Illinois Printers — Competition’s Fierce

And don’t forget: The world’s biggest cookie and cracker factory is in Chicago. Nabisco cranks out billions of Oreo cookies each year.

But while you might not be able to walk five feet in Chicago without a cookie crunching under toe, this ain’t exactly the easiest state for printers trying to carve out a living there. It’s one of the biggest printing states, to be sure (more than 80,000 industry people cash a check because of it), but the economic conditions and competitive landscape don’t always foster success.