The economy right now calls for caution, in my opinion. I m not a pessimist, I believe in riding out the wave, but at the same time I m not going to authorize my personnel to make any equipment or software purchases that are not absolutely mandatory for the success of our prepress or printing operation. The strength of a company allows its leaders and everyone involved in the company to grit their teeth and ride out the conditions, if the economy is in the tank or not in the tank. Still, we ll be watching our pennies the economy may continue to ride the down wave for a while, so I plan to keep a lid on investments, and I suspect most printing operations will be doing the same. At the end of the day, everyone is under the gun.
All printers are under the cheaper, better, faster constant pressure.
I think most printers are, for lack of a better word, scared or plain not interested in, the Internet. They are afraid of introducing a third party into their dealings with their print buyers, as is the case with some Internet companies that want to be go-betweens between the printers and the print buyers. It sets printers up to fight in a real price war to see which printers can go lower and lower. I think that ends up just lowering the bar on print quality for the entire industry, and creates a negative perception of printers in the process. Some of the other e-commerce companies offer to facilitate communication and increase efficiencies for a fee.