Think about the demographics in your company. Chances are most of the workers have been in the industry for well over 10 years. That’s not surprising considering that—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the median age of employees in the printing industry is roughly 47 years old. Within the next couple years, a lot of our workforce will retire. That’s a scary thought since most of the printing industry doesn’t have a supply of younger, skilled workers to cover the impending deficit of talent. Even those companies lucky enough to employee some younger men and women notice a wide skills gap between their seasoned employees and their new hires. We know this shifting workforce causes a huge issue for our industry. But Joe Polanco, president emeritus of one of the industry’s largest regional trade associations, has a solution: a recommitment to training. According to Joe, “Employers need to recommit their efforts (and money) to create on-the-job programs that can quickly develop the skill sets needed in today’s world of print and technology.” We couldn’t agree more. And although finding the right training program for your company can be troublesome, we’ve noticed one strategy that seems to be gaining popularity and momentum over the past couple years—online learning opportunities. The online learning (or e-learning as it’s sometimes called) market continues to grow at an exponential rate. According to , the worldwide market for self-paced e-learning reached $47.9 billion in 2015 and revenues are likely to reach $50.4 billion by 2020. e-Learning is already the second most important training method within many organizations, and 77 percent of American companies already offer some kind of online corporate training. That’s not surprising because, according to WR Hambrecht’s Corporate eLearning Exploring a New Frontier, e-learning—and the videos associated with it—are proven to increase knowledge retention anywhere from 25 to 60 percent.  Our incoming labor force also strongly supports the use of e-learning training programs. About 6.7 million American college students already use online education options and will take this preference with them to the professional world. The reasoning? e-Learning can meet the incoming labor force where they already spend their time—on mobile devices. Last year, a study of almost 24,000 adults (age 18–34) found that 77 percent of the group owned a smartphone, and they spent 14.5 hours on it every week. Not to mention, the incoming millennial wants flexible options in their education. They prefer to find their own balance to their lives and want the option to study at any time of the day or night. An e-learning program can give them that option. If you’re interested in finding an e-learning program that can fit the needs of your graphic communications...

  Think about the demographics in your company. Chances are most of the workers have been in the industry for well over 10 years. That’s not surprising considering that—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the median age of employees in the printing industry is roughly 47 years old. Within the next couple years, a lot of our workforce will retire. That’s a scary thought since most of the printing industry doesn’t have a supply of younger, skilled workers to cover the impending deficit of talent. Even those companies lucky enough to employee some younger men and women notice a wide skills gap between their seasoned employees and their new hires. We know this shifting workforce causes a huge issue for our industry. But Joe Polanco, president emeritus of one of the industry’s largest regional trade associations, has a solution: a recommitment to training. According to Joe, “Employers need to recommit their efforts (and money) to create on-the-job programs that can quickly develop the skill sets needed in today’s world of print and technology.” We couldn’t agree more. And although finding the right training program for your company can be troublesome, we’ve noticed one strategy that seems to be gaining popularity and momentum over the past couple years—online learning opportunities. The online learning (or e-learning as it’s sometimes called) market continues to grow at an exponential rate. According to , the worldwide market for self-paced e-learning reached $47.9 billion in 2015 and revenues are likely to reach $50.4 billion by 2020. e-Learning is already the second most important training method within many organizations, and 77 percent of American companies already offer some kind of online corporate training. That’s not surprising because, according to WR Hambrecht’s Corporate eLearning Exploring a New Frontier, e-learning—and the videos associated with it—are proven to increase knowledge retention anywhere from 25 to 60 percent.  Our incoming labor force also strongly supports the use of e-learning training programs. About 6.7 million American college students already use online education options and will take this preference with them to the professional world. The reasoning? e-Learning can meet the incoming labor force where they already spend their time—on mobile devices. Last year, a study of almost 24,000 adults (age 18–34) found that 77 percent of the group owned a smartphone, and they spent 14.5 hours on it every week. Not to mention, the incoming millennial wants flexible options in their education. They prefer to find their own balance to their lives and want the option to study at any time of the day or night. An e-learning program can give them that option. If you’re interested in finding an e-learning program that can fit the needs of your graphic communications...

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Paul Strack, President of CustomXM, about how his company has dealt with the rapid transformations in the printing industry. CustomXM, formerly Custom Printing Company, is a family-owned operation in North Little Rock, Arkansas that has successfully transitioned from a traditional offset printing company to a provider of integrated printing and marketing services. Paul will be one of the speakers at the 2013 Integrated Print Forum in May, where he’ll share the story of his company’s successful transition. When and why did the company change its name? Do you still consider yourself a “printer” today? The name change occurred in 2007/2008. Our company had been evolving over the years and we wanted to highlight more of our new capabilities. Based on where we thought the industry and our work was going, we felt that we needed to communicate our ability to provide cross-media marketing. Print is still the main engine driving our company and it makes up probably 30-40% of our revenue. However, we are seeing significant growth in other areas like fulfillment and marketing services. How did your existing customers react to the name change? Did the new name help in attracting new customers? It’s funny because existing customers were somewhat confused when they received their invoices and the company name and logo had changed. In hindsight, perhaps we could have provided more advance communication about the change. But in a way the change was a door opening opportunity, because it gave us a chance to explain to existing customers that we could do more than they thought. I think new customers started to become aware of our marketing services when we got involved in social media. Whether it was Twitter or Facebook, it opened us up to a whole new audience who didn’t know us from our “print-only” days. At first, I handled most of the social media outreach. But recently one of our newer hires (a sales rep) has gotten involved on Twitter and Facebook. How has your work changed over the past five years? We’ve been doing more and more integrated campaigns for clients. These are primarily direct mail campaigns that incorporate PURLs, landing pages, emails, and social media. We have seen quite a bit of growth in these campaigns over the last two years. Early on, it seemed like we were doing more one-off campaigns for clients. But I felt that this defeated the purpose, because one of the strengths of integrated marketing campaigns is that you gather information about your clients’ customers, which in turn allows you to refine the process in subsequent campaigns. Over the past few years, we have had success with providing multiple...

Marketers are always looking for ways to get more from their print budgets. Historically, printers have responded through the use of customized print, and more recently, quick response (QR) codes. One of the latest innovations in print is augmented reality, which allows for the creation of unique 3-D experiences that add another dimension to print. Printing Industries of America’s Joe Marin has updated a popular Digital Printing Council white paper on augmented reality.  This white paper, which is free to all Printing Industries of America members, provides an overview of augmented reality technologies and highlights their relevance to print. New information includes an updated tutorial and additional resources. Members can download the new white paper here. Additionally, Marin has created a series of video tutorials to accompany his white paper. The first three videos of a planned six-part series are currently up on the Digital Printing Council website. The topics explained include how to download and install augmented reality software applications, how to use some basic tools to create and navigate around a 3-D object, and how to trace a 2-D object and turn it into a 3-D object for augmented reality software. Members can view the new videos...