Frank Romano Looks at the Future of the American Printer

“The old printing industry is dead; the new printing industry is alive and growing,” said Frank Romano on Sunday, summarizing “The Future of the American Printer” in his afternoon keynote. 

The keynote presentation looked at where we’ve come as an industry—and where we’re going. It had been a rosy future, said Romano, until the “perfect storm of 1995” hit. That fateful year saw a paper shortage, the passage of the “Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995,” the growing adoption of PDF first released four years earlier, the proliferation of PCs and, perhaps most significantly, what many see as the event that marked the official dawn of the Internet age: Netscape’s IPO.

The printing industry rode the coattails of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s for a while, but with every new electronic technology—the penetration of broadband and Wi-Fi, the advent of social media, the introduction of smartphones and other mobile devices—print revenues took another hit. 

“The Internet is called a medium because it’s not well done,” said Romano, paraphrasing radio comedian Fred Allen. Still, there’s no denying the impact the Internet has had on print and the printing industry. Romano forecasts that by 2020, printing industry firms will only number just to the north of 10,000 establishments, the vast majority of them small, under-20-employee firms. 

Romano also posed the question, “what is print?”—what will print be by 2020? Just over one-fifth (22%) will comprise some kind of advertising and promotional material, 19 percent will be packaging, 12 percent will be industrial or functional printing, and all the other end use categories will divvy up the remaining 47%, with no one category even in double digits. 

The future lies in digital directions—both small- and wide-format. “Digital printing came along at just the right time,” he said. It put the ‘quick’ back in quick printing’ and met the emerging need for short runs.” As for wide-format, “Wide-format inkjet saved the industry,” he said.

Romano’s presentation walked through some of the traditional print categories, such as periodicals, books, newspapers, directories, identifying the trends driving their growth—or their demise. He also paid particular attention to those areas that are poised for growth: specialty items—“round objects,” as he called them—printed electronics, and the emerging “Internet of things.”

So what is the future of the American printer? The dominant trends will be increased growth of an emphasis on wide-format (“digital wide-format printing will be as common as offset presses”), an emphasis on high-value/high-margin substrates like synthetics and specialty media; “hybrid marketing”—aka cross media—that links print with mobile devices, websites, and social media; and mobile marketing that will increasingly use codes printed on packaging, POS materials, and brochures. Augmented Reality will become more important and, said Romano, “personalization will finally prevail.” The dominant print technology by 2020, Romano said, will be inkjet-based.

Romano’s keynote was followed by a panel discussion featuring InfoTrends’ Jim Hamilton, Japs-Olsen’s Michael Murphy, RIT’s Twyla Cummings, and WhatTheyThink’s Richard Romano.