Believe it or not, our recent survey reflects that there are commercial printing businesses that are in the mood to buy capital equipment and technologies. In our survey that will be discussed more fully in this Wednesday's webinar, the leading category for investment is bindery and finishing. Nearly 25% of the more than 300 respondents indicate intentions to purchase in this category. It's a broad category, and might well be 25 items of 1% each, but the interest is unmistakable. Digital production color and web-to-print capabilities also rank high. The data chart is divided into different employee size ranges. It's important to remember that the group with 50 or more employees represents more than 70% of our industry's capital investment. That group also has the most defined process for making capital investments.

Are these purchase intentions real or not? We also asked that in our survey. In general, about one-eighth of the respondents have already made commitments for purchases. One-quarter of them have set aside dollars in their budgets for purchases. Nearly half, however, have not made such provisions. Experience in these surveys over the years tells us that this pattern is typical; it has not been skewed by economic conditions, but seems ingrained in the way our businesses are run. Smaller printers do not have formal budgetary processes, but keep their eye on certain equipment that they believe they need and take the financial steps when they feel they can. Larger companies do have budgets, and they usually have regular programs for turning over their capital equipment base. Note in the chart below that of those planning to make purchases, the average for the industry is 24% for those who say they are buying equipment, but nearly twice that rate in shops with 50+ employees have budgets in place for those potential acquisitions.

In our digging through the data using methodologies that we do not have the space to present in this column, however, there are some differences by type of equipment. It's pretty clear that the intent to buy presses, whether new or used, is very low. But the respondents who indicated that they were planning to make such purchases reflected the highest percentage of respondents who had actually budgeted for these purchases. So if they're buying a press, they're definitely buying a press. It's probably a function of their business size. Some of the other categories, mostly software-related, are less definite. It may be the case that the larger capital equipment purchase does require more planning, and they may have made inquiries to financial institutions before they considered them.