WIDE FORMAT AND SIGNAGE ─ Year In Review
WHERE DOES WIDE-FORMAT AND SIGNAGE STAND Demand- and technology-side drivers for 2022 By Richard Romano
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n the year of our COVID 2020, wide-format printing was the saving grace of many a print service provider, who, with traditional vertical markets and customers shut down, turned to COVID-related signage as a stopgap measure to at least keep some of the lights on. Now that the pandemic has…well, not exactly ended, but at least ebbed to the point where shut-down markets are now open, where do wide-format printing and signage production stand? And what does the market look like for wide format and signage as we head into 2022? We can identify some distinct trends and market drivers, dividing them into “demand side” and “supply side” or “technology side.” First, let’s look at what is happening on the demand side. Wide-format printing was obviously in high demand even before the pandemic, and while those new COVID-specific applications emerged in 2020, demand for COVID signage has waned, although not entirely disappeared. On a more macro level, the pandemic has had some specific effects on businesses— some good, some bad—which have some repercussions for signage and display graphics providers.
New Business Formation It’s a post-pandemic phenomenon that The Economist called “bezonkers,” as in “New business formation in America goes bezonkers” (https:// econ.st/3FV8Gkv). See the chart of new business applications (Figure 1). While some of these new businesses replaced those that failed during 2020, economists see it as one of the consequences of “The Great Resignation.” People taking stock of their lives and careers during the pandemic and pursuing a dream of business ownership, or at the very least of not
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Figure 1. New Business Applications. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)
being stuck in a job one hates. How much of this will persist beyond 2021/2022 remains to be seen. However, according to Forbes (https://bit. ly/3G8dFP1), analyzing the July business application figures, still more encouraging is the reported rise in what the Census Bureau calls “high propensity applications,” by which it means those new businesses with a high likelihood of supporting a payroll. These, though only some one-third of total applications, also jumped some 1.2% from June’s level for the nation as a whole and had a similar regional pattern to applications overall, with the largest proportion in the South and the strongest monthly jumps in the Northeast and the West. What does all this have to do with wide-format printing? New businesses need a lot of resources and other materials to get started, a lot of it involving various kinds of print, and often including signage and other kinds of display graphics, both interior and exterior. This presents opportunities for display graphics and signage producers. However, what percentage of these businesses will be home-based, or at least not need the kinds of retail or office graphics a dedicated business
WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage | November/December 2021
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