Recently, Dr. Joe has suggested that both the economy, and job growth, have been much more robust than reported in the headlines. Taking a look at the Graphic Arts Channel, the Distributors and the Suppliers to the printing industry, we wondered if we could see any positive indications.

As you will read below, we believe that there is a fair amount of good news occurring. Specifically, if you look at the marketplace in both horizontal and vertical directions, this becomes clearer. Just doing more of the same, horizontal integration, appears to just prolong the inevitable, however, by adding capabilities vertically, so that more can be delivered to the marketplace at different levels, this is where we see some light at the end of the tunnel.

In recent articles, The EAGLE has talked about the demise of Manufacturer/Distributor A.B. Dick, and Dealers DM Products and NEGS. Each company had been publicly optimistic that despite the overall decline in their traditional supplies and/or traditional printing-related businesses, they could somehow continue to prosper if only they put more money into the same business over the short term and/or could amalgamate with other local dealers to gain strength. We now know what happened to these three companies. Are they anomalies, or are there continuing indications of more to come?