What do you think will be the greatest opportunity and threat to printers next year?
We have seen over the last six months, a massive swing in our client’s spend from long run litho, to shorter run digital. This in itself is both an opportunity and threat for a company such as ours, that offers both litho and digital in a very competitive B3 market. Quality digital is still a growing market, and equips companies such as ours to offer USPs that litho can’t, but there is always the threat, as with litho, that as it becomes more popular and accessible, the USPs disappear, and we start selling as just another commodity on price alone, which is where litho is at the moment.


What do you believe is the most under-recognised aspect in printing that is likely to become more important in 2011?
W2P has got to be the future for print, whether B2B or B2C. Although this is not new technology, and has been around for nearly a decade, it is only really now that clients are embracing the idea of buying their regular print items online, in much the same way that we buy everything else online. Now that the technology allows us to offer this service at an affordable level to all our clients, we will start to see this snowball over the coming year.


How important do you think Northprint will be?
For us, not that important, and of no real interest.


What can the industry do to increase its profile next year?
The BPIF is already trying at the moment to boost our profile as an industry, and has recently had the ‘ear’ of various members of parliament, where they have presented figures of where the industry is today in relation to the rest of the manufacturing sector in Britain. They produced a leaflet to accompany these findings, which made for interesting reading, and may surprise a few, as to what a large percentage of employment, turnover, etc the print industry accounts for as a whole. As well as the BPIF, we need to encourage bodies like PrintIT who are trying to engage with the next generation of young people who might be interested in coming into our industry, something that is desperately required.


What will you do differently next year?
Travel back in time to my school days, and pay more attention in my Maths lessons, and PE lessons, so that I can become a banker or professional footballer! Seriously I think as a whole in the UK we just need to get 2010 out of our systems, and come back in January re-energised and recharged, ready for a bigger and better 2011. If we want to do anything differently in 2011 it is too not listen to all the doom and gloom merchants and seize all the opportunities that are there.