Sean Milmo, European Editor11.20.17
Printing technologies are advancing rapidly, particularly in the application of automation. The results of this progress have been to leave large gaps in technological knowledge throughout the printing supply chain, particularly among printers themselves.
However, the emergence of new technologies has also revealed another major deficiency – a lack of awareness about how to market print to brand owners, advertising agencies and other major customers who have been switching their expenditure to digital media. Once again, it is the printers who tend to be the weakest at marketing their expertise.
The longer-term strategy of many printers seems inevitably to be to find a position for themselves at the higher end of the sector where adding value is the goal. As a result, ink producers will have to serve their needs by doing the same.
The Evolution of IPEX
These issues were highlighted at the IPEX 2017 printing and allied trades exhibition, which took place in Birmingham, England, from Oct. 31-Nov. 3.
The triannual event, which in terms of floor space used to be second to drupa among international printing shows, has changed. Instead of printing machine manufacturers covering large expanses with their equipment, the exhibition is a mix of much smaller stands promoting equipment, inks and other consumables, materials and services and spaces for seminars.
Total space has plummeted from more than 100,000 square meters to 15,000. Instead, the time and area allotted to presentations and discussions on key aspects of modern printing, including technologies, marketing and selling, design and skills has increased substantially.
“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on education and learning,” explained Rob Fisher, event director. “It’s an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. But our research shows that it is also what the visitors want. The industry is at a stage where education is vital not only because so much is changing technologically, but also because if printing is to adapt to new trends, it has to know about how to understand what the customer wants.”
Printers are wrestling with the dilemma of how to deal with a plethora of new printing technologies covering both hardware and software. Probably the more important challenge now is to promote themselves to existing and potential customers in an age increasingly dominated by the electronic media.
Printers are facing the challenge of having to select from a greater range of printing technologies than previously with a wider variety of inks and inks systems to be applied with them. Ink producers can and do assist in teaching printers both about the inks and the printing technologies.
They are less well placed to help printers reach out to customers. Unlike other suppliers to printers, ink suppliers are reluctant to communicate with printing customers themselves about their own ink technologies because of the dangers of generating conflicts of interest.
Paper makers, for example, have deals with magazine publishers under which they choose and buy grades of paper directly from them so printers are not even invoiced for the paper.
“Printing ink makers do not wish to have that sort of direct contact with printers’ customers,” said a sales manager of one printing ink business exhibiting at the show. “It would be eroding the freedom of printers to conduct business as they wish with their customers.”
In fact, there seemed to be broad agreement among speakers and participants at the seminars at the exhibition that the printers should be given as much scope as possible to promote themselves more effectively to their customers.
“Printers are not good at selling themselves to their customers often because they don’t appreciate the art of selling,” said Jon Tolley, managing director of Prime Print Group, a direct marketing printer, who was one of the seminar speakers at the exhibition. “They don’t communicate properly with their customers. So the brand owners tend to talk closely only to advertising and other marketing agencies.
“Our strategy for adding value as a printer is to concentrate on outcomes with our customers,” added Tolley. “Instead of telling them about the new technologies, we talk to them about to what extent we can improve their sales. What interests customers is what impact the printing solutions will have on the level of their sales.”
Commodity vs. Value Added Services
The printing sector is becoming divided between commodity printed products sold mainly on price and those that provide added value, and are judged by customers on how print can help them achieve their own strategic objectives.
“Printers have to make a fundamental choice between these two segments of the industry,” said Timon Colegrove, chief executive at Hunts, a commercial printer at Kidlington, England. “Both models can provide a basis for extremely successful printing businesses. The danger area is being in the middle, where printers are not looking seriously at the future. There are a lot of highly skilled people in the middle who have not yet taken the decision about what direction to go.”
There are big differences between commodity and added-value strategies which can make operating in both difficult.
“The big commodity printers are focusing on low margins and large volumes and on using technologies that enable them to print faster and more cheaply,” said John Charnock of the consultancy Print Research International. “The added-value printing company is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Its basis is the relationship with customers and understanding how it can meet the needs of those customers in areas beyond issues of cost.”
A growing area for added-value printing is personalization of promotional and other material, much of it in direct mail or packaging of online purchases.
“Our success has shown that print is more important than ever,” said Kevin Goeminne, chief executive of Chili publish, a printer turned software publisher, headquartered near Brussels, Belgium, and a leading personalization specialist.
Chili, whose customers now include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and McDonald’s, is a developer and distributor of online editing programs, not just for personalization projects but also customization for short, temporary campaigns and regionalization with different packaging items for different regions.
The company’s senior management has been addressing a series of meetings in October and November, including IPEX, some of which brought together on the Chili presentation stands brand owners, service providers and labels and packing industry specialists. At IPEX, Goeminne was introduced as the “new-era print CEO.”
“We talk as much as possible to our customers about solutions and not so much technologies,” he said at IPEX. “Big brand owners like Coca-Cola have brought us into the core of their communications ecosystems. But to do this you need to have the right skills in house. That can be hard work.”
The personalization market is proving to be a segment of many niches giving printers an opportunity to move into entirely new areas. Ricoh has targeted the marketing of a new recently launched compact textile digital printer on commercial printers already involved in personalization printing on conventional substrates.
“Printers already doing wide format printing would find textile printing as a complementary means of adding value to items like T-shirts,” said a Ricoh product manager.
On the whole, if printers do not know about a new technology, it is unlikely that their customers would know about it either. But with insufficient knowledge of emerging technologies, printers run the risk that their customers will sooner or later become aware of their inability to keep up to date.
“Some printers are only beginning to realize the scope for printing on plastic because of the availability of LED curing processes,” said Rob Worley, a regional sales director at Flint Group. “This in turn has made customers aware of the opportunities for printing on plastic.”
Sun Chemical is among a number of print companies which are running training courses on new technologies for printers. In the UK, these include classes within courses organized by the printers trade association, British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF).
“We do seminars not just for printers but also staff at packaging companies and plastic and other converters,” said Kevin Purdy, a UK-based technical services specialist at Sun Chemical. “With so much of the printing process now being automated, gaps in knowledge about technologies are inevitable. There is unlikely to be a single person who knows about everything that is going on within a printing production line. There is a much greater need for sharing of information than before.”
The major areas of deficiencies in knowledge are color management and performance of substrates, with the two often overlapping.
“Lack of knowledge about color management is a big problem because it stretches from the colleges through to the designers and printers even to the big brand owners,” said James Matthews-Paul, director of Rogue Agency, a marketing communications strategist. “The answer is more continuous education, investment in the area and above all responsibility. Companies and organizations, particularly equipment and software providers, have got to take responsibility for providing proper training on their products.”
European Editor Sean Milmo is an Essex, UK-based writer specializing in coverage of the chemical industry.
However, the emergence of new technologies has also revealed another major deficiency – a lack of awareness about how to market print to brand owners, advertising agencies and other major customers who have been switching their expenditure to digital media. Once again, it is the printers who tend to be the weakest at marketing their expertise.
The longer-term strategy of many printers seems inevitably to be to find a position for themselves at the higher end of the sector where adding value is the goal. As a result, ink producers will have to serve their needs by doing the same.
The Evolution of IPEX
These issues were highlighted at the IPEX 2017 printing and allied trades exhibition, which took place in Birmingham, England, from Oct. 31-Nov. 3.
The triannual event, which in terms of floor space used to be second to drupa among international printing shows, has changed. Instead of printing machine manufacturers covering large expanses with their equipment, the exhibition is a mix of much smaller stands promoting equipment, inks and other consumables, materials and services and spaces for seminars.
Total space has plummeted from more than 100,000 square meters to 15,000. Instead, the time and area allotted to presentations and discussions on key aspects of modern printing, including technologies, marketing and selling, design and skills has increased substantially.
“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on education and learning,” explained Rob Fisher, event director. “It’s an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. But our research shows that it is also what the visitors want. The industry is at a stage where education is vital not only because so much is changing technologically, but also because if printing is to adapt to new trends, it has to know about how to understand what the customer wants.”
Printers are wrestling with the dilemma of how to deal with a plethora of new printing technologies covering both hardware and software. Probably the more important challenge now is to promote themselves to existing and potential customers in an age increasingly dominated by the electronic media.
Printers are facing the challenge of having to select from a greater range of printing technologies than previously with a wider variety of inks and inks systems to be applied with them. Ink producers can and do assist in teaching printers both about the inks and the printing technologies.
They are less well placed to help printers reach out to customers. Unlike other suppliers to printers, ink suppliers are reluctant to communicate with printing customers themselves about their own ink technologies because of the dangers of generating conflicts of interest.
Paper makers, for example, have deals with magazine publishers under which they choose and buy grades of paper directly from them so printers are not even invoiced for the paper.
“Printing ink makers do not wish to have that sort of direct contact with printers’ customers,” said a sales manager of one printing ink business exhibiting at the show. “It would be eroding the freedom of printers to conduct business as they wish with their customers.”
In fact, there seemed to be broad agreement among speakers and participants at the seminars at the exhibition that the printers should be given as much scope as possible to promote themselves more effectively to their customers.
“Printers are not good at selling themselves to their customers often because they don’t appreciate the art of selling,” said Jon Tolley, managing director of Prime Print Group, a direct marketing printer, who was one of the seminar speakers at the exhibition. “They don’t communicate properly with their customers. So the brand owners tend to talk closely only to advertising and other marketing agencies.
“Our strategy for adding value as a printer is to concentrate on outcomes with our customers,” added Tolley. “Instead of telling them about the new technologies, we talk to them about to what extent we can improve their sales. What interests customers is what impact the printing solutions will have on the level of their sales.”
Commodity vs. Value Added Services
The printing sector is becoming divided between commodity printed products sold mainly on price and those that provide added value, and are judged by customers on how print can help them achieve their own strategic objectives.
“Printers have to make a fundamental choice between these two segments of the industry,” said Timon Colegrove, chief executive at Hunts, a commercial printer at Kidlington, England. “Both models can provide a basis for extremely successful printing businesses. The danger area is being in the middle, where printers are not looking seriously at the future. There are a lot of highly skilled people in the middle who have not yet taken the decision about what direction to go.”
There are big differences between commodity and added-value strategies which can make operating in both difficult.
“The big commodity printers are focusing on low margins and large volumes and on using technologies that enable them to print faster and more cheaply,” said John Charnock of the consultancy Print Research International. “The added-value printing company is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Its basis is the relationship with customers and understanding how it can meet the needs of those customers in areas beyond issues of cost.”
A growing area for added-value printing is personalization of promotional and other material, much of it in direct mail or packaging of online purchases.
“Our success has shown that print is more important than ever,” said Kevin Goeminne, chief executive of Chili publish, a printer turned software publisher, headquartered near Brussels, Belgium, and a leading personalization specialist.
Chili, whose customers now include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and McDonald’s, is a developer and distributor of online editing programs, not just for personalization projects but also customization for short, temporary campaigns and regionalization with different packaging items for different regions.
The company’s senior management has been addressing a series of meetings in October and November, including IPEX, some of which brought together on the Chili presentation stands brand owners, service providers and labels and packing industry specialists. At IPEX, Goeminne was introduced as the “new-era print CEO.”
“We talk as much as possible to our customers about solutions and not so much technologies,” he said at IPEX. “Big brand owners like Coca-Cola have brought us into the core of their communications ecosystems. But to do this you need to have the right skills in house. That can be hard work.”
The personalization market is proving to be a segment of many niches giving printers an opportunity to move into entirely new areas. Ricoh has targeted the marketing of a new recently launched compact textile digital printer on commercial printers already involved in personalization printing on conventional substrates.
“Printers already doing wide format printing would find textile printing as a complementary means of adding value to items like T-shirts,” said a Ricoh product manager.
On the whole, if printers do not know about a new technology, it is unlikely that their customers would know about it either. But with insufficient knowledge of emerging technologies, printers run the risk that their customers will sooner or later become aware of their inability to keep up to date.
“Some printers are only beginning to realize the scope for printing on plastic because of the availability of LED curing processes,” said Rob Worley, a regional sales director at Flint Group. “This in turn has made customers aware of the opportunities for printing on plastic.”
Sun Chemical is among a number of print companies which are running training courses on new technologies for printers. In the UK, these include classes within courses organized by the printers trade association, British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF).
“We do seminars not just for printers but also staff at packaging companies and plastic and other converters,” said Kevin Purdy, a UK-based technical services specialist at Sun Chemical. “With so much of the printing process now being automated, gaps in knowledge about technologies are inevitable. There is unlikely to be a single person who knows about everything that is going on within a printing production line. There is a much greater need for sharing of information than before.”
The major areas of deficiencies in knowledge are color management and performance of substrates, with the two often overlapping.
“Lack of knowledge about color management is a big problem because it stretches from the colleges through to the designers and printers even to the big brand owners,” said James Matthews-Paul, director of Rogue Agency, a marketing communications strategist. “The answer is more continuous education, investment in the area and above all responsibility. Companies and organizations, particularly equipment and software providers, have got to take responsibility for providing proper training on their products.”
European Editor Sean Milmo is an Essex, UK-based writer specializing in coverage of the chemical industry.