While it may seem that the industry was blighted with an unfair share of business failures in 2019, the reality is that for the past decade or so, it was always thus.

That’s not to say that the industry is in dire straits, far from it – there are plenty of businesses doing incredibly well, just have a scan through our Power 100 – it’s just that it’s going through a sustained period of change, and with any change in market conditions, there are victors and victims – some businesses will adapt better than others.

And scale is no guarantee of success, after all if, as the twenty-tens come to a close, when I look at the biggest stories of the decade, well, unsurprisingly, they were all about the collapse of firms some considered too big to fail: Paperlinx in 2015; Polestar in 2016; and Anton in 2017.

More shocking was that the work from those three giants and, more recently, Howard Hunt, was gobbled up quicker than a plateful of M&S mince pies.

Which is probably the perfect illustration of the structural and technological changes that have impacted print over the past decade and will likely continue well into the next.

So, as the year comes to a close and you reflect on the past 12 months don’t be frozen by the challenges of change in 2020, run towards the opportunities it offers.

Because standing still for too long is not only bad news for free-range turkeys, it’s not so great for print businesses either.

Merry Christmas to you and your teams from everyone at Printweek Towers and we wish you a prosperous print year in 2020.