When I first read the Tenon statement about "nine out of ten printers being in danger of collapse" my reaction was similar to that of a fair few PrintWeek readers, judging by the lengthy comment trail this story (and its follow-up) has generated.

It seemed a ridiculously over-the-top pronouncement, and called to mind a certain type of market statistic news release we at PrintWeek used to receive in years past where it was obvious that a bit of search and replace action on "printers" would see the exact same release issued to the trade publications covering butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.

However, Tenon is no tin-pot outfit and its survey appears to be pretty comprehensive. Cheerily, I see from another of its reports that it also predicts that more than 6,000 companies from across all sectors could fail in Q1 2010, which would be a near-25% increase on the same quarter in 2009.  

I spoke to a printer last week who opined that while he lamented the loss of jobs and skills, the radical winnowing out of weak competitors envisioned by Tenon would actually be welcome. But companies are not necessarily failing on merit, and those that do die don't stay dead. Whether print is unique in this respect I don't know, but it does seem that we have rather a lot of companies, including some sizeable players, where normal business rules do not apply. Perhaps Tenon can look into the distorting impact of this next time around.

All of this puts me in mind of an article written many years ago by an eager young PrintWeek journalist who wrote that "liquidation appears inevitable" for a loss-making firm, just because it was, err, making losses. It was pointed out to the young journo (prior to publication, I hasten to add), that if a company's owners and investors choose to support said losses, then that is their prerogative.

As it turned out 2009 was the year those owners eventually decided to pull the plug, but it's taken all of 15 years for that to happen. Whether Tenon's hypothesis turns out to be OTT or not, I'm sure the economic conditions that herald the new decade will mean similar decisions are telescoped into rather shorter timeframes in the future.