Offset printers have their eye on flexo: print buyers, reports our columnist, are encouraging offset shops to acquire flexographic printing equipment. At issue? Customer service.

You know what they say: If you can't beat them, join them. If offset is having a tough time competing against flexo, then go flexo. And they are. This is the number one growth area that I see in the flexo industry: offset companies getting into flexo. Now I am a full believer that there is plenty of work to go around. After all, the printing and packaging industry is one of the largest in the country, and flexo currently is doing way less than it will be doing over the next five years.

There is no doubt that flexo is becoming the dominant player in the printing and packaging industry, and I am here to tell you that offset companies have taken notice. The majority of my consulting time is being occupied by offset companies wanting to explore or get into flexo, and the most surprising thing to me is the main reason they are so eager to get started.

I am sure the obvious reasons form a large part of their decision--better profit margins, less expensive equipment, and fast turnaround time on orders, but the most common reason will probably shock you. I know it astonished me.

There is no doubt that for many years offset was the way to go for top quality printing and packaging. Relationships were formed and things looked good for all involved. As time went on flexo got better, and slowly but surely became a viable source of good packaging products. It also brought a lot more efficiency to production lines, not to mention profitability and cash flow. It's not only auto-applied labels that attracted printing and packaging buyers, but also the speed of the turnaround time and the savings. All in all, it was just the forward movement of technology.

Now you might ask, "So what's the big deal?" That, my friends, is what I am going to share with you. The big deal is why the offset companies are getting into flexo now. I have been involved with several offset companies and have met with their customers, and those are the people who want the offset shops to do their flexo work.

These print buyers have been telling me horror stories about the numerous flexo converters they have dealt with and how dissatisfied they have become. The number one complaint is that they never believed what they were told, and for good reason. They also tell me about all the times they would receive partial orders, and how they would wonder what they were expected to do with part of what they needed.

I feel for a lot of flexo companies out there. I see a trend starting here, and it does not favor the flexo companies that think that what they have done in the past is sufficient for the future. I have said it before and I'm saying it again: If you're not getting better, you are only getting worse. Change is the only constant, and the competition is getting tougher all the time.

Think about this: The people who are getting into flexo now aren't just ex-salesmen who thought they would be better off running their own companies. No. The people who are getting into flexography now are some of the best print production people in the world. And trust me, they are hitting it full force.

The cost of the best-of the-best in flexo pales in comparison with offset, and the profit margins for flexo blow away the profit margins that offset printers are used to getting. The adoption of flexography into offset houses will have a large effect on companies in both industries over the next five years. I predict that the flexo industry will grow exponentially during that time, but at the same time I think that at least 25 percent of flexo companies in business today will not be running five years from now.

There are a lot of flexo companies that think they are doing fine, and no doubt many are. But I was shocked to hear about the level of dissatisfaction--total dissatisfaction, in some cases--that these buyers have with the work produced by well known flexographic printers. The horror stories themselves do not surprise me because I have been hearing and seeing them for years. What surprised me were some of the flexo companies that these buyers were so dissatisfied with.

I guess the real surprise is that it seems that every flexo company I go into is looking for more work, yet label sales people are spending 80 percent of their time overseeing production problems in the shop instead of devoting that time to taking care of customers and bringing in new business. This is going to catch up with a lot of flexo converters in the near future.

I have to say that I still find that about 25 percent of our industry really does it right and they don't hurt for work, nor do they have to be concerned about profits. To them I say good job, and their work is noticed by the print buyers. Of the five largest buyers I have dealt with recently, all five do some work with the same flexo converter, and this one converter got very high marks from all of them. That converter is WS Packaging Group.

Art's tip

My tip for you this time is simple: The competition is getting larger and smarter. Make sure that you are one of those who do it right, and you won't have anything to worry about. But if things aren't going as well as you think they should be, now's the time for action, because offset is a-coming.

That's all for now. Remember, sometimes it just takes a Reality Check.

Art Fields, a press operator and industry consultant, is the director of the Flexographic Trade School in Charlotte, NC. Tel. [phone]; e-mail [e-mail]; Internet www.weareflexo.com.