The HP user group, Dscoop Edge Fusion, has heard why the accelerated changes the print industry has faced in the past year mean it is critical for businesses to be agile so they can quickly react to changing environments.

HP Indigo’s Global Commercial Business Development Manager, Adi Retman, used her session to stress the importance of businesses pivoting to stay ahead of the game.

“The world as we know it has changed after COVID and we all had to quickly adapt. We had to factor in social distancing – which led to working from home and all events being cancelled,” she told the Dscoop Edge Fusion session.

“When we look at many of the mega trends in the commercial printing market over the last few years, COVID has only accelerated them.”

The rise and rise of E-Commerce

Retman identified e-commerce as the single platform that has changed a number of industries following COVID-19.

“E-commerce is growing and consumers are rapidly changing their behaviours and demands. And there is a growing transition to buying more locally. E-commerce penetration in the US took 10 years to grow 10 per cent before, but in the first eight weeks of COVID grew by another 10 per cent,” she said.

“The winning industries of 2020 that have enjoyed a spiking rise in demand include Zoom, Wix, and UberEats, amongst other e-commerce sites. When we look at these industries, we can say, ‘well, they were at the right place at the right time’. But what happened to the other industries that were hurt?”

Retman further elaborated that the global events industry – which is estimated to be worth over $1 trillion a year – just stopped operating globally. Industries that support the events industry – like printing – suffered significantly with this.

“These businesses had to pivot their businesses, with a ‘do or die fast’ attitude and identify opportunities for growth,” Retman said.

“Another industry that suffered because of COVID was digital print. Over the past five years pre-COVID, digital print was growing while analog printing was on the decline. Through COVID, while there was some impact, digital suffered less than analog. Why is that?

“When we look at market trends, we see that they are all fuelling digital print. We see that e-commerce in print is also growing from year-to-year and is predicted to continue to grow, making fast delivery more important than ever before.”

Dscoop Edge Fusion: Short run demand triples

Retman said the demand for short run print has tripled in just the last five years.

At the same time, offset costs rose in 2020 and 2021 with price increases in paper, freight and offset ink.

“This means that today, more than ever, it’s risky to stay in the commodity of offset. A print business needs to come up with a winning strategy – whether that be to focus on innovation and high value products or improving the level of automation to work more efficiently and reduce labour costs,” she said.

“When we analysed our customers’ 2020 performance, we see that customers that used more unique features such as special inks and variable data printing did much better that year.”

Dscoop Edge Fusion also ran an APJ specific session, which featured Rawson Print managing director Andrew Price, Clarke Murphy Print director Benn Murphy, Currie Group’s Will Currie and Luminar managing director Matt Ellis.

Together with Dscoop APJ chair Kelvin Gage, the group spoke about how they navigated the industry in a post-COVID world and shared with the industry things that it needs to be aware of.

Just like Retman, they addressed the need for PSPs to pivot their businesses and adopt new technologies to help them achieve business goals.

Ellis addressed the importance of delivering on customer needs, and the importance of putting them at the centre of any PSPs’ objectives.

Murphy spoke about how industry trends and technologies have changed since his great-grandfather ran the business, saying that speed and accuracy in being able to deliver on customer needs is one of the top priorities in the industry.

Price added that customers are leading innovation in the industry, and that should be the driving factor in all PSPs’ decision making when it comes to making important investments.

In addition, Currie mentioned that the trend of print on demand is growing, resulting in the need for less warehousing.

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