The Large Format Signage Growth Opportunity

Digital wide format printing may be the most consistent opportunity for service providers. Year after year, the opportunity continues to grow. By offering wide format products and services, companies can take advantage of a trend that shows no sign of slowing. For those companies that may not be offering this service today, the least risky way to determine if there is enough demand to support a purchase is to outsource the service first.

How big is the opportunity? Market research company Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends reports that digital color printed pages will grow 12% and approach $871 billion in 2021. (Global production printing and copying market forecast: 2016-2021: Keypoint Intelligence –InfoTrends 2017). As you can see in the pie chart, business cards are #1 on the list with 17%, sales/marketing collateral is #2 at 13%, and signage and direct mail tie for the #3 print application.

Large Format Signage is Ideal for Small Companies

According to the WhatTheyThink Printing Forecast 2018, the growth in large format is important for small to medium and small print service providers. According to author Richard Romano,

• 10% of respondents saw “adding wide-format printing capabilities” as a business opportunity in 2018. This rises to 26% in moderately small companies of 10–19-employee shops and 25% in very small shops with 1–9-employee shops.

• In terms of investments, in Fall 2017, 8% of shops overall planned to invest in a solvent or eco-solvent wide-format printer, rising to 10% in the very small shops of 1–9 staff.

Pros and Cons of Large Format Printing

Automation Tools

The obvious advantage of large format signage printing is that it can add an additional product and service to a company’s offerings with higher perceived value. Although not a huge disadvantage, a challenge in offering large-format signage products and services is that there is a limited amount of automation tools available.

This is most clear when you compare the large format workflow to other print workflows that are more automated. Most web to print software will allow you to create templates that customers can choose, contain automatic pricing, allow customers to type in their own information to customize business cards and there is technology that can automatically impose and drive finishing equipment for business cards. The same is not true for large format signage workflows. Admittedly this only becomes a problem when you get busy.

Equipment

For companies that have not invested in large format equipment, the greatest disadvantage may be risk. With sales and profitability slowly and begrudgingly improving, no one is immune to a bad investment. Any investment that does not pay for itself quickly becomes a burden for the company. The only risk-free strategy is to outsource it until you can cost justify it!

Do you print large format signage? Share your experiences and insight by commenting below!