The Demise of The Printing Industry Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Michael Spiel Addresses The American Dealers Group

I haven’t written a blog for some time now. The malaise that ran through our industry was completely obliterated by a new found optimism and a need to automate. This has kept me quite busy.

As my brother recently said in a speech to the American Dealers Group; “We are coming off the busiest summer that our company has seen in years. Surprised? We certainly were. It seems that America has finally woken up to the fact that we need to reduce our labor to be competitive. Printers are automating more than ever before. Our smart customers are automating. Those less savvy are holding auctions.” It’s been three years since the 2008 crash. It’s time to go high or go home. Either you are going to compete in this new economy or you’re going to fold. “That’s the way we’ve always done it” is no longer an option.

This was the busiest Graph Expo we’ve seen in years. Americans are finally coming around to the notion that you can’t solve every problem with labor. The Europeans have known this for years and we are starting to catch up. We have more large shops looking at automatic double wire binders than ever before. More small shops are automating their punching and coil binding.

So look around your shop. Where are the bottlenecks? Where are your workers doing more talking than binding? How can you reduce labor with a decent ROI? If you don’t look at these things, and look at them soon, you may start looking at auctioneers.