C. Clint Bolte & Associates

Quad/Graphics’ acquisition of World Color following Quebecor World’s January 2008 bankruptcy has tongues wagging as to the potential impact on the printing industry as well as large print buyers. Here are my thoughts on how this may unfold.

Print buyers have been an integral part of Print and Graph Expo trade shows for years. Special interest seminars have been set up for them as a logical tie in with the leading print technology trade show in North America. At Print ’09 for the first time there was a panel presentation organized by Graphic Arts Monthly magazine comprised of high volume print buyers. These three executives represent entities that buy nearly a billion dollars of printing annually in North America alone. The proprietary systems, procedures, and policies they follow might well be “downsized” to fit other large corporations. And therefore should be of serious interest to print suppliers throughout the world.

February was a bad month indeed for U.S. print publishers. Half the publications intended for sale at newsstands encountered delays, as publishers tried to choose alternative means of distribution in reaction to a 7¢ per copy fee imposed by Anderson News and Source Interlink, the nation’s leading magazine wholesalers. Lawsuits, accusations of collusion, and massive business disruption have followed. Digging a little deeper uncovers the screaming need for a new business model, possibly the first of many as this stagnating economy unplugs obsolete and dysfunctional distribution processes throughout the publishing supply chain.

In-plants have moved aggressively in adopting digital printing technologies. Initially most of the applications have been shorter run, stagnant replacements for lithography. While articles and conference topics have trumpeted variable data applications for nie on a decade or more, the actual adoption has overwhelmingly been limited to mail/merge and addresses. In the near future more and more in-plants will be targeting an altogether new variable data niche application, Transpromo printing.

In the dubious 2009 economy printers are analyzing every aspect of their operations to uncover cost savings. Surprisingly enough several web and sheetfed printers may not be aware of a recently proven process whose ROI is infinite. Infinite because there is no investment – only cost savings. It pertains to the printing blankets and fortunately applies to every single brand of printing blanket.

This Quebecor World fall out conceivably could have a more significant impact on the printing and publishing industries in 2008 than the economy teetering on the brink of a recession. Certain segments of the market might in fact benefit from the expected aftermath of the collapse of this printing heavyweight.