Graphic Media Alliance

04/19/2022

Printing Industry Performance & Insights Study

April 25, 2022 - Survey Opens

May 9, 2022 - Survey Closes

May 23, 2022 - Results Released

The April 2022 PIPI study will seek to identify effective sales/marketing approaches for different types of printing companies (strategic groups). Completing the survey may prompt printing firm leaders to consider other marketing, sales management, and social media marketing strategies. This survey should only take 12 minutes to complete.

Reasons to Participate

• More participation enhances the reliability and value of the knowledge we share from our studies.
• More participation will strengthen our studies’ positive impact on our industry. The healthier our industry is, the better it is for all association members.
• Taking our surveys may provoke constructive thoughts. Multiple association members reported that our questions prompted them to consider options they had not considered before.

Benefits for Association Members

• Provides industry outlook from printing company leaders’ perspective. This may help printing company leaders when considering expansion.
• Provides financial benchmarks, which help when making strategic decisions to improve performance.
• Provides actionable knowledge about what management practices are effective and worth an investment of time and effort. For example, is “budgeting” connected with high performance? As most printing company leaders wear multiple hats, knowing what management practices best enhance performance is helpful.
• Provide insights as to what approaches work best for various management practices. For instance, our October 2021 study shared what HR approaches high-performing printing firms were applying.
• Our industry is very diverse; web printers focused on catalogs differ from digital printers that provide ancillary services. Our goal, with enough participation, is to address the topics above from the perspective of different “strategic groups.” For instance, web printers focused on catalogs and digital printers that provide ancillary services will have different financial benchmarks and effective management practices.

Take the Survey!

Results of the January Studies

Key Takeaways

• Through cluster analysis, we identified groups that seem to reflect our industry well.
• We report revenue growth, profit, and ROA, averages for each group. It appears each group is growing and producing profits, which speaks well for our industry.
• It appears the application of sheetfed printing may affect the difference between EBITDA and net profit, along with ROA – discussed in more detail below.
• We report the number of employees per million dollars of annual revenue for each group, and those numbers are generally close among four of our five groups. However, group four – focusing on specialized labels – appears to use fewer employees per million dollars in annual revenue than the other four groups.
• Proactively seeking ways to reduce cost often appeared as a strategic focus of high-performing firms in different groups.

Identifying Strategic Groups in the Printing Industry and Their Related Performance Benchmarks

Also in the January PIPI study, we identified different production/product groups in the printing industry. From those groups, we provide some helpful knowledge. We share those findings in this report.

This report shares the January PIPI study findings related to industry outlook and performance. We explore industry outlook and performance from multiple perspectives: national, regional, and multiple revenue categories.

Key Takeaways

• Consistent with previous PIPI studies, printing business leaders have a positive outlook for their businesses.
• Printing firm leaders’ relatively positive outlook is encouraging in the context of the current workforce shortages and supply chain issues.
• Our findings suggest leaders of large printing companies have a more positive outlook than leaders of small printing companies.
• We found the most optimistic outlooks in the West, Northcentral, and Southeast regions, and we observed a less optimistic outlook in the Northeast region. Yet, printing leaders’ outlooks were positive in all regions.
• Our performance data is relatively positive, indicating that printing companies are growing, reaping profits, and generating returns.
• It appears larger firms are growing more and generating higher profit percentages than smaller companies. However, small firms are generating higher ROA percentages.
• Printing firm performance appears most robust in the Southeast while the Northeast appears the weakest performer of the regions. The Southeast’s higher performance may connect with that region’s more optimistic outlook, and the Northeast’s lower performance may connect with that region’s less optimistic outlook.
• However, printing company performance is positive nationally, in every region, and in every revenue category.

Industry Outlook and Firm Performance