This is the second and final part of my interview with Dr. Joe Webb, print industry economist, consultant, forecaster, commentator and public speaker. To access Part 1, please visit Dr. Joe Webb Weighs In - Part 1

Buying print offshore comes up in many discussions with print buyers today. What can you tell us about the strength/growth of printing in other countries? Do other countries represent serious competition for US printers? I hear mixed reviews on this. Please weigh in.

This is a global economy, and it's tied together better than ever before in human history, and those ties will only improve, increase, and intensify. I never hear the discussion about how US printers represent competition for offshore printers, which we do, because we, and a handful of other countries, are content creators and intellectual property creators for a worldwide audience.

Offshore printing is a threat and an opportunity. Many print brokers have developed excellent working relationships with offshore printers, and find they can satisfy their customers quite well. It always depends on the nature of the job in its size, scope, and turnaround factors, and also the nature of the content and reproduction requirements. There is risk: a job that is not done well and has to be printed again has significant geographic issues to deal with.

The other issue is that multinational companies have operations that can now source locally rather than have to wait for the U.S. headquarters to ship materials. It's so much easier to send print-ready PDFs or other files from HQ to an overseas office to coordinate themselves.

In your opinion, what printers are most at risk for closing their doors? Small ones? Printers that haven't expanded their repertoire? Printers that don't do digital? Where will this consolidation trend lead us?

All printers are at risk of closing their doors if they don't provide consistent and compelling opportunities for their clients. Size is a reflection of the kinds of services a printer provides. If you print for big circulation magazines you have to be a big printer because of the capital required to have the presses that are needed for that service. Smaller printers will have different kinds of equipment because of the kinds of jobs they can run, which are often impractical to run on bigger, long-run presses. It is intellectually tempting to look at printing businesses as being scalable, or assuming that all small printers want to be big printers, but their size is based on other factors, and ultimately reflects the needs that they uniquely see in the marketplace and their skills at satisfying them.

The consolidation trend will seemingly lead to fewer printers, but the number of printers is declining whether there is consolidation or not. Consolidation is a reflection of many other factors, and one of the benefits is that employees lose their jobs and go to work for smaller or mid-size firms, bringing their experience with them, or they start new print businesses, or they go elsewhere into other industries that compete with print. There are many people who were skilled trade typographers who became graphic designers and others who morphed into digital printing businesses. The consolidation that's going on right now is very defensive, especially as more media dollars shift out of magazines and other “big print” products into other areas.

It's interesting to note that the decline in print does not mean a decline in content. Employment in ad agencies, graphic design, and non-newspaper publishing is up, and rather strongly. The number of publishing businesses is rising, with many of them being “microbusinesses.” There is a media shift unfolding before us, and good print businesses are using that to their advantage by offering new media services or gateways to those services.

By the way, why are you known as The Contrarian?

Back in 1997, when everyone was saying how print volume was increasing because of the spending of the new Internet companies, I was saying that after 2000 it would be quite a different story. The reason was that the Internet would eventually be able to promote itself, it would become a repository of documents that people could view or print at their desks, and that other media would come along that would use the Internet as a platform.

Commercial print volume has dropped considerably since that time: $30 billion of print is now out of the market. There are 153,000 fewer commercial print workers (-19%). Commercial printing volume is declining about -1% a year. There are about 300 million PDFs online, easily accessible via Google or other search engines. The Internet's direct effect on the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world is demonstrable, and the indirect effects on education, transportation, medicine, and all businesses affects billions of people without them realizing it. I saw it first hand when I started an industry information business in the mid-1990s and we were using the Internet to promote and to sell our offerings. It was new, and different, and I had to be dragged into it kicking and screaming by my business partner. It was just stunning how it all worked out.

The contrarian “thing” of looking at data in ways other people didn't may have become more clear at that time to the clients and others who worked with me, but it actually started earlier. It had its real start in my reading of Peter Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the mid-1980s. As he describes it, you need to search for incongruities in the marketplace to find opportunities, and that is something that stuck with me then and is an ingrained part of my work now. Incongruities are things that don't make sense and usually go against the common wisdom. Hence, anything that goes against the shared beliefs of an industry would be considered as contrarian. It's a lonely job, but someone has to do it, and you can get hurt climbing on bandwagons, so I avoid it.

Thanks, Joe, for your insights. I am heartened to know that there is no decline in content, despite a drop in commercial print volume, and that employment is up in agencies and graphic design. Your message overall seems optimistic. Like most good doctors, you've helped us feel better.

Once again, Dr. Webb's web sites (with his name, was he destined to be an Internet presence?) are www.drjoewebb.com and www.printforecast.com. Check them out.

If you want to meet Dr. Joe, plan on attending Boston Print Buyers' 2nd Annual Print Buyer Conference on November 7-8, 2007, in Westford, MA. Details to follow.