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League of Extraordinary Printers

In a mature industry, mergers and acquisitions get all the attention, especially in newsrooms. Reporters can spend hours speculating on who’s going to buy whom, when so-and-so is likely to go out of business and so on. But the M&A game is not nearly as compelling as talking about who is forming a partnership, how they’re doing it and what it means for the industry. Strategic alliances make things interesting, especially when small and medium-sized companies pool their resources. Suddenly, those companies are forces to be reckoned with.

It’s telling that the No. 2 company on our annual Top 100 rankings is actually a group of companies. Dynamic Print Group combines the capabilities and service of many printers dedicated to serving the distributor segment. They are still individual business owners, responsible for their companies’ ultimate success, but their investment as collaborators in Dynamic shows willingness to better their own situation by working toward a common goal.

Like many alliances, Dynamic Print Group is the result of market conditions. Printers that used to supply customers with specific applications find themselves fielding requests for a greater variety of products and services. “If you go back 10 years ago, you didn’t see big blocks of business move. Lots of smaller privately held printers had portions of larger companies’ business,” says Steve McGrath, Dynamic’s vice president. “With the change in print management at large companies, some of the business forms printers moved from selling business forms to office products to commercial printing, and companies that used to work with 15 individual printers sought a single source, an all of a sudden those printers were at risk.”

More companies will have to partner with each other to successfully compete in the long run. To see how the rest of the segment is doing, read our Top 100 Trade Printers List, beginning on page 28. Judging from our survey, many printers are experiencing flat growth, which isn’t surprising given the current economic climate. Nonetheless, industry members are optimistic about their future prospects, and many expect that when things turn around, they’ll be stronger than ever.

Andy Brown
Managing Editor
abrown@PSDA.org