Nearly three in ten (29%) of printers said the biggest growth area for their business in recent months had been very quick turnaround work of all kinds.

Printers reported seeing strong growth in web-to-print orders, which 22% said had been their fastest-expanding area of business. Just over one in seven (15%) saw the strongest growth in packaging and labels, and around an eighth (12%) said direct mail was their best performing segment.

While the trend towards last-minute orders and demands for fast-turnaround jobs has been particularly marked following the pandemic’s acceleration of online shopping and swift e-commerce delivery, demand for rapid print work has only intensified over the past year according to Trevor Voisey, managing director at Kent’s Lemon Labels.

He told Printweek: “It’s a sign that customers are holding less stock.

“Beforehand, we would have a company order once every six months; now they spend monthly, and it’s more frequently urgent.”

Voisey put this change in buying habits down to business owners taking a tighter grip on their cashflow, as economic pressures intensify.

“People are desperately trying to conserve cash. So whereas before, they’d order a significant amount in advance, now they’re looking to order more frequently in smaller amounts, to stop having the money tied up in their warehouse.”

While some printers might charge a premium for such tight-deadline work, Voisey said his firm tries to accommodate requests to differentiate itself from competition as a rapid-response printer, though the change has required some readjustment of the business’ own operations.

“It’s always been part of our model to try and be reactive and quick. We haven’t used it as a profit driver – perhaps we should have, but we’ve [accepted it] more as a part of customer service.

“When we first started noticing it, it did [impact the business], but we’ve reacted and have been gearing up to operate quite differently, so it doesn’t impact us so much. While they’ve been reducing their stock holdings, we’ve been increasing ours to accommodate them. It comes with its own challenges, but I think it’s the right business decision for us.”

Richard McCombe, managing director of trade wide-format firm Graphic Warehouse, told Printweek that “everybody wants it dispatched tomorrow”.

“It’s not a bloody photocopy!” he joked.

McCombe was more surprised that so few printers had put wide-format as their best growth area: just 5% of respondents said so.

“I really do think that commercial printers do not recognise the value in selling large-format print.”

“If you don’t get involved in large-format print and start cross selling and upselling to your existing customer base, you’re going to lose some of that customer base, because they’re going to these people who say they can do it all.”

McCombe agreed, however, that web-to-print was a major growth area for business – if done correctly.

“Web-to-print is interesting. It’s not for everybody. Around 60% of our work comes through our web portal, and 40% through the customer service team. If it’s a high-risk product, no-one will just chuck it in through a web-to-print service, they still want to speak to somebody.

“The danger for smaller companies looking to compete online, or to motivate their customers to buy online, is that they then open up all their prices [to online competition]: customers then start looking around and get a competitive price [elsewhere].”

Kelvin Bell, sales director at web-to-print software provider Vpress, said that the concern was well-placed: small printers will soon find themselves outpaced if they try to compete online on price alone.

He told Printweek: “To capture buyers’ attention [online], you can either race to the bottom on price – which I strongly suggest no one does – or concentrate on user experience or better marketing.”

Companies that disregard web-to-print technology entirely, he warned however, are rapidly getting left behind.

“Most e-commerce in the UK, B2B, purchasing is done from 2pm to 10pm: are you going to be there 24 hours a day to follow that order up? You need to automate the front end, and add the customer service after the order.”

Bell added that a digital front-end as used in web-to-print cuts down order and pre-press artwork check times significantly, helping ramp up the amount of work printers can take on. 

McCombe’s experience at Graphic Warehouse backs this up, with the firm’s own web-to-print system used both for online orders, and those taken down by its customer service team.

He said: “We would never be able to get through the amount of artwork that we process, if we had to do it manually like the old days.”

Bell added: “The people who haven’t got web-to-print now are coming very late to the party. A lot of people out there already have that competitive advantage.”