Printing companies are often described as being small, medium, or large. Do you know the difference? To be honest, I wasn't absolutely sure. Do the terms refer to employee size? Revenue? Equipment?

Since so many print customers, including graphic designers, talk about their preferences in terms of small, medium or large printers, I thought it important enough to poll industry professionals. For international flavor, I branched out to the UK and New Zealand as well.

I wrote to Dr. Joe Webb, Director of WhatTheyThink's Economics & Research Center; Frank Romano, Professor Emeritus at RIT and well-respected industry expert; Dr. Ron Davis, Printing Industries of America's Chief Economist; Joan Grace, Chief Executive of PrintNZ; and Robert McClements of PrintYorkshire.

I never expected to get the range of responses that I did: how gracious everyone was with this question. Thanks, one and all!

Minus a few small edits for style only, all of the comments listed below are directly from those polled. I didn't want to drown the copy in quotation marks.

Who knew that this one tiny question would result in such an education? Here's what I found out.

Dr Joe Webb

Dr Joe Webb (read his columns and listen to his audio reports at www.whattheythink.com) said that a standard definition of these terms exists. He wrote:

In historical industry standards, 1-9 employees is considered small (can be up to $1mm-$1.2mm), 10-49 is considered mid-size (about $1.2-$6mm), and 50+ is considered large (about $6mm+).

In terms of the census bureau, any business with <500 employees is considered small! That's 96% of businesses: virtually everyone! The census has to look at everyone, so they have to create small, medium and large definitions that fit ALL industries.

The economic census of 2007 (just being released) has three categories:

1-19 employees
20-99 employees
100+ employees

So you can see how they are doing the 'one size fits all' for those data, but they do not describe small, medium, or large for our business very well.

Economist Ron Davis

Dr. Ron Davis wrote that in general, PIA considers firms with fewer than 20 employees as small printers, those with 21-50 employees are medium-sized printers, and those with more than 100 employees are large printers. Visit PIA's web site at www.printing.org.

The Professor

Frank Romano had a lot to say on the issue of defining print services. (Isn't that just like a professor? Maybe he didn't want to be one-upped by Dr. Joe. Remember the "Clash of the Printing Titans" debates at previous print buyer conferences?) Here's Frank's response:

	Small Printer	Medium Printer	Large Printer
Average revenue	$700,000	$5 million	$20 million
Average employees	19	50	100
Press type	Sheet Page	Sheet Signature	Web Signature
Press size	2-up	4/8-up	8/16-up

Thus, the bigger and faster the press, the better the printer can handle very long runs of publications with high page counts.

	Small Printer	Medium Printer	Large Printer
Runs	Short	Moderate-Long	Long-very Long
Page counts	Low 4-100	Moderate 4-200	High 4-400
Types	Promo	Promo	Promo Catalog Magazine

"Small printer" can mean the firm has a small press (offset duplicator) — while others say a Heidelberg GTO (14 x 20) is a small press. We define small press as one with 13 x 19" sheet or smaller capacity.

Press size has traditionally been an indicator of a firm’s print capability, which is why many printers define themselves by their press ("I’m a 40-inch house," for example.). One very large commercial printer claimed that they were a quick printer even though they had almost 500 employees. Small employee counts have also been traditional indicators — some say under 10 and others say under 20 employees.

There is a significant overlap in terms of services provided and equipment in use between these segments:

	Small Printer	Medium Printer	Large Printer
Copying services	Yes	Yes	No
Design services	No	Yes	Some
Small offset litho	No	Yes	Some
Large offset litho	No	Some	Yes
Bindery services	Some	Yes	Yes
Mailing services	Some	Some	Most
Digital printing:
Monochrome	All	All	Some
Color	Most	Most	Some
Wide format inkjet	Most	Most	Some

The term "instant printer" or "quick printer" arose in the 1960s as the camera-platemaker and offset duplicator allowed printers to offer while-you-wait services. These firms evolved into black-and-white and color copying as well and split into two markets: franchise and independent companies. Copy services arose with the growth of the copying machine. Today, all copiers are really digital printers.

Quick printers may have up to 20 employees, multiple locations, and revenues exceeding $2 million. However, they typically operate from a single storefront location and have fewer than 10 full-time employees. The average annual revenues of these companies fall between $600,000 and $1 million, but extremes abound, and actual sales figures can range from $100,000 to $30 million per year.

We tend to think of quick printers as relying on walk-in customers for the bulk of their business. Many of these firms are refocusing their resources on local corporate accounts. As part of their changing business strategy, they are pursuing corporate business instead of waiting for the customer to walk through the door. Quick printers aren’t necessarily quick. Their typical turnaround for jobs is longer than 24 hours.

Franchise firms generate about $200,000 more in annual revenues than independent firms — independents average annual sales of $600,000; franchise firms average about $800,000.

The European Definition

Robert McClements of PrintYorkshire (www.printyorkshire.com) offered a European definition of the Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME).

The European (which does include UK!) definition of an SME is up to 250 employees. Small is up to 50, and occasionally we refer to Micro being less than 10. Here is the formal definition: The glossary is being updated given the recent signing of the Treaty of Lisbon (http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/index_en.htm)).

At Community level, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are defined by a set of criteria concerning the workforce, turnover and independence of the business. In terms of the workforce alone, a micro-enterprise has fewer than 10 employees, a small enterprise fewer than 50 and a medium-sized enterprise fewer than 250. The European Union has specifically defined SMEs so that the benefits introduced for their support are reserved for those businesses which genuinely have the characteristics of such firms.

Small and medium-sized enterprises account for more than 90% of all European enterprises and are at the very heart of the European economy. In line with the slogan "think small first" from the European Charter for Small Enterprises (2000), the Union is setting up a number of SME support measures (access to funding, taxation, research, information and communication technology, etc.). It has also established a single, coherent policy framework for these various measures, with the aim of realising the untapped potential of SMEs for growth and job creation within the Union.

Happy Eurospeak. (Thanks, Robert!)

Let's Hear from New Zealand

Joan Grace and Ruth Cobb (Membership Services Manager) of PrintNZ weighed in as well. PrintNZ is New Zealand's print industry trade association; visit www.printnz.co.nz. (Actually, visit New Zealand itself if you get a chance: gorgeous!)

We actually sell our membership based on those three very simple definitions – well, four, actually – Small, Medium, Large, and Multi-site (meaning they have more than one location).

We keep our definitions a little flexible so that being one number off doesn't stop someone from joining up, but the rule of thumb for us is below. We use employees, because turnover (revenue) can vary, depending on the type of business you are, the economy, etc. While staff numbers will also vary – the swings won't be as vast.

Anyway, for us, the definitions are these:

Small	Up to 10 employees
Medium	10 – 25 employees
Large	Over 25 employees

The table found at this link is probably very helpful in terms of your definitions. The full document is also quite good:
www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentPage____39470.aspx.

The international comparisons are interesting and surprisingly similar. Basically, in NZ, we call small and medium-sized businesses those with fewer than 20 staff members – and anecdotally that is probably what your people mean when they use the term in the US.

Increasingly, we use the term “micro-businesses” to cover those with fewer than 5 staff members.

Many overseas reports refer to small businesses as those with fewer than 500 staff members – not a helpful definition for us in NZ – and probably not what is really spoken about when people get together to “throw the rice around”!!

I want to thank everyone for their contributions to today's Print Tip. Though there is not 100% consensus on the definitions, the small-medium-large terms generally relate to the number of employees. I like that Frank's detailed explanation relates press sizes, revenues, and services with small, medium and large printers.

Isn't it interesting that in Europe and New Zealand, a fourth category for micro businesses exists?

All of these insights add to one's knowledge about printing companies and their differences. I find it tremendously important to get perspective on businesses in the print sector.

©2009 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. Your comments are encouraged. You're free to forward this email to friends and colleagues. However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.