The EAGLE had its roots in the analog consumables marketplace for the offset printing industry. We have been watching this marketplace decline to the benefit of digital imaging and then digital printing, but have not seen any major movement of the key players in the industry to show the tide has turned.

We have, for the last five years or so, been chiding the marketplace on all sides from supplier to distributor to printer, to embrace the changes taking place. This still hasn’t taken place on the scale warranted by trends and directions. To this day, offset dealers do little with wide format printers except for proofing, and the offset-oriented manufacturers have not crossed the chasm into the other fields, nor has the offset printer been the one taking on wide format short run print. Offset has generally stayed on the outside, except in the rare cases and the smaller companies that have been able to make the transition. We have certainly written about the few, but not the many.

However, we have recently seen or been involved with sufficient anomalies in the print marketplace that a few comments seem to be in order. In no particular order, we believe that these events will show that significant change is finally in the air.