We recently wrapped up our Top 100 Commercial Printers for 2022—read the feature article, watch the video interview with this year’s winner, Strategic Factory, and/or check out our webinar—and it occurred to us that, since we have been conducting this survey for more than 15 years, mining the database of past results could provide some valuable info about how the industry has changed—and how it might continue to change.

This will be the first in a sporadic series of articles I’d like to label, with my flair for the dramatic “Tales from the Top Shops Database.” First up: applications.

Flashback to 2012. A top story of 2012 was rising gas prices (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose) and that year our Top 100 Small Commercial Printer was CPS Gumpert, who came in at $18.5 million in sales for 2011 ($22.3 million, adjusted for inflation). The Top 100 in toto accounted for $482 million in 2011 sales ($581 million in 2021). Compare those figures to this year’s winner ($23.9 million in 2021 sales) and the Top 100 as a whole ($492 million in 2021 sales).*