Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

And it's not pretty.

Sad news today from Oberlin, Ohio. The World Color Press plant, located in Oberlin, is closing. 119 printing employees will be out of a job as of May 21st. The line of reasoning sent down from World Color's head office is simple and one we hear too often lately: the economy is bad, we all have to make tough decisions.

The plant shutdown comes on the heels of Quad/Graphics acquisition of World Color (formerly Quebecor World Inc.) in January. While World Color reps call the closure unrelated, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that the multinational company is cleaning house and cutting costs where they can.

Direct mail and magazine insert printing done by the Oberlin plant will be transferred to other World Color branches, and employees will be notified of openings at other locations. Unfortunately, in this economy, we all know what that means.

Frustrations aside, however, the modus operandi of all large printing companies has been the same since the recession began: consolidate, trim the fat, lower expenses. As major forces in the printing industry begin to prepare for the trade show season, many, such as Heidelberg and Komori, are scaling down, choosing to market themselves in less expensive ways rather than invest in a costly trade show expo.

The irony here, of course, is that if printers won't invest in print, then who will? Shutting down small plants and shunning trade shows can be viewed as basic self-preservation tactics, designed to ensure the industry's future, but ultimately, these stop-gaps can neither be called innovative solutions or creative developments. This type of defensive maneuver only works for weathering a temporary storm, not revitalizing an industry.

The Oberlin World Color plant has been a leader in instituting green technologies, and cutting costs in the process. That's the kind of smart, forward thinking that printers need to survive, and yet, it's being crushed by corporate bottom lines. If the game plan according to major players is to stamp out innovation in favor of self-preservation, then maybe this industry, at least so far as the old way of doing business is concerned, doesn't deserve to survive.