New Report Profiles Graphics Industry

New TWGA report: Printers not optimistic, book publishing down, stock photography purchase up, and U.S. graphic firms number 50,000.

TrendWatch Graphic Arts, a trends analy­sis firm focus­ing on the graph­ic arts and graph­ic design mar­ket­places, today released its “2005 Graphic Arts Market Demographic Profiles” report, an update to the Demographic Profiles report pub­lished in January 2004. The report pro­vides snap­shots of each of the graph­ic arts mar­kets TWGA reg­u­lar­ly surveys—commercial print­ers and pre­press shops, graph­ic design and pro­duc­tion firms, and pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies. These snap­shots include top-line demo­graph­ic data (estab­lish­ments, graph­ic pro­duc­tion desk­tops, shipments/revenues, and cap­i­tal expen­di­tures), indus­try trends (busi­ness con­di­tions and the forces that are caus­ing those con­di­tions), mar­ket out­look for 2005 and beyond, and guid­ance for indus­try firms, ven­dors, investors, researchers, and analysts. 

The report, “2005 Graphic Arts Market Demographic Profiles,” draws on a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing the TWGA Demographic Atlases, Census Bureau data, the Graphic Arts Blue Book, and TWGA’s own volu­mi­nous 10-year his­tor­i­cal data­base of trends and changes in the indus­try, to pro­vide not only the basic demo­graph­ics of the indus­try, but also how those demo­graph­ics have been chang­ing and, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, why those demo­graph­ics have been changing—and how they’re like­ly to con­tin­ue to change in the next 12 months and beyond. 

“As busi­ness con­tin­ues to improve across the board for graph­ics com­mu­ni­ca­tions firms, oppor­tu­ni­ties abound for the com­pa­nies that serve the industry,” notes one researcher in the TWGA Analyst Report.

The report notes:

  • Nearly half of the estab­lish­ments in the print­ing indus­try are small com­mer­cial and quick print­ers, and yet small com­mer­cial and quick print­ers only account for 10% of all ship­ments in the industry; 
  • There are greater than 50,000 design and pro­duc­tion estab­lish­ments in the U.S., more than one-third of them graph­ic design shops; 
  • Magazine pub­lish­ers account for near­ly one-third of the $232 mil­lion that pub­lish­ers spend annu­al­ly on new com­put­er purchases;
  • Book pub­lish­ers are the only pub­lish­ing mar­ket that saw its busi­ness con­di­tions decline from Summer 2003 to Summer 2004;
  • Despite report­ing the best busi­ness con­di­tions they’ve expe­ri­enced in four years, print­ers are less opti­mistic about the future than they have been.

The TrendWatch Graphic Arts “2005 Graphic Arts Market Demographic Profiles” report is avail­able in PDF form for online pur­chase at www​.trend​watch​graphi​carts​.com . The price for the 190-page report is US$995.