A recent four-hour television documentary hailed Johann Gutenberg as the most important figure of the last 1,000 years for improving the printing press in the 15th century. The Arts & Entertainment Network show aired, however, at a time when the rise of the Internet has begun to change the face of the printing industry. Printers have embraced the Internet as a means for clients to zap print jobs to them across phone lines, but, at the same time, the electronic medium threatens to unseat ink on paper as the preferred method of communicating written words and still pictures.
“It’s very much a mixed bag,” Ron Davis, chief economist of the Printing Industries of America Inc. trade association, said of the Internet’s impact on printers. “It’s hard to say what the net impact is. But I think so far we haven’t seen a big negative impact.”
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More than 1 million Americans worked in the printing industry in 1998, the most recent year for which the figures have been tallied, Davis said. The number of printing jobs in the United States grew just over 2 percent compared to the previous year, which is consistent with the overall job growth rate for the economy.
On the positive side of the Internet equation, e-mail and Internet file transfers have largely eliminated the lag time between when a print job leaves the client’s office and when it arrives at the printer.
“The biggest impact for us is how quick you can get files and information,” noted Steve DiCaprio of TCI Press in Seekonk, Mass. “Instead of waiting for FedEx of UPS, you’ve got it instantly.”
If there’s a problem with a file, DiCaprio said, the client can make the needed changes and re-send the print job the same day instead of having to pay for another overnight delivery, which also reduces costly down time for the printer.
And receiving the print job in digital form, as opposed to a hard copy or negative, reduces the processing time and expense on the printer’s end, added Dennis Glass, chairman of Meridian Printing in East Greenwhich. Printing Industries of America’s Davis said the trade association’s latest survey of printers found that today just 22 percent of all jobs are supplied to printers by hard copies or negatives.
Davis said many printers also have begun using their Internet sites to take print orders, and Glass noted that several companies are building Internet portals that will allow printing customers to track the progress of their jobs and the status of their accounts online in real time.
“We haven’t gotten involved in that yet,” Glass said, “but it’s the coming thing.”
But Glass agreed that the advent of the Internet is a “double-edged sword” for printers. “I think the consensus is that it has hurt a little bit,” he said, adding that Meridian’s financial and fine art printing businesses haven’t felt the competition from the Internet yet.
The Internet hasn’t hurt TCI Press, which primarily prints newspapers, DiCaprio said.
But how are catalog printers faring as e-commerce picks up steam?
Davis, the trade association economist, said some individual catalog printers are definitely feeling the pinch, but overall the impact of the Internet may be a wash.
“There’s a lot of catalogs being printed because people go to a Web page and click ‘send me a catalogue,’ ” he said. “I think we’re finding right now that in markets like catalogues and directories, it’s lowering some print runs, but, on the other hand, it’s raising some demand because there’s a new source of customers.”
But that’s not to say that the Internet isn’t a threat to some printers.
Davis said some financial printers, in the face of electronic reporting of financial statements, have had to evolve from straight printing companies to business consultants whose services include printing. The successful ones have redefined themselves from companies that help clients manage data by putting it on paper to companies that help clients manage data through a variety of means.
Ron DeStefano of Proprint Inc. in Johnston has lost some business at the hands of the Internet and other communications technologies. The use of e-mail and facsimile machines, for example, has cut the demand for company letterhead and envelopes in the last couple of years, he said.
Although printers are making use of the Internet and keeping a wary eye trained on its development at the same time, surveys conducted by the Printing Industries of America indicate that many consumers still prefer to receive information and entertainment in the ink-on-paper format.
“We’re a society that likes having it in our hands, something that you can sit down with wherever and read,” DiCaprio said.
Davis added: “It’s still a healthy industry, and we think as long as printers keep an open mind about who they are and what they do for their customers, it will remain healthy.”
