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WhatTheyThink

Survey: Printers Focus on Economic Woes--At Their Peril

Press release from the issuing company

6/19/01 - According to TrendWatch, a scant 2% of print businesses cite "replacing jobs lost to Internet or PDF non-print publishing" as a business challenge, making it the least challenging thing for printers. Not far up the list is "competition from Internet information," a challenge for 4% of printers. Why should you care? If you're a printer, this should scare you into action! Blaming lost jobs on the economy (which is a top business challenge for printers) tells us many printers just don't get it yet. The low numbers for Internet or PDF-related challenges indicate that printers have no idea where the real challenges to their business are. As we've often said recently, it's not just the economy; the whole nature of print--for consumers as well as businesses--is changing. Competition from electronic (read: non-print) sources is a much bigger problem than the woes of a sluggish economy. Here's the real deal--we're just at the beginning of this longterm trend where printing is shifting from the press to the desktop.