Dallas, Tex. – The 700,000 sq. ft. Printing UNITED Show last week proved that Texas is indeed big, but it literally took a tornado to rush out a book called the Texas-80 Largest Print Buyers. On the Sunday night before the trade event, Nieman Printing Company, one of the book's sponsors, lost part of its roof and all of its electric power. It delayed production of the book until the following Monday.

"All is well," assures Vincent Mallardi, author of the 50-page volume that for the first time ranks the largest 600 buyers of print in the Lone Star state. "The project took over 300 hours to contact selected entities from each sector of the economy, and then calculate regressions, deviations and cross-tabulations to impute the purchasing activities of over 1,000 buyers in a new database."

Mallardi is known for primary-source forecasting, in other words going out and talking to buyers. Himself one of a few lifetime One Hundred Million Dollar Print Salespersons, took on the work of predicting print in 1979 after participating with the Rand Group in its first econometric model. "It was a 4-by-4 matrix back then, hardly a super-computer of today, but it did provide our industry with more accurate information for decision-making, in particular for acquisitions of equipment and competitors."

The Hot Markets studies commenced at PIA in the 1970's after which it continues every year, summarized in the January Printing Impressions editions. "Most of the subscriber sponsors of the full study," adds Mallardi "are not printers but, rather, are private equity funds, banks, leasing companies and paper manufacturers. Share prices of publicly-traded printers are affected" he notes.

The Texas-80 and database access to the full list and data are available during the month of November or until supply of the books runs out. Contact [email protected] to purchase the set at the show price of $ 195. Sponsors are the PBBA Printing Brokerage Buyers Association, ASI Advertising Specialty Institute, P3 Software for Print Buyers, Clampitt Paper, the LaManna Alliance and Nieman Printing.