What a Difference a Point Makes — Printing Shipments Part II

What’s the new print year look like? March is gradually becoming our new October. That is, as end-of-year printing recedes, other months are becoming arithmetically more significant. But it’s just numbers. What they indicate is that the print business continues to change and that old rules of thumb and common wisdom about strong or weak parts of the year are out the window. That’s what caught many people by surprise in 2005, as they kept saying “but the year always finishes strong,” and then, unfortunately, it didn’t. Now the pattern is gradually becoming “one month or quarter is just like another.” Anyone who complained about how difficult it was to cope with seasonal swings in their volume should now be happy. Those seasonal swings helped define our industry. It’s like having the hiccups. . .once they’re gone, we miss them.