We’ll never go back to a preset “normal.” No matter what change happens, there is always this collective delusion that things will return back to a previous state. When COVID started, I admittedly thought we would be sheltering in the place for a few weeks. We are now so far past a few weeks and so far away from a pre-COVID normal, it's hard to even remember what that felt like. 

There is no return to “normal” coming to your print business post-COVID. In fact, what does post-COVID even mean? What is the new normal? What has this pandemic done that will permanently change the way printers continue with their custom manufacturing businesses? Lots of smart people are writing about major trends in this area as it applies to work in general and our economy. In this article, I give my thoughts on the idea of remote workers in an industry that requires at least some of their people to be on-site in order to physically create and ship printed products.

Pre-COVID, I hadn’t really heard of many printers allowing remote work of any employees, other than the explanation that sales representatives are often out with customers. This is now a global trend. Working remotely is a new normal. For software companies, it may become the default, making “in-office workers” the exception. It’s hard to even imagine how this will impact commercial real estate, especially in my home town of San Francisco. My friend would refer to the packs of young tech workers as “Twitter puppies” who overcrowd all the good lunch spots downtown and drove the average studio apartment monthly rent in San Francisco north of $3,000/month.