Observations from the Front Line

This is officially my first post on this blog. The purpose of this blog will be to share information on the state of the printing industry and to stay in touch with printing company owners and others who are involved in merger and acquisition activity in our industry. Right now, our industry is going through a tremendous shakeout. In 2001 there were 50,000 printing companies in the United States. By 2003 after the 9/11 shakeout, there were 35,000. What I'm hearing today is that when the dust settles after this recession there may be 20,000 or fewer printing companies left standing. It is brutal out there. We are feeling it just like everyone else (just look at our recent 10-Q...not pretty). We are still actively acquiring printing companies and being very creative with deal structures due to the challenges being felt by virutally every company fortunate enough to still be competing in today's environment.