The Great Wide-Format Migration Is Over—But Many Opportunities Remain

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but that rarely holds water when it comes to magazine story assignments. So it’s tempting to present this chart...

...and leave it at that. But perhaps a bit of elaboration is required. 

Last November, we conducted our annual "Print Business Outlook Survey" in which we ask a set of boilerplate questions about current and expected business conditions, business challenges, opportunities and planned investments, as well as questions about the extent to which print businesses are, or have been, adding new capabilities. 

As you can see in the chart above, when it comes to wide-format printing capabilities, nearly one-half (45%) of our survey respondents say they have already added them—28% more than two years ago and a further 17% in the past 18 to 24 months. Only 8% say they plan to add wide-format printing in the next year or two, and a full 30% have no plans to add wide-format capabilities at all. Thirteen percent plan to outsource it, if they don’t already. This suggests that anyone who planned to move into wide-format printing has already done so. There may be a few stragglers, and that 30% doesn’t comprise hardcore, stalwart holdouts, but the big shift to wide-format is generally over. 

The current state of wide format is further corroborated by a historical look at “adding wide-format capabilities” as a business opportunity:

If we look at our historical planned investment data:

There was a spike in 2017–2018 in both of the rollfed and flatbed wide-format printer categories we track, but that seems to have subsided by the time of our fall 2019 survey. 

So what does this mean for wide-format printing as an opportunity for print businesses? Is it a moribund print area? Are shops better advised to look to other areas—textiles, packaging, etc.—to boost business? 

Not at all. 

While this data may seem to indicate that competition in wide-format printing services has become tougher and that wide-format printing has become commoditized, that should not be discouraging. If anything, it should be encouraging. Why? It indicates that there is a growing demand for wide-format print applications. The number of establishments in a market—in any market—is a function of the level of demand for what those establishments produce. 

And, yes, while there are certain wide-format applications that are more commoditized than others—banners, for example—many remain fairly high-margin. And I have spoken to several wide-format shops that still make a killing doing banners; there’s a lot of demand for them, and their production can be highly automated.

Here are a few general market drivers:

• As  said, demand for wide-format print applications remains high. The key to success with any print product is the overall demand for it. No one is making money printing, say, directories because there’s little or no demand for directories. But people are making money printing signs and display graphics because these are in-demand products. 
• It takes a crowd to draw a crowd. Demand for sign and display graphics has been on the upswing because they are highly visible and conspicuous applications. One business sees their competition’s signage and feels the need to follow suit.
• Businesses in many verticals have a much more accelerated rebrand cycle than they used to, and that means they need replacement signage, vehicle graphics and other collateral materials, big and small. 
• Automation and ease of use have made wide-format printing highly efficient. Sure, this has helped facilitate commoditization and competition, but it has also made wide-format printing more profitable, as turn times have been accelerated and errors minimized. 

So, here are some tips for successfully exploiting wide-format printing capabilities—even if you’re in that 30% that claim they’re not going to add it. 

Don’t Call it “Wide Format” 

First of all, no one outside of industry pundits and analysts knows what “wide format” is. In sales, marketing and promotional activities, always cite specific products: posters, banners, retractable banner stands, wall décor, wallpaper and vehicle graphics.

Get a Good Internet Marketing Guru 

How do general product buyers shop these days? Right: they Google what they’re looking for. It’s been said that the loneliest place on Earth is page two and beyond of Google search results. So one important key to success—not just with wide-format but with any printing—is to ensure that you come up on the first page of hits when a potential customer does a Google search for a specific product. So if someone types “retractable banner stand” into Google, and you specialize in retractable banner stands, you’d better make sure that you’re among the top hits. This is where having a search engine optimization (SEO) expert on staff or on retainer is vital. 

Know What Things Are Called 

Part of successful SEO implementation is ensuring that you account for the fact that it’s not uncommon for some print applications to be called different things, especially in different parts of the country. We can call this “The Hero Effect.” If you want to buy a large sandwich, what you call it will depend on where in the country you are. Is it as hero? A grinder? A hoagie? A po’boy? A sub? Likewise, certain wide-format print products can go by different names. Make sure you account for all of them. Sometimes just scoping out the competition’s website can help determine how to refer to something. And be sure to use Google Analytics to identify what search words or phrases your customers use to get to your website. There is a lot of experimentation involved, and a good SEO pro can help attract more business than 10 sales people. 

Know What Applications Are Growing—and What Aren’t

Different print products have different dynamics. Things come into fashion and things go out of fashion. At the moment, vehicle graphics are hot—not just for consumer vehicles, but especially on the commercial level. Small businesses are increasingly using their vehicles as promotional...um, vehicles, and larger businesses spend an awful lot on fleet graphics. 

Wayfinding is an important subset of signage. As an example, as I was writing this feature, I had to go to the emergency room in a new town I had just moved to. (It turned out to be nothing serious, thankfully.) You don’t realize how important wayfinding signage is until you need to navigate and hobble through a large medical complex.

Elsewhere, environmental graphics—wall and other interior décor for businesses and organizations—is also a hot application area. Learn the best practices for producing these kinds of applications and especially for selling them. 

In both these cases—wayfinding and environmental graphics—the growth in demand for graphics is related to a growing real estate market. New construction means more demand for graphics—be they interior, exterior, wayfinding or otherwise. If you have been to any major city recently (or even some not-so-major cities), you know that construction is booming. (It has been said that New York is going to be a great city when they finally finish building it.) This opens up opportunities for sign and display graphics. 

When the real estate market crashed in the late 2000s, the market for these kinds of graphics also crashed. Often trends in other markets can impact the demand for certain kinds of print. 

Explore New Sales Channels

Sometimes sales and marketing efforts have to vary from what have been the traditional print sales channels. For example, print providers who have been successful with environmental graphics have found that approaching architectural and interior design firms has been the most successful strategy, as these kinds of applications are usually planned as new facilities are being designed, constructed or remodeled. In terms of vehicle graphics, going to car shows can also often be a good way to jump start new business. 

Get Out of the Office

We often stay so focused on our own business that we tend to ignore what is happening in the world around us. Or if we do get out, we remain oblivious to the environment, especially if we’re staring at a phone 90% of the time. Sign and display graphics are the most conspicuous form of print. Don’t ignore them. For example, walking around my downtown, which I do frequently, I noticed that in the past couple of years, a unique variety of light-pole graphics started proliferating and have become more and more popular and commonplace:

When a new type of graphic turns up more and more frequently, that’s a good indication that it’s an in-demand application. Don’t let that opportunity go to waste; learn how to produce it and then emphasize it in your marketing and promotion efforts. 

It doesn’t even have to be all business. I was in a cheese shop in Manhattan a couple of years ago and noticed that their interior wall graphics used magnetic materials from Visual Magnetics to dynamically change the display depending on what specific kinds of cheese they wanted to highlight. 

 ©PascalPerich

There is a local brewpub in Saratoga Springs that uses dynamic digital signage—via Untappd—to highlight what specific brews are on tap on a given day. Just noticing the signs around you can stimulate creative business and product ideas. 

Build a Targeted Sales Portfolio

Any good sign and display graphics provider has a portfolio of completed projects on their website. (You do, right?) It’s important to have such a portfolio because very often clients may not know just what kinds of graphics are available or feasible. They’re often focused on their own business—or staring at their own phones—and don’t pay attention to signage and other display graphics. So as a print provider, you can show them how exploiting a new type of display graphic can attract more attention to their business. 

Not only having a portfolio, but having a series of targeted portfolios is important. Organize your projects by vertical market. A bank has different sign and display needs than a hospital, which has different needs than a restaurant, which has different needs than a school, or a retail store, or a corporate office. Target your sales and marketing materials to single out these verticals, so if you are pitching interior graphics to a bank, your prospect isn’t saying, “Well, you know, we don’t need salad bar graphics.” 

Eat Your Own Cooking

It can be surprising how often wide-format print providers fail to utilize their capabilities for their own display graphics needs. One of the challenges new entrants into the market can have is building up a portfolio—producing graphics for one’s own business is a great way to get some examples onto your online photo gallery. At the same time, if needed, pro bono work for a local charity, school or other cause can also be a good way build up a portfolio until you develop a roster of paying clients. 

Focus On a Holistic Approach to Print 

Ultimately, you don’t want to be in the business of selling products. You want to be a strategic partner for your clients, and that involves a more consultative approach to print sales than just taking orders over a counter or through a web portal. It's about helping clients solve problems—and specific types of print are among the tools at your disposal to solve those problems. That’s why offering many different kinds of print—small-format, commercial in addition to various kinds of wide format—can help retain customers, especially if you can function in the role of asset management for them. I’ve heard this described as “golden handcuffs”: you want to be indispensable to them. 

2020 and Beyond

The 2010s was a banner decade for wide-format printing (as it were), and the next decade is only going to build on that. The keys to success? Keeping up on top applications, knowing what’s in demand and marketing marketing marketing.