There has not been an industry that has not taken a hit from COVID-19. This pandemic has made several businesses close their doors or lose enormous amounts of money due to lockdowns and illness. The printing industry has not been exempt from this. However, they are slowly building their way back up.
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Where It Was
In 2020, the middle of the month was the hardest for large format commercial printers to combat. According to an article from Keypoint Intelligence, last year businesses with large format commercial printers saw a significant decline of nearly 20 to even 50 percent for some in their revenue. This was all back between April and June 2020. Overall, the entire industry saw a 30 percent decline in sales.
Where It Is Now
As the world starts to reopen, most businesses are allowed to have customers actually inside their establishments again. This has been helpful and needed to bring businesses back to a plus side for their revenue. COVID-19 did have a benefit for the printing industry, though. Businesses needed signage to display their new practices, such as mask requirements and social distancing, as things are starting to reopen. This brought in much-needed business for the print industry.
Where It Will Be
To get back to where businesses were may never happen but to strive to get there should not be unaccounted for. The Wall Street Journal projects that it will take almost 10 years to get back to the norm, saying, “U.S. quarterly economic output isn’t expected to catch up to previous projections until the end of 2029.” However, what was the norm before will eventually have to change, especially for the printing industry. Think about how many business people were working from home in contrast to them working in the office just a year ago.
This has shown a whole new way of operating and utilizing people in the workforce that doesn’t have to be in a physical location. Many traditional printing industries can transform into a new way of doing business by coming into the world of digitalization. 2021 is more digital than it has ever been in the past. The pandemic has shown its importance to the world. Now it is up to the printing industry to follow suit in order to maintain and compete in this new norm that has been created by COVID-19.