Margins and marketing put under the spotlight at ProPrint's Breakfast Briefing

Outdoor signage and point-of-sale have been resilient parts of the printing industry but as more suppliers enter the sector, margins will be squeezed - a point discussed at ProPrint's first-ever Breakfast Briefing.

The panel event on "The Wide-Format Opportunity" was sponsored by Fuji Xerox Australia and held at the prestigious Langham Hotel on Thursday 15 September in Melbourne, coinciding with Visual Impact Image Expo and GASAA's PrintCom shows at the nearby Convention Centre.

More than 70 guests crowded into the Swanston Room, where sector experts gave insight into market conditions and client expectations.

Click here to see the event in pictures.

The panel comprised: Charmaine Moldrich, chief executive of the Outdoor Media Association; Dale Rees, general manager of retail displays and visual merchandising at Ergo Asia; Tri Thoi, director of Xtreem Technology Centre; and Paul Towsey, manager of Finsbury Green's Victorian government print management unit.

Moldrich explained why out-of-home media continued to display strength.

"Why are we still growing while other media channels are dipping? More and more people are spending time out-of-home, so as the other media fragments, outdoor becomes the last bastion of broadcast media.

"When I rang the Gruen Transfer last year and said, ‘Can you do something on out-of-home?’, they said: ‘You’re just a small media channel, go away, lady, we don’t want to talk to you.’ This year they rang me and said, ‘We want to do a show on out-of-home’ so it’s starting to become a media channel that people are taking seriously."

Xtreem's Thoi explained how the firm had grown from a CD and DVD duplication service to a diversified company that runs 10 Roland DG wide-format machines and recently installed a Xerox iGen4.

Dale Rees said more than ever, retailers and marketers were looking for innovation.

"In the retail space, marketing companies and brands have got tight budgets, and finite resources.

"If you’re able to bring innovation to the table and assist in creating effective campaigns that is going to work for you and the client," said Rees.

Some of the most heated Q&A centred on the issue of margins, and whether the rush of commercial printers to enter wide-format would push down on prices and drive commoditisation.

Finsbury Green's Towsey said on margin erosion, "it’s going to happen. It’s gravity."

He said relationships were the key to protecting margins. "Once you’ve got credibility with a customer, that also protects your margin because there’s a certain point where a buyer of print, where you respect where that point is, what a supplier is worth."

Click here to see the event in pictures.

A video from the event will be published online in the near future. See the October issue for in-depth coverage.