Mar 10
9
Its All About Being Prepared To Change
I went into town this morning to get some new business cards printed at the local printer.
He occupies an old building on the main street, narrow at the front, but incredibly long. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him that I had the artwork for the card on a flash drive. He asked me to come in so that his assistant could check that he could open the file.
As we were waiting for the computer to boot up Ian said to me, “Do you want to buy a printing business?”
He laughed as I told him that I wasn't interested, and said to me, “I used to be able to make a good living from this business, then more recently I was able to make a living, and now it's getting hard to justify opening the doors”.
Ian has three printing businesses spread over three locations.
The thing that drove his profits for years was printing the annual reports for the local clubs and societies. Now they assemble the annual reports on a PC and email them as pdf files to the members.
Slowly the digital revolution continues. We talked about Joseph Schumpeter and creative destruction of industries by the internet in the 1990's. Lots of people laughed and kept on with the knitting. But the reality is that now bricks and mortar stores like Ian's little local print shop are becoming less and less viable. The machines that they took six year leases on are not working 16 hours a day – which is the amount of work that they need to do to pay for themselves, and yield a decent profit. Instead the leases on the equipment are driving businessmen like Ian to quit. And he is one of the lucky ones who owns the premises that he is in, and doesn't have to think about adding the cost of rental to his overhead.
The irony is that if Ian re-engineered his business, I believe he could make it really profitable and would probably have more fun too. But he would have to change.
And this is the problem. People don't like to change. They want the world around them to be they way that it was. And it isn't anymore.
Change doesn't necessarily mean that everything needs to be digital either.
It might mean in, the case of Ian, getting better quality paper in stock and running an older style printing press and adding a book binding business to it as well and doing custom runs of bespoke book editions, using local crafts people to create tooled leather bindings. It could mean a lot of things.
Ultimately it is all about reexamining what business you are in.
Some people will do this and will become incredibly successful at it. Some wont.
I will be keeping an eye on Ian's business. The real estate that he owns would make a great office, or could house an ISP, or a coffee shop, or a bespoke printing business… And we could do with at least a couple of those options along with a lot more…