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Editor's Blog

Monday, 09 November 2009

I’ve just attended the BAPC’s annual conference where it’s got to be said the printer turnout was abysmal – not that it was any great surprise to find so few PSPs felt it worthwhile to offer up a Saturday in lieu of valuable business advice and a great networking social occasion. It’s how print is – we’ve all been to embarrassingly badly attended events where the turnout in no way reflected the quality of the content. What a wasted opportunity. Is it that printers don’t believe the oft seminar focus of strategic management issues has any relevance to their operation? It makes you wonder. There was a rather telling moment at the BAPC conference when a speaker asked the audience (of 100+) for a show of hands from those that had read any of three key management tomes he mentioned – let’s just say the response was minimal.

As a panellist of the recent Image Round Table printer discussion pointed out when asked if the print sector has good enough managers - those running companies still in business must be doing something right! They obviously are. But have they gone as far as they can go? Although there’s a new generation of entrepreneur’s springing up in wide-format there is still a great swathe of players whose background is in production rather than management. In this instance is it a comfort zone thing? Do they shy away from that which they’re not too familiar with?

As the communications landscape changes out of all recognition, managers of PSPs are going to have to adapt to new conditions – and to do so many are going to have to change their business set-up and mind-set. And use the facilities offered them to help them do so…

Comments: 1 | Lesley| Categories: |

Editor's Blog

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

Now I’m your typical Capricorn – more of a cynic than an optimist – so it’s unlike me to take a leap of faith and say the worst is over. While wide-format has so far weathered the economic storm far better than most, let’s be candid, we’ve been battered and bruised. But I’m sensing a new energy. News is coming through more frequently of investment and growth plans than of redundancies and falling margins, and it appears that companies are no longer just accepting that things have to change, but are embracing the changes. So are the fruits of earlier restructuring and diversification beginning to ripen?

Print ’09, Viscom Dusseldorf and Print Ireland have prompted a recent outpouring of new solutions and ideas, and it’s obvious from my in-box that manufacturers and suppliers are gearing up to snatch their piece of the recovery pie. While the generally bleak economic landscape may have stymied R&D somewhat over the last year or so, print kit, software and consumables suppliers have been anything but idle – and not just in terms of product development but in terms of turning their operations into more sustainable businesses etc.

Let me know if you think my newly found optimism is well founded...

Comments: 0 | Lesley| Categories: |

Editor's Blog

Tuesday, 04 August 2009

You know how it is – stand still and the grass grows under your feet – which is why we’ve been constantly reviewing this website since it was re-launched with a new look at the beginning of the year. This month we’ve added a special ‘online only’ features section that includes material you won’t find in the printed version of Image Reports Magazine. We’ve also added a ‘Grab a Gizmo’ section to bring your attention to those little odds and ends that can make your working day a little bit more interesting/productive/fun! And we’ve added more ‘comment buttons’ to various articles so we can learn more about what you think on the issues. Plus, of course, you can now download Image Reports’ new Widthwise Report, which delivers a ‘Roadmap to the Future’ for digital wide-format print in the UK.

Like you, we are always striving to provide added-value in what we deliver. And that includes providing you with the information you most want to receive in the format that most suits you - be it via the printed magazine and/or the digital version, email newsletters or through the website. Help us to do that by letting us know what you think of this website. What do you consider the site’s most/least useful features. Are there ways in which you would like to see it evolve – let me know your thoughts.

Lesley Simpson – Editor

Lesley Simpson Lesley has been writing on the changing face of the UK commercial printing industry for over 20 years. Having graduated from London University to ‘pasting-up’ advertisements for Yellow Advertiser Group magazines and spending long hours at typesetters and printers proofing galleys and passing pages, Lesley migrated to writing about the print sector, starting out in the 1980s as a novice reporter on the long gone New in Printing magazine before becoming a news hack then news/features editor of PrintWeek (then LithoWeek!) where she also had the dubious pleasure of editing one of the first trade show ‘dailies’. For the last seven years she has edited SJP title OneStop, a former sister publication to Image Reports where she now becomes Editor.

Comments: 0 | Lesley| Categories: |