Teaching Experiences -- China Connection

We discussed what successful U.S. printers are doing to get out of the "commodity" business, such as setting up a fulfillment center, diversifying into package printing, maintaining databases, etc. An executive from a large U.S. printer I met at Drupa told me that he is talking to some Chinese printers that currently print some jobs for him, but now they want to take the final step and actually send the finished products to the ultimate customers, rather than to a middleman. While those new business models appear attractive to Chinese printers, their time is well off into the future.