Yesterday I wrote a short article about the WhatTheyThink acquisition by APTech, which led to some interesting observations. One comment was from Paul Sherfield from the UK, who raised a very important question and a topic that we constantly discuss here at INKISH.

Why are PSPs not using the wealth of resources available from vendors, consultants, and media?

By Editor Morten B. Reitoft.

Intergraf represents European federations, representing over 100,000 printing companies. No European media reaches 100,000 companies or even a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people working in our industry. I don't even think the federations reach the companies with information that, to some extent, is needed for operating a modern printing company.

Printing companies, of course, must focus on their customers, their employees, and their operations, but what about topics such as environment, sustainability, digital transformation, workflow/automation, newest and latest technology, and articles, statistics, films, podcasts, etc., that support growth. Where do the owners get their information from? We don't see an overwhelming number of attendees at tradeshows; the circulations of trade media are surprisingly low, and webinars and events, in general, are not reaching large numbers either?

I was looking into some of the numbers available on trade media - and media like 'Druck & Medien' (DE) only has a print run of 6,500 magazines covering the entire DACH region. Print Week (UK) only prints 8,500 copies, and you can continue looking at the publically available media plans that uncover surprisingly low circulations. And I am not judging their importance and reach, just wondering how the more than 100,000 printing companies in Europe get themselves updated?

The most apparent reason PSPs don't use the available resources must be quality. If the quality produced by trade media, organizers of events and webinars, reports- and research, white papers, and of course, and unfortunately, also the content we create was great, essential, and something that could help growth, wouldn't we have a larger audience?

The reason I started INKISH was for those exact reasons. I wanted to tell stories about PSPs so owners and managers could find inspiration and learn. We see INKISH growing, and though we still consider ourselves a small media in the global printing industry, we work hard on being extremely loyal to our audience. I got an email from Anthony Thirlby some weeks ago - and let me quote this and explain it.

When I read above, I, of course, speculate on why this is the case. Do we - as media - chase the agendas set by the vendors? Or are we not in-depth enough with the real issues and challenges? Or is Anthony wrong, and the stories and opinions we raise right?

I honestly don't know. I don't know what Anthony refers explicitly to. Still, reading his comment, I can't help thinking about the many interviews and statements we have raised regarding whether Inkjet is finally ready to replace offset?

In general, we get a lot of good feedback from both vendors and PSPs about the content and the topics we discuss on INKISH.NEWS and INKISH.TV.

When we did a webinar last year about Inkjet - the total number of unique attendees was about 3,800. When we looked into the details, we identified 785 unique PSPs where the remaining were vendors, media, consultants, and some unidentified. When you develop webinars, you, of course, spend a lot of time in planning and marketing. Still, the channels promoting the content are typically the channels you have access to - like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, newsletters, and of course, INKISH - but still, we don't get the number of attendees, for example, FuturePrint does.

We have plans for how we hope to reach more PSPs - but it requires time and money, and it will take time to get there - but thank you, Paul Sherfield, for raising this. It's tremendously essential - so thank you!