Vinocur's Perspective

  2006 marks my 20th anniversary of writing this column in AMERICAN PRINTER. From the late 1970s through 1986, I wrote a similar column for another industry magazine. Do the math. In nearly 30 years of covering the printing industry, I抳e written approximately 360 columns with a 1,000-word count. I抦 approaching a half-million-word typing milestone. You抎 think I抎 be breathless by now, but you抎 be wrong. I still have a lot to say.

  Of those 30 dozen columns, at least 12 encouraged the industry to mount some sort of image campaign to awaken the outside world to the importance, influence and vitality that the world of printing has on business and life in general. I even spent three years raising funds and chairing a PIA committee to initiate such an effort. Unfortunately, someone dropped the ball, and it wasn抰 me. About three years ago, a passionate handful of printers and vendors picked up the gauntlet and formed the Print Council.

  It has taken a while to get the project off the ground. Finding the right leader for the Print Council has been a Herculean task. But, at the beginning of this year, Ben Cooper, the former PIA government affairs director and association vice president, was named the new executive director of the Print Council. I hope he can get the effort going. It has to be done this year, and it needs the support of all printers in the industry. We cannot rely on funds from vendors alone to support the organization.

  A feat fit for the Print Council

  When I picked up the December 19th issue of the Wall Street Journal, it carried an article promoting digital printing. If I didn抰 know better, I would have though that it was a Print Council initiative. It抯 the sort of goal to which the Print Council should strive.

  That issue of the WSJ contained a special section on technology. The cover page of the section had a callout that read, 揙ffsetting losses. Digital presses offer commercial printers an escape route during a brutal shakeout.?It isn抰 often that our industry gets the recognition it so richly deserves. I immediately went to the article, one that was rather comprehensive and a must read for all printers.

  I wasn抰 crazy about the headline. Digital printing in my mind has not and will not replace offset printing. As I read the article, I found mentions of many friends and members of NAPL, printers who have been on the digital printing highway for years. The article began with the saga of LaVigne Inc. in Worcester, MA. Chris Wells, the firm抯 CEO, reported that about 40 percent of LaVignes?$14 million in annual revenue currently is derived from digital printing. The company has been a long-time Indigo user, as mentioned in the story. Xerox, Kodak and Punch (makers of Xeikon digital color equipment) also were mentioned.

  Pui-Wing Tam, a staff reporter in WSJ抯 San Francisco office, also interviewed Jim Schultz, onetime NAPL chairman and the current CEO of Great Lakes Integrated in Cleveland. Schultz told the reporter he bought several Nexpress digital presses from Kodak in 2002 and the impact was immediate. 揂 lot of companies are sitting on the fence looking at digital presses, but it抯 the way of the future,?Schultz is quoted as saying.

  Also interviewed for the article was Andy Paparozzi, NAPL抯 chief economist (even though his name wasn抰 mentioned, your favorite association was). The paper even carried graphs showing the projected performance of lithography versus digital from 1997 through 2010.

  Points of contention

  The report was thorough, and Tam even interviewed a couple of customers who have recognized the value of digital printing and one-to-one marketing. However, I would have edited one paragraph in the article. Tam says NAPL抯 industry sales numbers have declined from $86.6 billion in 2000 to $78.9 billion in 2003. She claims there were 42,000 printing establishments in 1998 and there are 37,000 today. Both of those figures, I believe, are highly overstated. Paparozzi pegs the current number of companies at 27,000 and is predicting another 5,000 will disappear by 2010.

  Another article, which the business media ran in November, was headlined, 揦erox chief says digital products will fuel growth.?That story reported Xerox expects per-share earnings to rise 10 percent to 15 percent next year on a three percent revenue increase. Xerox chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy said the firm had established a solid lead in customer technology for office use and for commercial printers who are buying new digital presses to supplement their offset capabilities. I feel that announcement triggered the December coverage.

  In any event, every industry executive should read the entire WSJ article from December 19th. It will illustrate the kind of results the Print Council can achieve. You can find it at www.wsj.com.

 

[时间：2006-03-17  作者：M. Richard Vinocur  来源：AP]