The optimum size for a printing company

[davidhyter]

yes u r right . We lived in a diversified world where we need multiple options for every thing .

[cdelgado]

This original post poses the thought I've come to believe for more than a year. With so much diversification of customer demands, it'd be quite difficult for a mid-sized shop to compete and operate profitably. The agility and niche focus afforded to small shops would suggest that smaller shops, catering to their local area market, would be well poised to succeed. Customers are increasingly concerned with their return on spent marketing dollars and a proactive shop, with the ability to reach out and ally with alternate service providers is in the best position to fulfill a clients needs/demands, without the strangling overhead of idle iron, too large a workforce and the ancillary costs to support them both.
Large shops servicing the regional demands of large volume printing (litho and digital) would be well suited to succeed as well. one or two shops within a region would attract the type of work, in scope and volume, to support their structural investment.

[michaelejahn]

Film will go away, witness today's announcement of the death of Kodachrome. So now we use digital cameras to take pictures that we then "print on paper" to show aunt Emily. Sorry, did I miss something?

Hal Heindel

Well yes, Hal, apparently you have missed a few things. It is hardly about the death of Kodachrome, which perhaps you were unaware was a SLIDE film - not a color negative that required printing. Perhaps you missed that services like Googles Picasa, Flikr and other online photoalbum tools enable the user to share digital pictures with friends and family WITHOUT having to print them. Perhpas your Aunt Emily does not have a computer, well neither does mine, so we stop by with a new SD card once in a while and replace the one that is in her digital picture frame - which place a new slide show. Many of us never print, where before the only way we could see anything was to have that roll of film developed and printed - now, we do not waste materials when the flash fails to fire or our thumbs are in front of the lens.

This approach has become very popular.

[Morning Flight]

Now we do not waste materials when the flash fails to fire or our thumbs are in front of the lens.

No, Michael, we include them in the animated slide shows we upload to YouTube. You do realize my post was tongue-in-cheek?!

I wasn't kidding though when I said film "will go away." It pretty much has already. Of the four Hasselblads I own, three have film backs, one is a 555 ELD equipped with a Kodak DCS digital back. The film cameras haven't left their Pelicans in years. But if they should come out, I would have to load them with Ektachrome. For medium format, Kodachrome was never an option.

About aunt Emily, she has gone digital and loves her Kodak EasyShare printer dock. Could be a Rochester thing.

Hal