NOTEBOOK: Printing for Export Markets: Do U.S. Firms Have a Prayer?

When you think “international metropolis,” what city comes to mind? New York? Paris? Rome? How about Boston? The home of World Series champion Red Sox was a venue for Sappi's globe-trotting International Printer of the Year awards. Locus for such august institutions as Harvard and MIT, Boston boasts 600,000 residents from 80 countries and using 140 languages. That's international.

Yet most printers in Boston, or across the U.S., are not yet focusing beyond local and regional markets. Now is a good time to do so. The weaker dollar, the thriving European economies, and burgeoning middle classes in emerging markets the world over are hungry for education and consumer goods—two categories involving print. Though we tend to lose site of it, “Made in U.S.A.” can add cache in some categories—especially for products tied to popular culture, or holding world-class stature—think Starbucks, IBM, Apple, Coke, FedEx, Harley Davidson. Why not push U.S. printing exports?

It is more than a coincidence that three recent studies—from PIA/GATF, RIT and the weightiest from the NPES research group PRIMIR—profile global market dynamics for print. Perhaps when these studies were begun, researchers expected they would show the U.S. print industry prone to forces that have wounded other domestic industries such as garments, furniture and electronics.

But in its broad overview last year of U.S. printers' prospects and vulnerability to foreign providers, PIA economists found just 5% of print consumed here originates abroad, much of it from Canada, with a comparable amount exported. And while that may rise to 6 or 7% in the next 10 years, the study suggests a devalued dollar, which has come to pass since this report, will grow exports.

The U.S. gross domestic product is now 90% services. When you sell a service, the only confirmation you've got that anything of value has changed hands is something printed to document it. With a wealth of U.S. printed material in every airline seat pocket, software package and training program, the export of services could strengthen print's fortunes. Some examples of possible print service export scenarios: Lightning Source U.K or Kinko's can print and ship within Europe a digitally produced project that originates domestically. Orders channeled through U.S. servers at Bowne, RR Donnelley, or Quad/Graphics are output and delivered abroad.

In the blisteringly fast-paced Chinese market, CC1 of Hartford, WI, announced further expansion of its service-based print offerings. Tellingly, that story crossed the wires just as NPES Annual Conferees heard recaps of PRIMIR's latest study on the World-Wide Market for Print. (Free copies or synopses of these reports are available by e-mailing me or using these links  PIAGATFPrintingExport,  RIT Export,  Primir Global Print Markets online.)

Also working to the advantage of U.S. printers:

• English as Internet lingua franca;
• Plentiful paper-making resources;
• Low labor ratios in U.S. print plants.

If you attended the Premier Print Awards during Graph Expo, the geographic shift in winners was unmistakable. Printers from more than a dozen countries—Brazil, China, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Mexico, South Africa—made up a quarter of them.

By a large margin, these winners are printing for their domestic markets. Striking, though, is the fact that the PIA/GATF stamp of quality certifies their printing stature the world over. It was thrilling that Toyo Ink rushed its two Bennys to a beautiful, specially built display at IGAS in Tokyo, celebrating the company's technical and aesthetic achievement for all the world to see, and putting a U.S.-based program so prominently on display.

If others will travel thousands of miles to seek a coveted Benny, would it behoove you to take advantage of this opportunity so close at hand? Here's the entry form for 2008.

bill.esler@reedbusiness.com