken from the offset guys. Stuff like, "it's not real printing", now their customers are understanding the value of short run digital work.

Craig,
We have neither big iron nor big overhead. We have both digital and offset, but we're in a very competitive market. We're only 60miles from Boston with tons of printers in between that are in the same boat.

Offset shops have never given any grief to digital shops. That's in your mind. There's always been a market for both. Personally....my family and I don't find it funny that we're in this condition due to no fault of our own. If it makes you feel good then so be it.......

 

[cmpe]

Hi,

We are in Greece and we have a small printshop with a 5 colour Man Roland 705 offset press, and a Xerox DC 252 digital press. I beleive that here the crisis hasn't sawn its teeth yet. But everyone is affraid, so business is slow, at least in comparison with jan - feb 2008. A couple of big factories have already closed, but that would have be done anyway, crisis or no crisis. Our big problem is that it is difficult to collect the money from jobs that we have already delivered. Anyway we well see what will happen until Septeber, when the real effects of the crisis will arrive here also.
As for digital or offset printing, there are some customers which they shift from offset to digital printing (they want less copies), but that is all. I believe that offset press and digital press will go side by side at least for the next 10 years. They are targeting different kind of products. What I believe is that small size offset presses belong in the past.

I hope we all get out of this crisis with minimum possible losses.......