Hi, this is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com. Lots of things in the news nowadays - they always seem to get my attention. Everyone asks me where print is going. Well, it’s just not going back to where it was. It’s moving ahead and certain printed products will continue, some will diminish and some will disappear. But the printing companies are going to have to find new kinds of products to generate new kinds of profits.

And so I found two stories about two different printing companies. One is the FetterGroup down South in Louisville and they have been very innovative. They started out as a commercial printer, a full color, 40-inch color presses. They moved into wide format. They moved into printing holograms for security printing on tickets and tags. And now they’re moving into 3D printing. They’ve established a light manufacturing operation for 3D surface decorated products and they can do rapid prototyping. They can create all kinds of different products, toys. In fact, we’re starting to see that now. This Christmas, I think, you’re gonna see some devices introduced that allow children to actually create their own toys and then print them out on inkjet printers that create, deposit their various levels of plastic and therefore product a toy. Some will be black and white, of course, but into the future they’ll probably be color.

Another printing company is Plum Grove Printers. They’re in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Now they say they’ve been diversifying beyond their core ink-on-paper business for many years and the things they’ve done, QR code work for Smartphones. They’ve created custom websites for franchise customers so you can order printing on a website and it goes to their company, they print it and deliver it wherever it has to go. And, of course, they have a traditional business. They’ve taken direct mail and they describe it as sophisticated mailing services. I’m not quite certain what that means – if the postman wears a tuxedo when he delivers it to you?

But these are just two examples of printing companies that have moved beyond print. And, in fact, on Plum Grove one of the things they’ve done is moved into an area that I think is lucrative to some extent and that’s imprinted material such as hats and mugs and shirts. You say, “Oh, that’s for small companies.” You know, there’s a lot of money in advertising specialties and everybody has them. In fact, many companies substitute that for other forms of advertising and promotion. I mean, they’re always willing to give you a pen or a keychain or a button or something so that you’ll use it on a regular basis. Of course USB sticks are now – I mean I have a phenomenal collection of USB sticks from almost every company on Earth I think. All different sizes, all different formats.

My point is that there are new areas for generating revenue for printing companies. They are not traditional printing and that’s what we have to do. We have to look beyond the traditional in order to find our future and some companies are already doing it and other companies are gonna have to start doing it. And that’s my opinion.