Market Intelligence: Hot Topics, New Markets

The wide-format digital print market continues to grow based on a number of factors including the shift from analog to digital printing and the growth of emerging applications. InfoTrends is projecting that the retail value of wide-format digital print will grow from$16.1 billion in 2011 to over $23.6 billion in 20116 for a five-year CAGR of 7.9 percent.

Fueling that kind of growth requires a steady development of products and technologies that contribute new capabilities to wide-format print producers as well as new tools to help more effectively sell wide-format digital printing services. I’m writing this right after the ISA show where there were quite a few major trends that become evident through the technologies and products that vendors were demonstrating.

One of the initiatives that really caught my attention at ISA was the EFI Smart Sign analytics product. This is a tool that helps measure the effectiveness of signage and graphics by combining cameras, facial recognition software, and eye-tracking software, to measure the number and demographics of people that are seeing signs configured with the Smart Sign analytics tools. To me this kind of system is a critical development because it helps marketers identify the best messaging, content, and locations. For example, a company that is advertising a hair growth treatments can identify the number of bald men (like me) and their wives who look at the sign, not just those who stop and stare, but the ones that glance as they are passing by so there is a better measure of the number of actual impressions. This addresses one of the key issues that marketers face when it comes to signage and graphics, and print advertising in general: how do they know it really works? The data from Smart Sign analytics can help prove the value of wide-format signage as part of a marketing campaign.

Another one of the most interesting developments from ISA is the new Roland DGA digital signage initiative. Roland, which has been a market share leader in the wide-format eco-solvent printer market for years, is embracing the digital signage market by offering a set of tools that help its sign producing customers get into the digital signage business. The idea from Roland is that many sign shops bought their first plotter and it was a Roland, many bought their first wide-format digital printer and it was a Roland, now Roland believes it should be the company that helps its sign shop customers get into the next phase of signage production. The projections for growth in the digital signage market range from the low double-digits (12 to 14 percent) to 35 percent or more on a compounded basis. Many big companies such as Intel, Cisco, and Samsung have staked out a position in the digital signage market based on their technology. Many times InfoTrends has asked questions in our research with wide-format print buyers as well as with PSPs regarding their perception of digital signage. The results have indicated that there is some erosion into digital signage (away from print) but that for the most part digital signage complemented digital printing as part of a signage and graphics campaign. That finding alone should be enough for print only PSPs to take a look at how they can participate in the digital signage business as a way to better serve customers and grow their business.

Yet another key development that I first saw at ISA was what HP was doing with its www.hpwallart.com cloud-based service. Companies that buy an HP Latex printer are able to log on to this service to upload their images, virtualize them, and order them very easily. The service lets users share/preview the images as well, so that printers and their clients can see what the wall covering project will look like before ordering, so it is kind of an on-line proofing system. We have seen very nice growth in the digital wallcoverings market anyway, in our most recent survey work wall coverings were identified as some of the fastest growing wide format digital print applications. The development of this tool should facilitate an increase in the number of print service providers that participate in this segment.

Anyone who has ever had to replace traditional wallpaper knows that removing that stuff is a hassle and it is easy to damage the wall that wallpaper has been applied to. Another enabling factor in the wallcoverings market is the growing availability of wallcovering media products that are easily repositionable without damaging the wall behind them

The HP service is one of the first, and we believe will the one of the first of many software tools that are cloud-based that wide format printing companies can take advantage of. Many of the functions of wide-format printing companies, quoting, design, file management, e-commerce & job costing, fulfillment, could soon become functions that print shops will subscribe to as opposed to software packages that they buy.

We see these trends helping to shape the future of the signage and graphics market. What we see developing is a new view of the market, one in which companies that would formerly call themselves a sign shop, or a wide-format printer, are increasingly able to call themselves partners in a communications or custom manufacturing strategy.

The challenge is for companies to expand their view of what they do, and in so doing add to their capabilities to enable additional services.