Paper Prices Less of a Challenge for Printers

The term "paperless office" has been around for decades, even if the phenomenon itself has been decidedly elusive.

But, if you look around and examine your own behavior vis-à-vis paper, you may very well find that we're closer to that state than ever. As has been stated many times, we're swiftly becoming a predominantly electronic society—or at least business is swiftly becoming an electronic environment. E-mail has largely replaced letters (and thus reduced the need for letterhead and envelopes), Web pages and PDF brochures are taking a bite out of print marketing materials, and even minutiae such as desk calendars and schedule books are being replaced by PDAs and contact management software programs like Act! or Microsoft Outlook.

Accordingly, "paper prices" as a business challenge took another nosedive in the Fall 2001 TrendWatch Graphic Arts Printing survey, from 13% to 6% of all printers queried. In some of the individual printing markets covered in the study, the figures are down even more dramatically. For example, among quick printers—which are the most challenged by paper prices—the percentage dropped from 30% a year ago to 7% today. Further, six months ago, 27% of book printers said that they were challenged by paper prices, while just 4% are now.

The rationale for these trends is fairly straightforward: printers aren't running a lot of jobs these days. When they aren't doing a lot of work they're not using a lot of paper, and when they're not using a lot of paper they're not abundantly challenged by paper prices. This is perhaps why this challenge peaked in the TrendWatch Spring 2000 survey, which took place when business conditions started to slide.