Wide Format Imaging

Three words seem to describe the trends in the industry the best. You could call them the "Three 'C's": compression, consolidation, and cut-throat competition.

Whatever segment of the graphic arts industry in which you may have originally started you have, without a doubt, experienced all three of those 'C's. Over the past several years, the wide-format industry has been shrinking and compressing?when it comes to the number of shops in the market. Some of this is due to consolidation; we've all seen it as shops continue to purchase and acquire other firms, while others form partnerships or merge together to make better use of their resources and strengths.

A few years ago, your competition was very clearly defined. Sign shops competed against sign shops, reprographers with other reprographers. Now, it's more of an "anything goes" market. Firms are continuing to enter wide-format from all sides and from varied backgrounds. Digital printers, digital color shops, or digital imagers seem to be the designations of choice for many as they move away from the more traditionally used nomenclature.

But even as the number of shops decline within the graphic arts industry, digital printing?and wide-format imaging especially?is growing in dollars and volume. Everyone is doing more with less.

Fewer shops are fighting for larger pieces of the 'wide-format output' pie. And every project, every dollar, is becoming more important as firms try to stay on top. But how can you do that?

"I'm committed to offering the 'leading edge' of technology, but not the 'bleeding edge,'" says Chuck Hayes, CEO of Irvine, CA-based OCB Reprographics, and Wide-Format Imaging's 2006 Shop of the Year. "Never presume that what is making you money today will be there to provide you with the cash and profits you will need for tomorrow."

OCB, under the direction of Hayes and his predecessors, has embraced the changes in the market and it's their commitment to the industry and their vision for the future that makes them one of the most innovative and successful companies in the US.