A recent webinar, presented by Richard Romano of WhatTheyThink and Richard Bellamy of Inflecton and sponsored by Gelato, offered printers a strategic guide for the last months of 2025 and a highlight of top industry trends as we head into 2026. The content was based on Gelato’s “Peak Season Playbook,” an essential strategic guide for Print Service Providers (PSPs). The peak season may have passed, but the issues the industry faces will continue to play a very large role in the new year.

The Great Contradiction

Understanding consumer and print-buyer trends is essential for knowing how to deploy plant resources, trends that can be summarized by the phrase “The Great Contradiction”: we are in a global economic environment characterized by slowing growth, a sluggish jobs market, trade policy uncertainty, and rising inflation, all of which are fostering a climate of cautious consumer spending.

At the same time, consumer demand and expectations have never been higher, with heightened demand for personalized products (83% of global consumers say they are willing to share personal data in exchange for more personalized experiences), sustainable manufacturing processes (58% of consumers say they’re willing to pay more for eco-friendly products), and near-instant grati?cation of seamless, rapid ful?llment.

The presenters identify how consumer behaviors adopted during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 have become more or less permanent, changing the nature of ecommerce which, only a small fraction of retail sales pre-pandemic, now accounts for 24% of total retail sales. At the same time, social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have become actual, full-scale marketplaces where the entire customer journey occurs within the app.

The Tectonic Shift to Print On Demand

Romano and Bellamy shared research that shows that the global print-on-demand (POD) market is projected to grow from $12.96 billion in 2025 to $102.99 billion by 2034, representing a 26% CAGR. The drivers of this include the rising demand for personalization, a growing “creator economy” perhaps best exemplified by Etsy stores, and ecommerce integration with ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, Etsy, Wix, and WooCommerce. In terms of specific applications, apparel (especially T-shirts) and home décor are the fastest-growing segments, but inkjet printing capabilities have expanded the number of items that can be personalized and customized. During the presentation, a link was shared to a recent Technology Outlook feature by WhatTheyThink contributor Mary Schilling  that showed how advancements in inkjet printing are powering innovations in automotive design, wearable tech, home goods, flexible electronics, and even baby diapers. All of these areas open opportunities for print service providers.

The “Complexity Crisis”

While all of these trends can be seen as great opportunities, they also present their share of challenges. That is, the need to produce more products, through more channels, faster than ever means that legacy software and processes are insufficient for the increasingly high-mix, low-volume, high-speed environment. Therefore, PSPs need to adopt an “operating system for complexity” designed to unify fragmented systems, automate manual tasks, and transform chaotic data streams into a single, manageable platform.

The presenters go over solutions to the various “peak problems” today’s PSPs face:

• The lack of real-time visibility in a complex production environment.
• Rising labor, raw material, and shipping costs combined with the inefficiencies of managing increased complexity.
• The slow, manual, and resource-intensive process of onboarding new customers.

GelatoConnect

GelatoConnect is a platform that simpli?es and streamlines these key production processes, but any production platform that a business adopts needs to address these issues.

One bottleneck in the production (or preproduction) process is estimating, much of which is still done manually, so the webinar also includes an introduction to (and video testimonial for) Gelato’s new AI Estimator, which allows users to obtain precise estimates in just 15 seconds and thus deliver customer-ready quotes in under five minutes. By eliminating manual estimating, users can cut quoting costs by up to 50%.

Onward

Whether it’s the “peak season” or the start of the new year, the industry faces several fundamental challenges—economic challenges involving inflation, employment, and trade tensions; changes in the way print is procured, such as the explosive growth of print on demand, driven by personalization and customization driving customer preferences, and sustainability challenges, such as the growing customer demand for sustainable and eco-friendly products.

Therefore, it has never been more vital for print production to be as seamlessly integrated and automated as possible.

(Watch the webinar and download the slides here.)